Eight years ago, Jack Strelec wrote a song about a baseball team that almost no one cared about.
Today, his song “Deep Purple Pride” about the Colorado Rockies is getting some attention.
He hopes it’ll catch on and become the team’s theme song for the 2007 playoffs. “We wrote it so it would be played to 50,000 people,” he said.
Strelec, 54, of Green Mountain Falls, is a teacher in Colorado Springs District 11 and also the bassist in the Steele-Daniels bar band that has been playing for 30 years.
“We got a parallel career to the Rockies,” he said. “We know what it’s like to hang in there and keep pushing and keep pushing.”
He and his bandmate John Michael Steele wrote the song after watching the Rox in spring training in 1999.
“We gave it to the radio, but the Rockies stunk,” he said. “We forgot about the song. Once we saw there was some interest, I said, ‘Dude, I got a song about this.”‘
The band re-recorded the country-tinged ditty. Television and radio stations have been playing the song. Strelec hopes to hear it over the loudspeakers at Coors Field.
“It’s easy for everyone to remember and sing,” he said before reciting the chorus: “It starts from mile high. Baseballs touch the sky. We’re Rocky Mountain high. Deep purple pride.”
Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com
