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Mile High Stadium |
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Denver, CO |
From the "Ballparks of Baseball" website. Used by permission.
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Number of Games: 4 |
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First Game: June 5, 1994 |
Pirates 4, Rockies 3 |
| Last Game: June 28, 1994 (DH) | Padres 9-11, Rockies 10-3
(2nd game 11 innings) |
Mile High Stadium was demolished in 1999.
It has been destroyed along with so many other multipurpose stadiums, but I'd have to say Mile High Stadium is probably the best multipurpose stadium I've ever seen. It's because of those awesome movable East Stands, which actually glided on water to move from a cozy football position to a more distant baseball position. And for a time, after Coors Field opened, there were a few people bemoaning the loss of Mile High, which averaged more in attendance than Coors could seat. But those third-deck seats in Mile High were really, really up there--quite far away, especially if you were down the lines. And those seats in center field...my, but they were a million miles away (although I liked that they sold them for a buck). So Coors is a definite improvement, but I don't think there was too much wrong with Mile High. It was wonderfully quirky, in fact...homers to left were insanely easy, but homers to right were very difficult (I think it was something like 370 feet down the right field line, and the wall quite high.)
I enjoyed one of these games with friends Michelle and Robby. Robby scores the games too, but he uses wacky hieroglyphics only decipherable to him. Archeologists could unearth my scorebook in ten thousand years, and would have no trouble whatsoever determining exactly what Eric Young did in the eighth inning that June day in 1994. If they unearth Robby's scorecard...well...they'll probably think it's some failed architectural plan.
Mile High was also host to my only-ever scheduled doubleheader. I figured, hey, how could it get any better than this? A doubleheader with dad. That there is some father-son bonding. But there's a problem...Rockies pitching. The doubleheader lasted absolutely forever. It resulted in one of only two times in my life I've been compelled to leave a game early...the damn 11th inning of the damn second game was positively--and unprecedentedly (see below)--endless. So I took pity on my Dad sometime during the eighteenth pitching change of the eleventh inning and let him take me home.
As much as I like the idea of the doubleheader, and as much as I laud suggestions that scheduled doubleheaders should be made more commonplace (this will never happen, however, as owners need each of the 81 games of revenue), I have a suggestion: schedule no doubleheaders between teams whose earned run averages, when added together, are higher than 9. We can't handle that many walks and hits.
BASEBALL STUFF I'VE SEEN HERE:
In the first game of the June 28 doubleheader, the Rockies come back from an 8-run deficit to win, a Rockies record at the time (over the year and a half they'd existed).
The Padres set a record in the second game for most runs scored in an 11th inning (since 1900), lighting the Rockies up for nine. It's the only 11-3 pitchers' duel I'll ever see.
Ballparks.com Mile High Stadium site
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Written August 2001, updated May 2005.