This Yankee fan didn’t care much who won this evening’s game between the Giants and Rockies at Coors Field. But I love a ballgame anywhere, especially in a park I’ve never visited before (Coors is No. 24 for me). So I gladly attended tonight’s game with colleagues from the Associated Press Managing Editors, meeting in Denver this week.
I’ve watched from the outfield many times, but never before from field level. We ate, drank and watched from The Warning Track party room, right behind the right field warning track, watching through a chain-link fence.
That was cool, but not as cool as getting to go up behind the hand-operated out-of-town scoreboard. You climb steep, narrow stairs …
… to a narrow room with numbers …
… and abbreviated team names.
Workers behind the scoreboard monitor out-of-town games on two TV sets. (I was politely but firmly asked to move when I inadvertently stood between a scoreboard operator and her TV. When someone scores, the operators quickly update the scoreboard.
And, if you want to feel like a little kid getting away with something, you can watch the game through a knothole. Not the best game I’ve ever seen (Giants won, 8-5), but one of my favorite ballpark experiences.
[…] I’ve also had plentiful professional visits to Colorado, starting with a 2008 Newspaper Next presentation for the Colorado Press Association. My DFM visits to Denver started with a 2011 APME conference there (including a Rockies game where we got to visit behind the hand-operated scoreboard). […]
LikeLike