Outside the ballpark where his slick-fielding shortstop had scooped a big chunk from the team budget with a new megabucks contract, Rockies owner Charlie Monfort hopped out of a pickup truck, stood at the curb on Blake Street and plugged quarters in the parking meter.
The man was spending money left and right.
And, to think, some folks have the nerve to call Monfort cheap.
“You notice, I’m not even wearing my bullet-proof vest today. That’s nice,” said Monfort, dressed in a sweater on a brisk January afternoon.
“People come up to me and say, ‘Have you lost weight?’ And I tell them: ‘Nah, it’s just that I don’t have to wear a bullet-proof vest in Denver anymore.’ ”
Instead of giving him the cold shoulder, long-suffering Colorado baseball fans now shake the hand of Monfort.
Instead of cheap, folks now call him champ.
It’s good to be No. 1 in the National League.
It’s even better when ownership re-invests good fortune in the future success of the Rockies.
Attired in a serious gray suit more suited to a captain of industry than a shortstop who plays in the infield dirt, shortstop Troy Tulowitzki sat down Wednesday to show his delight in a six-year, $31 million contract, a record deal for a player with such scant major-league experience.
“No pressure,” shouted a heckler from the back of the room.
The teasing sure sounded familiar, and it seemed to come from the spot where Rockies slugger Matt Holliday stood, wearing a mischievous grin pointed at Tulo.
But what should bring sincere smiles to Colorado players and fans alike is how Tulowitzki said he will earn his paycheck. Tulo wants to be judged by the team’s number of victories, rather than his number of trips to the All-Star Game.
Why is Tulowitzki worth big money to a team that has sometimes operated on the cheap?
When justifying the investment in a 23-year-old shortstop, Monfort cited the Hall of Fame intangibles often admired in “Craig Biggio and Derek Jeter. It’s such a long season, those are the players who don’t get too high or don’t get too low and keep teams going in the right direction. It’s tough to find guys like that.”
Last autumn, Tulo and the Kid Rocks became overnight sensations.
This spring, those same Rockies will have to deal with overwrought expectations.
For all the double plays Tulo can turn and the homers Holliday will crank, how much muscle the Rockies exert in this year’s championship race largely rests on the young arms of Ubaldo Jimenez and Franklin Morales, who both must learn the delicate art of pitching while living up to the loud hype of their nasty stuff.
Of course, any suggestion 2008 could be a year of growing pains for the Rockies might get me accused of straining to find dark clouds in an endlessly blue Colorado sky.
“You? Negative? Really?” said Monfort, his voice full of mock astonishment.
But everyone knows no team has repeated as NL champs since 1996. “That’s part of being the hunted,” Monfort said. “We’re not going to sneak up on anybody.”
You’ve got to like the down- home vibe of a baseball owner who drives himself to work in a truck, and doesn’t need to feed his ego by cruising through LoDo in the back seat of a limousine.
Outside Coors Field, however, the meter is definitely running on Holliday.
“He can make tons of money if he tests the free-agent market. We know that. The organization knows that. Everybody in baseball knows that,” Tulowitzki said.
Colorado does have Holliday under contract for two more seasons, avoiding haggling when the 28-year-old outfielder recently accepted a two-year, $23 million deal that cut the Rockies a hometown discount of 10 percent from what he could have made by taking a salary dispute to arbitration.
“I think it showed both sides wanted to do something, because the arbitration process is never very friendly,” said Monfort, who took the deal as an encouraging sign Holliday might yet stay in Colorado beyond the 2009 season.
“And, let’s face it, if Matt had another great year, the chances of him making more money in arbitration were pretty good, because we would be competing against other contracts. So he did give in, he did give some. And, hopefully, we gave him reason to believe there’ll be a meeting of the minds on this issue.”
But will the good vibrations currently rocking LoDo prevent the Yankees, Angels or any aggressive franchise with aspirations as big as its wallet from enticing Holliday and testing his allegiance to Colorado?
“Your meter’s running,” I told Monfort, by way of goodbye.
Let’s hope Monfort doesn’t spend all his quarters on parking.
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com
