Rockies Deal With Mounting Expectations : Baseball: Dodgers arrive in Denver to find expansion team isn’t satisfied leading NL West; it wants to win it all.

Many of this city’s sports fans are already predicting another Super Bowl appearance for the Broncos, reveling in the NFL team’s 9-7 exhibition victory over the San Francisco 49ers Saturday night as if it actually meant something.

Of course, if the Broncos had lost, say 10-9, they would be calling for new Coach Mike Shanahan’s firing. That’s just the way it works in Denver.

When an over-zealous Bronco fanatic killed himself a few years ago after the NFL team suffered a bitter defeat, leaving a suicide note saying that he couldn’t take another losing season, folks around here understood.

Call-in radio shows these days are flooded with fans debating the nickname for the new NHL team. Oh, and what a scoop it’s going to be for the first news agency that reveals the team’s colors.

Then there are the lovable Colorado Rockies, for whom boosterism is considered a civic duty.

It’s gotten so crazy that when rookie Bryan Rekar won his major league debut two weeks ago against Philadelphia, it was front-page news in the Rocky Mountain News. No telling what will happen when the kid pitches his first shutout.

Who would ever have imagined the day when the Bronco season would be under way and a three-year-old baseball team would have top billing in this sports-insane city?

Two months remain on the baseball schedule, but the Rockies’ three-game series against the Dodgers beginning tonight is being called the biggest in the franchise’s history.

The Rockies are expecting sellouts for all three games, extending their streak to 25 consecutive sellouts at 50,200-seat Coors Field. Fans will arrive during batting practice. They’ll stay until the final pitch. Those who dare leave early will be heartily booed.

“People are going absolutely nuts, and that’s saying something for this city,” said Randy Rutherford, owner of Larimer Square, a shopping and entertainment complex near Coors Field. “That’s all anybody’s talking about. It’s like nobody can believe we’re in a pennant race.

“It’s almost scary in a way. Some people are kind of hesitant. It’s like you don’t want to get too good, too quickly. I mean, if we’re this good now, then what do we do?

“You don’t want to get jaded, where contending is no longer good enough. You’ve got to be careful about the expectations.”

It’s too late now. The Rockies, who have been in first place on 74 of the 79 dates this season and lead the second-place Dodgers by 3 1/2 games in the National League West, say they no longer will be satisfied just staying in contention.

They plan to win the division title.

“We’re well aware of that,” Dodger first baseman Eric Karros said Monday. “They’re going out and trying to win this thing, and whoever doesn’t take them seriously by now is a fool.

“You can say whatever you want, how they’re just an expansion club or how they can only play well in their own ballpark, but look at the standings.

“They’re a first-place team. We’re not. They’re the team to beat.”

This is why the Dodgers also believe the series is crucial. If they can sweep the three games, or even win two, they believe the Rockies will be left psychologically devastated, sensing the Dodgers simply are the better team. If the Rockies sweep, well . . .

“If it’s a long-lasting effect, the season will be over for us,” Dodger outfielder Chris Gwynn conceded. “That would mean you’d play bad for two weeks, or even a month, and that would be it for us.”

Colorado left fielder Dante Bichette said: “We feel we’ve got a better team, but we realize that most people don’t, so we’ve got to prove that.

“The longer we’re in first place, the more we believe we belong there.”

Certainly, it can no longer be assumed that the Rockies will fade out of the race. Sure, they can’t match the Dodgers’ pitching, they don’t have much depth and, of course, they don’t have pennant race experience.

But they do have Coors Field, the only place in baseball where a batter is in scoring position the moment he steps to the plate.

The Rockies have slammed 78 home runs in their first 43 home games, putting them on pace to hit 131 home runs and equal the National League record for homers at home set by the 1947 New York Giants at the Polo Grounds. The Rockies and their opponents are averaging 3.09 homers a game at Coors Field and, if this were a 162-game schedule, would be on pace to break the all-time record of 250 homers at Los Angeles’ old Wrigley Field in 1961.

“That place is a joke,” Karros said. “The ball just flies out of there, especially to right-center. They should put an asterisk next to anyone’s name who sets a record there. You cannot honestly say that’s a fair offensive ballpark.”

There’s no greater proof, of course, than the Rockies themselves. They are batting .317 at Coors Field, roughly 70 points higher than on the road, and their 78 homers there are nearly double their total away from home.

Still, the hometown folks don’t want to hear it. Ask them, and they’ll say there’s nothing at all wrong with their ballpark.

“People get pretty upset at Coors Field bashing,” Denver booster Rutherford said. “They look at it as a matter of civic pride. Their heart and soul and a lot of money is in that ballpark. They don’t want anybody knocking it.

“I mean, people get upset if they see people leaving early. People will start booing. They don’t want the reputation of Dodger fans, where you show up late, stay for a couple of innings and leave to beat the traffic.

“We’ve got some pretty loyal and knowledgeable fans.”

It’s these zealous fans who have accelerated the Rockies into a breakneck success story. The team drew a record 4.4 million fans in its inaugural 1993 season at Mile High Stadium and were on pace to draw 4.6 million fans until the strike last year. The rabid fan interest forced the Rockies to add 7,000 seats to their original design of Coors Field.

The additional seating wasn’t so much to make more money, said Jerry McMorris, the Rockies’ president and chief operating officer, as it was to avoid rioting in the streets among fans seeking seats.

“The ultimate status symbol is being a season ticket-holder for the Rockies and Broncos,” said Chris Graham, general manager of the Sports Column bar. “It’s tough to even get a scalped ticket. People aren’t painting their faces or tailgating like they do at Bronco games yet, but it’s starting to get there.

“[Hideo] Nomo had better watch out when he gets to town because people are talking about kidnaping him. We figure our chances are a whole lot better if we can keep Nomo from pitching for [the Dodgers].”

Certainly, the next time a Nomo pops up in America, there will be few teams outbidding the Rockies for his services. In just three years, the Rockies have already recouped their entire $95-million investment.

They used the money to acquire high-priced free agents Larry Walker and Bill Swift, never laid off a single person or even cut a salary during the strike, and have become the model franchise of baseball.

“We were highly criticized by certain members of the press in our first year,” said Bob Gebhard, the Rockies’ general manager. “They criticized us for not spending as much money as the [Florida] Marlins, for not having enough scouts, for having so few people in the front office.

“We were very limited financially, but once the fans showed up in droves, our ownership said, ‘Let’s put it back into the baseball team.’ ”

The consequences have been remarkable. The Rockies won 67 games their first season, more than any National League expansion franchise. And last year, they were half a game behind the Dodgers on July 28 when all-star first baseman Andres Galarraga broke his hand.

“This place is unbelievable,” Colorado center fielder Mike Kingery said. “I’ve played in great baseball cities, but this place takes it to another level, and we thrive on that.”

Manager Don Baylor said: “I think people know we’re not just an expansion team anymore. People are taking us seriously. Look at the Dodgers. People were pretty much looking for them to run away and hide in this division, and here we are.”

If the Rockies win the division, the Dodgers say their frustration will be overwhelming. Perhaps it won’t be embarrassing to lose out to such a young franchise, as many fans would like to believe, but certainly it would make for a long winter.

“We’re probably more under the gun than they are,” Dodger closer Todd Worrell said, “because all of the expectations are on us. We’re supposed to win this thing. They’re not. And sometimes teams have difficulty living up to that responsibility.”

Second baseman Delino DeShields said: “I think a whole lot of people would like to see us go down. People are always looking to knock down the top dog.

“This [Dodger] organization has accomplished a lot, and there’s a lot of envious people out there. It’s nothing to be ashamed of if we don’t win it, but believe me, we’ll be hearing all about it.

“We’ll be hearing about it for a long, long time.”

All the way from the Rocky Mountains.