Rocky Fever Stays at a Peak : Key to the Expansion Team’s Success at Gate Is Its Regional Appeal

They like to tell the story of the farmer from Chadron, Neb., who bought four season tickets for the Colorado Rockies, even though it’s a five-hour drive to Denver.

Bernie Mullin, the Rockies’ ticket director, laughed and said, “The guy told us that five hours in his Cadillac is a breeze after eight hours a day on his tractor.”

The Rockies are proving that fans will go to any length to support baseball’s next-to-worst team, with apologies to the New York Mets. The Rockies have set six major league attendance records and are headed for more.

“It’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen,” Manager Don Baylor said. “On weekends, we get more people for batting practice than we’ve drawn for some games on the road. There are 13 states in the Rocky Mountain area, and everyone feels a part of it.

“I was in Salt Lake City this winter and overheard a woman say, ‘There’s Don Baylor. He’s the manager of our team.’ I mean, I had never even been in Salt Lake before.”

It’s a Rocky Mountain high--and more.

The National League expansion team sold 28,627 season tickets to fans from 36 states, Puerto Rico and Canada. It sold 50 season tickets to residents of California, but then Californians are conditioned to tough commutes. The biggest out-of-state sale was in Wyoming, a minimum drive of 60 miles.

“People don’t think twice about driving 150 to 200 miles here,” owner Jerry McMorris said. “There’s a lot of open space that you can cover pretty quickly.”

It’s a phenomenon, nevertheless.

The Rockies are 24-45 overall, 14-24 at home, near the bottom of the league in virtually every department, but averaging 56,854 in a football stadium that requires a passport to reach the upper decks.

However, they are filled more often than not.

The Rockies have had one crowd of more than 80,000, two of more than 70,000 and seven of more than 60,000.

They are averaging 5,000 in walk-up sales, sell 20,000 tickets a week through 68 grocery outlets and are ensured of drawing 3.7 million through advance sales.

The pace through 38 dates projects to 4.7 million, which would shatter the Toronto Blue Jays’ single-season record of 4,028,318.

Is five million possible?

“Well, our attendance should really pick up now that schools are out and the weather is heating up,” said ticket director Mullin, as if there was much room to pick up. “Also, there’s more tourists in this area during the summer than winter.”

With a total of 2,160,433 through Tuesday, the Rockies have already broken the Blue Jays’ expansion record of 1,701,052, set in 1977.

They have also set major league records for largest opening-day and single-game crowds (80,227); largest three-game series (212,475); largest four-game series (251,447) and fastest to both 1 million (17 dates) and 2 million (36 dates).

Perhaps the most remarkable statistic is that they have not drawn one crowd that would fit in Coors Field, scheduled to open in 1995 with a seating capacity of about 45,200, which has been expanded from a planned 43,700 and is designed to eventually expand by 5,000 more.

If the 1993 pace holds up, they will be knocking the doors down. The Rockies are paying for the redesign from 43,700, but they are otherwise getting a free stadium funded through a sales tax of one-tenth of 1% in a six-county metropolitan area, and they are caught in the middle, McMorris said, between the ticket demand and media criticism that they are being greedy for wanting expanded seating.

“It’s a sensitive situation, but we have to make sure that the working people who are paying the bill on the new stadium find seats,” the owner said. “I think it’s only a matter of time until we expand to 50,000.”

In time the honeymoon will end, and the current euphoria will fade. But all of the initial studies--artistic, economic and otherwise--indicated that a stadium of 45,000-50,000 seats would be fine over the long haul.

“Everybody felt that if we averaged 25- or 26,000, we’d be doing well,” said John McHale, executive vice president. “We figured that the season-ticket sale would represent the core of our support. We had no clue that we’d be averaging twice that.

“An economic study by the Chamber of Commerce in 1990 projected the impact of major league baseball on the area at about $92 million a year. It was short 50%.”

Why?

“The obvious thing is the 30-year wait,” McMorris, a trucking executive, said, referring to a period during which the Oakland Athletics, San Francisco Giants and Chicago White Sox flirted with the area and Bob Howsam talked of creating a Continental League with a franchise in Denver.

“People here kept getting their expectations up, and while it didn’t happen, that built a foundation. So many people worked so hard over a 30-year period that everyone in the region has bought into it, now that it’s a reality. The process nurtured itself.

“Opening day here was so euphoric that the governor said to me that he thought it was the greatest day in the history of the state.”

The euphoria is such that, not only do fans fill most of the seats at Mile High every night, they stay in them until the merciful end. Neither nature nor opposing hitters tend to drive them home early.

Five thousand watched the workout before the home opener. Four thousand bought tickets while waiting out a rain delay in April, and by the time that game was postponed, the Rockies had sold $70,000 worth of team merchandise.

The team is second to the Chicago White Sox in the sale of licensing products, and only public safety curtailed the opening-day sale of programs at 220,000. The forklifts attempting to bring in another 100,000 couldn’t maneuver through the record crowd.

Said McHale: “I think the attendance has tended to build on itself. People know they’re not going to be alone out here, that they’re going to have fun with 50,000 others, and they want to be part of it. There’s almost no one I’ve come in contact with who hasn’t been to a game and won’t tell you about it.”

Joe Girardi, former Chicago Cub catcher, said the atmosphere must be comparable to the early stages of Fernandomania in Los Angeles.

“The amazing thing is that it’s impossible to go anywhere without people knowing who you are, and we’ve only been here a couple of months,” Girardi said. “In Chicago, we’d be sold out from June to September, but this is times two, and we were sold out here in April, when it was 35 degrees.

“It’s been a great experience--better than I had imagined. I mean, the fans are a blast, no matter what happens in the game, and they never leave. We can be down, 9-0, and they’re still here, as if they expect us to hit a 10-run homer.”

Expectations come with the territory. The Broncos are a three-time loser in the Super Bowl, but have played to sellouts for 23 consecutive years and have a season-ticket waiting list of 5,000. The supportive atmosphere, Baylor said, is a sharp contrast to his years with the Angels, when half or more of the Anaheim Stadium crowd always seemed to be rooting for the visiting team.

“Even in ’79 and ‘82, when we won the division, the players would ask each other, ‘Are we at home or on the road?’ ” Baylor said.

“There’s no doubt here. These people are too much. I keep getting letters and calls from fans trying to assure me they’re patient and behind us. I wish I had their patience.”

Maybe it’s more a case of ignorance being bliss. They chant “dee-fense” at Mile High and even do the wave. When the Rockies honored Lydia McKee of Littleton, Colo., as their millionth fan, she said her favorite player was what’s his name, the first baseman, Andre Scalarraga.

She meant Andres Galarraga, whose league-leading .431 batting average has provided a measure of stability amid the often erratic play of the Rockies and eccentricities of Mile High Stadium.

“In two years here, we’re liable to see everything,” Girardi said, referring to the quirky dimensions and thin air. The elevation of 5,280 feet is painted on the right-field fence. Baylor insisted on that to give opposing players something to think about, as if they weren’t already aware of it.

On a recent visit, Pete Incaviglia told his Philadelphia Phillies teammates: “If I get on base, all of you hold your breath so I can get some air.”

Baylor said he holds his breath every time a ball is hit to left field, where it’s only 335 feet down the line and 365 in the power alley. Those dimensions, the light air and the tendency of Colorado pitchers to get the ball up make for an explosive combination.

Atlanta first baseman Sid Bream hit a checked-swing home run to left in early May that a disbelieving Baylor still talks about.

“When I take the lineup card out, I even tell the umpires to play deep,” he said.

Said Atlanta’s Tom Glavine of his Colorado counterparts: “I feel sorry for those guys having to pitch here all year.”

The Rockies yield an average of almost six runs. The Phillies scored 39 in a three-game series at Mile High. The Braves scored 46 in four. Only the purr of the turnstiles has kept pace with the parade of hits.

Wrote Woody Paige in the Denver Post: “The Rockies may be the first team in history to draw 4 million fans and give up 4 million runs.”

The attendance, owner McMorris said, confirms his contention that baseball made a mistake in waiting so long to come to the Rockies, and that expansion to 28 teams should be a steppingstone to 30 and then 32, with four divisions of four teams each in both leagues.

This expansion cost the Rockies and Florida Marlins $95 million to buy in and another $40 million or so in start-up costs. Neither shares in the national TV revenue this year, but the Rockies have a local radio and television deal estimated at $10 million, and with a sweetheart lease at Mile High Stadium and the lowest payroll in baseball, their revenue will be among the largest. Some have estimated it at $100 million.

“Our fan support will permit us to be successful in time, but it’s going to take many, many years to recoup our original investment,” McMorris said. “I said at the time it was one of the worst business deals I’ve ever seen.

“I mean, I came in as a minority partner only as a civic responsibility, and I agreed to the majority role when we reorganized because of my sense that if this could work at all, it could work here.

“Baseball may have some long-term economic problems that need to be addressed, but it’s very difficult to find anything wrong with it in Colorado.”