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HIGH JINXED

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Times Staff Writer

It was Bryn Smith who threw the first major league pitch in Denver, 12 1/2 years ago on a mild afternoon at Mile High Stadium. It didn’t leave the park. In fact, it didn’t do anything particularly screwy at all.

So, he threw another one.

The Rockies were off, through two years in a football stadium, the rest at Coors Field, and the phenomenon that is the pitcher at an altitude of one mile plus a pile of dirt ascended from there.

Baseballs soared, and pitchers sighed, and hitters benefited. As the lines between bad pitching and good hitting and reduced friction grew vague, so too did the theories of what to do about it. Regardless, there came a time, usually right after the national anthem, somebody was going to have to pitch again.

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“I think it’s more mental than anything else there,” Smith said. “Some of these pitchers that go into that park, they’ve got to be terrified.”

None would admit to such psychological weakness. In fact, there appears to be a camaraderie among those who have stood against the elements of Coors Field, and popped a guy or two up.

A pitcher there, Jason Jennings, was once rookie of the year, and on July 9 of this season, in the 886th game at the ballpark, was the winning pitcher in the first 1-0 game at Coors Field. Pedro Astacio, a journeyman pitcher, is revered there for his toughness; in 1999, he won 17 games despite a 5.04 earned-run average. Steve Reed and Bruce Ruffin are the only two Rockies to have thrown at least 300 innings and have ERAs of less than 4.12.

Yes, those are the heroes.

“There is a mental toughness you have to have, no doubt about it,” Smith said. “The organization in the years since, they’ve often had to ask, ‘But can he pitch at Coors Field?’ ”

The answer, more times than not: “Someone has to.”

“I see some guys struggling,” said Astacio, who, with the San Diego Padres, now pitches in a pitchers’ park. “I think the thing is in the mind, because everybody knows it’s a tough place to pitch. But in my situation, I didn’t look at it that way. You know you’re going to have some crazy games, but you have to keep going. You have to keep pitching. You can never hang your head.”

In late April 2002, stressed by a smoke-’em-if-you-got-’em decade of baseball, the Rockies dressed up a room at Coors Field, made it a humidor and stored their baseballs there.

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Team management and the commissioner’s office thought it was time to play the game being played in the 29 other major league parks.

As there appeared to be no way to thicken the atmosphere amid the Rocky Mountains, and having run out of other ideas -- too many good pitchers failed, all the bad pitchers combusted, ERAs became confused with cap sizes -- moister baseballs became the answer. In theory, the balls maintain their size, weight and texture better, so they don’t carry like the balls left out to dry and harden. There are those who believe the humidor has changed the game at Coors Field, and those who don’t, among them Colorado Manager Clint Hurdle.

“Nobody wants to give us credit for it,” Hurdle said, “but we’re pitching better at home.”

He granted, however, “I don’t think there’s any doubt that for whatever reason the ball’s not jumping like it did in the past. ... Our guys have to figure out how to get outs at home and not look for excuses. They have to keep the ball down and know, ‘If I don’t, I’m going to get slaughtered like anywhere else.’ ”

Since 1995, when they opened the doors at Coors Field and let the long balls out, the ballpark has produced the highest batting average (.311), most home runs (2,606) and hits (19,305) and, per game, the most runs (13.2) and home runs (3.0).

After a particularly Coors-like series a decade ago, Tim Flannery, then a Padre coach, called it “arena baseball.” Those who pitch for a living at Coors Field have been less complimentary, and Hideo Nomo’s 1996 no-hitter there for the Dodgers stands as some of the outstanding three hours of pitching ever.

The Rockies have studied reports of high altitude’s effect on the body, particularly the bodies that throw and hit baseballs. They’ve hired high-profile pitchers, the likes of Bill Swift, Mike Hampton, Darryl Kile and Denny Neagle. They’ve run through the retreads. They’ve huffed and stockpiled hitters, notably in their Blake Street Bombers era.

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Even now, at a time when their home ERA is about the same as their road ERA, the humidor has hummed for four years, and some of their pitchers -- closer Brian Fuentes and starter Jeff Francis, for example -- are better at home, the Rockies remain in search of a pitching solution, and very often wear an expression of bewilderment with their home whites.

The Dodgers play their next three games at Coors Field, then get to leave. Jamey Wright, along with the rest of the Rocky staff, still has September there.

In a sport where individual success is defined by statistics, the Rockies pitch in the most favorable major league hitters’ park ever conceived. According to STATS, only three teams from 1995 to 2004 gave up as many as five runs a home game -- the Rockies (5.98), Kansas City Royals (5.14) and Texas Rangers (5.10).

“It’s almost like you have to learn to deal with mediocrity, as far as numbers go,” Wright said.

While Wright has tried to uphold an optimistic view, the hits keep falling, the runs keep scoring, and Coors Field yields the most combined runs and highest combined earned-run and batting averages in the game. In 26 starts this season, Wright has a 6-16 record and a 5.71 ERA. His ERA at Coors Field is 6.91; everywhere else it is 4.70.

“In between starts, those five days, you sit there thinking, ‘God, this stinks,’ ” he said. “At times it feels like a no-win situation.”

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Not only have their pitchers been battered, but the Rockies have had little recent overall success. They have not had a winning season since 2000 and have only that one since 1997. Since the organization’s inception in 1993, they have not had a team ERA -- home and road -- of less than 4.97. The Atlanta Braves, who had a major-league-best ERA of 3.57 from 1995 to 2004, had a 5.32 ERA at Coors Field, according to STATS, and that’s the lowest of any visiting team that played at least 10 games there. The Florida Marlins’ ERA at Coors Field, in 46 games, was 7.76.

Again, those pitchers get on a bus, get on an airplane, and return to something like sea level. The Rocky pitchers stay behind and stay at it. They’re urged to pitch to the conditions, to trust that their offense will stay with the other team’s, to ignore the hits that fall in front of and beyond -- sometimes way beyond -- outfielders playing deep.

“You’ve got to be mentally tough enough to handle the stuff that’s going to happen in a game and keep pitching,” said Marcel Lachemann, once a pitching coach for the Rockies and now a scout. “Then, when it’s over and it didn’t work, to do it again the next time. It’s a tough sell.

“I wouldn’t classify it as hopeless, but the guys who have been successful, you have to be mentally stronger and tougher, way more than the average guy.”

Pitchers generally fail statistically at Coors Field, some because they throw poor pitches, some because they pitch at Coors Field, and they fail in relation to pitchers who play most of their games in more reasonable ballparks.

Sean Brawley is a sports psychologist who has worked with young players in the New York Yankee and Seattle Mariner organizations and for the last four years with USC’s football team. He compared pitching at Coors Field to Pete Sampras’ playing tennis in the French Open, where expectations change based on the environment. So, generally speaking, ERAs rise in Denver and Sampras loses on clay.

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“The issue is the power of the environment,” Brawley said, “and what it can do to the psyche. It’s very, very hard. It’s a lot of pressure, especially since it’s such an obviously negative part of the environment.

“When the environmental factor is so important, like a coach or the altitude, it’s the hardest thing there is.”

When right-hander Jay Witasick exercised a contract option to be released from the Baltimore Orioles in spring training, he received a handful of offers to pitch elsewhere. He chose Coors Field, where he remained until being traded to the Oakland Athletics in mid-July, and wouldn’t mind returning. That makes Witasick different. Typically, when pitchers leave Denver, they brush their tracks with leafy branches.

The humor in the Rocky clubhouse, Witasick said, tended toward dark. After a messy game, the standby wry assessment: “Maybe the humidor’s not working.”

For a struggling pitcher, he said, the ballpark was as culpable as one wanted to make it.

“It’s the best excuse,” Witasick said. “If you ever want to use it, there it is.”

Even Jennings, whose early and relative success there has encouraged others to similar competence, has experienced bouts with Coors syndrome. After a particularly Coors-ian loss to the Braves this season, he lamented, “It’s a crazy place. It’s ridiculous.”

Not only that, it can be humiliating. It can be so wrenching, pitchers think about how they leave it behind.

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“Some of the best advice I ever had came from Darryl Kile,” Wright said. “He told me, ‘No matter what happens, always walk off the field with your head high, knowing you gave your best. Be proud of what you’ve done and wherever you’re at.’ ”

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