The Colorado Rockies
The Colorado Rockies are a United States professional baseball team based in Denver, Colorado, just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.
The Colorado Rockies compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) and is a member of the National League (NL) West division. This is a fairy new baseball team; they were established for the 1993 season as an expansion team, and were MLB´s first team to be based in the Mountain Time Zone. Since 1995, their home arena is Coors Field in Denver´s Lower Downtown area.
The Colorado Rockies have qualified for the postseason five times; each time as a Wild Card winner.
The team achieved its first and so far only NL pennant in 2007, when they won 14 of their final 15 games in the regular season and secured a Wild Card position. The final part of the winning streak was a 13 inning 9-8 victory against the San Diego Padres in a tiebreaker game. The Rockies then defeated the Philadelphia Phillies and Arizona Diamondbacks in the NLDS and NLCS respectively and entered the 2007 World Series. In the World Series, they were defeated by the Boston Red Sox in four games.
Short facts about the Colorado Rockies
Established: 1993
Major league affiliations: National League 1993 – present, West Division 1993 – present
Colours: purple-black-silver
Nicknames: The Rox, The Blake Street Bombers
Retired numbers: 17, 33, 42, KSM
Ballpark: Coors Field 1995 – present, Mile High Stadium 1993-1994
World Series titles
None
NL Pennants
2007
NL West Division titles
None
Wild Card berths
- 1995
- 2007
- 2009
- 2017
- 2018
Dinger
An anthropomorphic purple dinosaur named Dinger is the official mascot for the Colorado Rockies. He wears black sneakers and Rockies jersey. The word dinger is slang for home run.
When Coors Field were constructed, several dinosaur fossils were unearthed there, including a 7-foot-long triceratops cranium, which serves as inspiration for the mascot Dinger.
According to legend, Dinger hatched from an egg at Mile High Stadium on April 16, 1994.
When the Rockies hitters are at bat in the late innings of a game, Dinger can be seen dancing in the seats behind the home plate – but he always sits down right before the beginning motion of each pitch.
Dinger is a well-known character in the Rocky Mountain Region, as he works year-round to promote physical fitness and literacy among elementary school kids, hangs out with the Rockies Rookies Kids Fan Club, and visits the Children’s Hospital Colorado and Denver Health.
Colorado Rockies origins
Baseball has been popular in Denver since the 19th century, but it would take long before the city got a major league baseball team. When the Bears Stadium was built in 1948 to accommodate the minor league Denver Bears baseball team, it was constructed in a way that would make it fairly easy to upgrade to a major league ballpark. (Since 1968, it was known as the Mile High Stadium.)
In 1990, the Coors Brewing Company became a limited partner with the AAA Denver Zephyrs (formerly Denver Bears). The following year, an ownership group representing Denver led by John Antonucci and Michael I. Monus was granted a franchise as a part of MLB´s two-team expansion. They selected the name Colorado’s Rockies due to Denver´s proximity to the Rocky Mountains. When a scandal forced Monus and Antonucci to leave the group, trucking magnate Jerry McMorris filled their place.
The Colorado Rockies played their first game in 1993, in the West division of the National League. That season, they set an new Major League attendance record by having a total of 4,483,350 fans on site to watch the games, and this record still stands.
Back then, the Mile High Stadium (formerly Bears Stadium) was their home ballpark and they shared it with the NFL team Denver Bronco´s for two seasons while the new Coors Field arena was under construction.