I have a confession to make. I was originally a Chicago Cubs fan. Yep, born in Melrose Park, Illinois. I met Bill Buckner when I was in kindergarten, then grew up to Andre Dawson, Ryne Sandberg and Mark Grace. After one of what turned into several aborted attempts at college, I moved to Denver for the first time in 1996. I worked in the Call Center Customer Service Department at US West (in the current CenturyLink Building) and spent most of my time trying to figure out how a somewhat-spry and lean 21 year old could spend $32k in a year. Of course, not having house expenses since I had a room at my parents’ house, nor car expenses since I had my parents car, meant I had too much money and too little overhead to spend it on. So I went to a lot of games at Coors Field. I had a blast at Old Chicago (in Denver) watching Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire‘s 1998 home run chase. Spent a lot of time in the smoking section in Ye Olden Day, back when smoking sections had these newfangled inventions called televisions and radios so that people could watch the game, talk about the game and smoke a cigarette or six at the same time. One of my fondest memories during that same summer was when the Chicago Cubs came to Coors Field. I was adorned in my Kerry Wood jersey, sitting in my usual seats the sun-blinded foul territory between first base and the outfield. Glenallen Hill (then with the Cubs), strode up to the plate. WHACK! He hit a huge fly ball to my area. Huge as in gosh-ga-darn-that-thing-is-so-high-but-I-think-oh-I-think-I-can-catch-it-and-YEAH! I got it!… I got it. And with that, I realized that I was never going to be a major league baseball player because I could never hit a ball that high. Later that same season, I also caught a Dante Bichette flyball and since I’d caught my quota for the year, I promptly gave that one to a cute kid in a Rockies shirt.

Near the end of the 2014 season after the AAA Sky Sox were done for the year, I saw Glenallen Hill in the clubhouse and told him that story and asked to shake his hand. He gave me a hug instead.

I left Denver in 1999 for Corvallis, Oregon. I graduated from Oregon State University but somehow got engaged to a Oregon Ducks fan and had a daughter. I even got baby pictures of her in a little Chicago Cubbies onesie and was determined to bring her up as a Cubs fan regardless of how much her mother wanted to turn her into a princess. Unfortunately the college rivalry and differences in parental extracurricular planning was a good analogy for how real life played out. To make a short sentence longer, being single again and with the job market in Oregon not offering anything near $20k a year, I came back to Denver in August of 2004.

This time around I had expenses, but somewhat fortuitously I arrived just in time for the Cubs-Rockies series. The folklore had it that there were a lot of Chicago transplants in the Denver area and I was curious to see if things had changed. Alas, from my own eyeball roll call of the jerseys in the stands, that still seemed to be the case as the blue well outnumbered the white/black/purple menagerie. I was among the ones so blue-adorned, with the same Kerry Wood jersey proudly on my back. My brother came along with a Chicago Cubs Nomar Garciaparra jersey. Go figure. He still has it too. Done figuring.

After entering through the gates, my brother and I got some drinks. Mike’s Hard Cranberry for me, since that’s about as hardcore as I get, and made our way over to the section where our seats were. We had box seats (hey, it’s the Cubs!), third base side and sat down. Around the third inning, I got antsy for a cigarette. Hey, after waiting in line at the gate and dutifully not smoking in line to not offend any probing noses, I figured my politeness earned me a nic fix. So, at the entrance to the aisle that led down to our seats, there was an elderly lady in an ushering outfit who I figured could be helpful.

“Excuse me, miss. It’s been awhile since I’ve been to Coors Field. Can you tell me where the nearest smoking section is?”

“We don’t allow smoking in Coors Field.”, she replied.

Oh, she must’ve misheard me, I thought.

“I know I can’t smoke in the seats, I just wanted to know where the nearest smoking area is.”

“We don’t allow smoking in Coors Field.”, she insisted.

Um, ok. Maybe she just misunderstood. I wandered around, found another usher, and thus, the smoking section. It still had a television too.

After a few smokes and a few words with a misguided and very inebriated Cub fan who thought that despite my commentary about my own now-less-than-lean waistline, that I was in fact, not the real Kerry Wood, I headed back to my seat.

Or at least, I tried to. When I got back to the aisle, that same usher stopped me.

“You can’t go down now.”, she said.

“Oh? Um. Sorry.”, I said and stepped aside to wait… until she immediately let five other people walk past and go to their seats.

I guess I was shocked by the expression on my face since she followed that up with, “I guess they don’t teach manners at Wrigley Field.”

I’m generally a laid-back kind of individual. Perhaps it’s a part of my Oregon experience, but I’m kind of a pacifist-hippie sans drug use. Either way, I try to make it a habit to not overreact. That habit didn’t work that time. No, I didn’t get violent. I got extremely paranoid. I mean, what did I do? I tried going back over in my mind what I said. I wondered if maybe she thought I was drunk, like Kerry-Wood-Fan-Boy from the smoking section. Could she smell Mike’s Hard Cranberry on my breath? Does that drink even smell enough to, you know, smell? Maybe I should call it a night after one drink and drink a lot of overpriced water to wash away the smell so she doesn’t toss me out of Coors Field.

I went back to my seat and confided in my brother. Eventually, I settled down and my customer service training and experience kicked in. Again, being a normally relaxed kind of guy, I generally don’t go around reporting people. I’ll even eat an undercooked grilled cheese sandwich from Denny’s with nary a peep. But if I felt I had to walk on eggshells for the rest of the night without particularly knowing what I did wrong, there might be other people in a worse situation than me. So I figured it’d be best to tell someone to create a record that, “Hey, he was sober enough to at least talk to someone even if he had a _whole_ Mike’s Hard Cranberry”. And, on the offchance that I was actually right, well, perhaps the lady usher would get some helpful coaching.

So, I got up, kept my head down and walked past the lady usher. A few sections down, I asked a different usher where I could find a supervisor who courteously directed me to the proper area. I told the elderly gentleman what happened and what aisle the usher was ushering in and he said, “Yeah, we’ve had some issues with her before.” Then he told me to fill out a comment card and handed me a pen.

I filled out the card and handed it back and that was it.

Except that wasn’t it. A few weeks after that day, I got a box from the Colorado Rockies containing a letter apologizing for the poor experience I had. I’d forgotten the other part of my customer service training, that people who complain tend to get some kind of discount or freebie or other thingie for their troubles. From a business standpoint, it makes sense, since a phone company like US West would rather give someone $5 so they keep spending $50 a month. Baseball, being a business, I guess also does the same thing. Since I don’t complain much, it didn’t really cross my mind that I’d get something out of it too.

And hoo-boy. There was a lot of loot and my propeller-headed math side kicked in. There was an ashen-grey Rockies hat. Mentally, I appraised it at $10 since it had one of those plastic snap backs. Not dissing it at all, I love hats. I got some baseball cards, more fuel for the loot fire since I love baseball cards. There were some other items that I received but can’t recall right now and I think I got a free ticket as well. I also got a Comfort Dental Todd Helton bobblehead doll.

Ain’t he cute? I’m not a bobblehead afficianado since I think they really don’t do a good job at resembling players, but if weight is any judge, the piece didn’t feel like cheap plastic. It was heavy enough where I thought “This is a quality item.”

All added up in my mind, it was probably $40 worth of stuff in retail value.

But, it isn’t quite as simple as a dollar amount. There was a satisfaction that, “Hey, I guess my comment card went somewhere and it was actually read by some person.” I would’ve been happy with that. I mean, I didn’t lose my seat or any money or anything because of the usher so it’s not like I was “out” anything except for a bit of fun and peace of mind. The loot box was just extra icing on the cake. The Rockies, I felt, didn’t have to do that. And yeah, like my customer service training taught me, that thoughtfulness sticks into my mind today.

And no, I haven’t had to fill out a comment card since then. Sure, I’m upset that the smoking areas are moved so that I need to coax my old and abused lungs up a level or two of stairs. I miss the televisions and the radio broadcasts so that I had an idea what was going on in the game, but that’s just the way things work in the new millenium. Nor has other stuff at Coors Field always made sense or the food always tasted great (smoked cheddar sausage = good, Heltonburger = not my cup of tea). But overall, I’ve had a great time.

Such a great time, in fact, that something I didn’t quite expect happened. You see, my daughter visits from Oregon for the summer and I’ve taken her to quite a few Rockies games in her ten years of life. It’s almost a ritual, a Daddy thing since her mom is more of the college football breed and I, well, am not. So I take my daughter and we head on down to the park and, like a good Daddy, I spoil her rotten, buying her Rockies beads and other goodies. Over ten years, she’s been through about four different sized hats and quite a few Fireworks games. Give her a bag of peanuts, a bottle of water, some cotton candy and some Dippin’ Dots and she’s in seventh heaven. When she was six, she started getting beyond the treats and enjoying the game itself. During the first game we went to that year, she’d holler/cry in her little voice, “Let’s go Rockies!”

Ohmygosh! I turned her into a Rockies fan! The horror, how could I? She was supposed to be a Cubs fan gosh-ga-darn it. Because the Cubs are great and… um…

Then I thought back through the decade plus and change that I’ve lived in Denver and the hundreds of games I’ve been to at Coors Field… I was here for the Blake Street Bombers. I admired Darryl Kile for not making excuses. I enjoyed the heck out of Rocktober when every single game had a great defensive play or a clutch hit. Not a thought crossed my mind when I took off work to successfully get World Series tickets or when I braved the cold to watch Yorvit Torrealba give the perfect encore to an eephus pitch in that year’s NLCS. There was a Good Friday in 2009 and the subsequent playoff race.

And in that decade, I’d been to one Cubs game at Wrigley Field. Nah, it’s not a falling off the bandwagon thing even if the Cubs didn’t get as far in the playoffs over the last decade as the Rockies did. Ownership had changed twice and the major league roster got sandblasted but at least Milton Bradley was gone. The one game I went to, I had to stand outside Wrigley Field to smoke a cigarette and if I didn’t get back in in 10 minutes, my ticket was voided. They even wrote the time on my ticket and kept an eye on me the entire time I smoked. New millenium but, eh, meh.

Why should she be a Cubs fan? Heck, why should I be a Cubs fan?

The Rockies have had a better run and been more fun in the last decade. If you watch a Rockies game, anything might happen. You get anything from a double header double come-back day with a cycle on the side to a no-hitter for the bad guys, a 6 for 6 hitting performance on Opening Day to quite a few pretty plays.

And all that was just in 2014.

You can put a price tag on the ticket (which is still one of the best deals in the league), but not on the experience. The experience, overall has been great. And even with that one usher on that day, some good (loot) and goodwill came out of it.

Consider these two Rockies customers well-serviced.