For every benefit gifted by Coors Field (winning batting titles like Skee-Ball tickets), there is a corresponding drawback (sky-high ERAs). The Rockies are not blind to this reality. Even before their inception at old Mile High Stadium in 1993, the club looked for ways to dull down the elevation effects.



They hired physicists and scouts and engineers looking for the sweet spot, for how to build a ballpark not so small to allow too many home runs and not so big you can’t see home plate from the fences. They settled on the biggest outfield in baseball, a greenbelt so vast it would make Fred Olmsted jealous.



It didn’t work. In the 12 years after Coors Field opened its gates in 1995, the park accounted for three of the four highest single-season home runs totals in baseball history, including an MLB record 303 homers in 1999.



They kept trying to find an answer. The Rockies installed a humidor in 2002 to keep baseballs from drying into flying beef...