Sporting a well-worn Todd Helton jersey, Jeff Ballard surveyed row upon row of empty green seats at a recent Rockies game.
“Kind of sad,” the 48-year-old baseball fanatic from Boulder said.
Ballard was never a Rockies season ticket-holder, but he attended 25 games at Coors Field three years ago. Last year, four. This year, two. He now spends his entertainment dollars playing golf instead of going to Coors Field.
“This used to be the place to be,” said Ballard, a chef by trade. “The energy was great, the baseball was exciting, you connected with the players and the team had a chance to win.”
But that was then. This is now.
The last-place Rockies close out their 2005 home schedule Sunday against San Francisco. Through 77 home dates (one doubleheader), Colorado has drawn 1,822,237 fans, an average of 23,665, down nearly 20 percent from a year ago. The Rockies rank 26th in major-league baseball in attendance and for the first time will fail to draw 2 million fans. This from a franchise that led the major leagues in attendance from 1993-99 and drew more than 3 million fans in each of its first nine years.
But the Rockies say they have a plan to stop the slide on the field and make Coors Field a baseball hotbed again.
“It’s our job to connect the players with our fans and then get out of the way,” team president Keli McGregor said.
To that end, the plan is simple.
Stay with the young players who formed the core of this year’s team, which showed improvement in the second half, and allow them to get steadily better.
Hope fans begin coming back once the team plays better, and use that revenue to reinvest in the team.
Continue promoting young players such as Matt Holliday, Garrett Atkins and Brad Hawpe, the focus of this year’s “Gen R” advertising campaign, and build on special promotions such as this year’s “Boys Night Out” and “College Night” to attract more first-time fans.
Chicken or egg?
For the above to succeed, the team must get much more competitive. It’s a circular problem.
To generate significantly more revenue, the Rockies need more fans, thereby freeing more money to fill holes in their lineup. But fans aren’t likely to start coming back until the Rockies get better.
“Absolutely the money will be spent on the ballclub,” owner Charlie Monfort said. “We are not in this thing to make money. We definitely want to win a championship.”
To do that, Monfort, the front office and the team on the field will have to reverse a dramatic tumble from grace.
In 1996, a year after the upstart Rockies made the playoffs as a wild-card team, they drew 3,891,014 fans to Coors Field, an average of 48,037 a game. Their season-ticket base was about 35,000. Now, it has plunged to 16,000. Thursday’s announced crowd of 18,119 was the smallest in franchise history. And keep in mind “announced crowds” reflect tickets sold, not turnstile counts. At some recent games, crowds were as small as 8,000.
The attendance spiral downward, a drop of more than 450,000 fans this season alone, parallels the team’s showing on the field. The Rockies have produced one winning season in the past eight.
The organization admits it has misspent millions on poor free-agent signings, forcing it to tighten its belt. Next season, the team’s projected $45 million payroll will be one of the smallest in major-league baseball.
Some fans have grown resentful, pointing the finger at Monfort and general manager Dan O’Dowd.
“I have sensed anger for the last couple of years, right up until midseason this year,” Monfort said. “I do still think there is a core of angry fans out there. And it will take a heck of a lot more on our part – not just marketing and stuff, but wins – to get them back.”
Manager Clint Hurdle, buoyed by his young team’s improved play in the second half, is convinced fans will come back once the team gets more competitive.
“I think this club will re-energize the crowds at Coors, because I think they will appreciate the kind of baseball being played here,” Hurdle said. “But to get the big numbers, to get back to 2 1/2 or 3 million fans, I think it takes a consistent, winning ballclub.”
Building a tradition
Winning, however, offers no guarantee of box-office success. The Cleveland Indians and Florida Marlins are evidence of that. Both teams are battling to make the playoffs but rank 24th and 28th, respectively, in average attendance among the 30 major- league teams. And while Florida always has struggled to draw, Cleveland had a fan base as rabid as the Rockies’ in the 1990s.
Helton, the Rockies’ one true star, said baseball can thrive in Denver, but he said he believes it’s going to take a long time to build a loyal fan base.
“Once the people … have grown up here and have become true, die-hard Rockies fans, they will come and it will be a tradition, like in Chicago with the Cubs at Wrigley Field,” Helton said. “I do think you can get to that point, but that might be 10 years down the road.”
It’s clear fans want players they can embrace the way they used to cheer for Andres Galarraga and the rest of the Blake Street Bombers. That’s certainly the case for sisters Flore Newberry, Juanita Bailey and Margie Sanford, Coors Field regulars.
“They need to stop trading everybody off or letting them go,” Bailey said. “I think this is a good group of young players, but I just hope they stick around.”
Newberry agreed. “I don’t mind if they rebuild but, for goodness sake, don’t do it every year.”
New ideas, few results
The Rockies have tried various marketing promotions to counteract the decline. Among them are “Fridays on the Rocks,” late-afternoon games designed to draw downtown workers, and 6:35 p.m. starts the team deemed more family-friendly. Those moves haven’t made a dent in stopping the exodus of fans.
Any hope of a reversal is based on becoming more competitive. Then maybe the Rockies can build a tradition to last.
“We have a great ballpark and a great baseball neighborhood,” McGregor said. “Thirty years from now, we want it to be the next Wrigley Field.
“We know tradition doesn’t just doesn’t happen, but that is our goal.”
Staff writer Patrick Saunders can be reached at 303-820-5459 or psaunders@denverpost.com.
