Dick Monfort wore bright purple sneakers Friday to match the tie under his gray suit. The owner of the Rockies is 61 years old now. And he knows the baseball season is a marathon.
“Why not be comfortable?” he said during his team’s batting practice.
Monfort and the Rockies settled into their home opener against San Diego at Coors Field with questions about the season already lingering — first among them, what will happen with Jose Reyes?
Monfort said he will wait for Major League Baseball to finish its investigation of the Rockies’ veteran shortstop, who was facing domestic violence charges in Hawaii until the case was dropped.
“(But) if he did something wrong, he should pay for it,” Monfort said.
Monfort traveled to New York on Thursday to discuss Reyes with Commissioner Rob Manfred. MLB still is collecting information about Reyes, but Manfred said a decision on whether he will be suspended will be made soon.
Reyes remains on paid administrative leave, collecting his team-high $22 million salary this season. Prosecutors in Hawaii charged Reyes in an alleged domestic violence incident in October then dropped the case less than two weeks ago because his wife refused to testify.
“I think what they want to do is be fair,” Monfort said of baseball officials. “I’d like to know exactly what happened. It’s easy for us to speculate on what happened. But you’re dealing with a guy’s life here.”
The Rockies sent star shortstop Troy Tulowitzki to the Toronto Blue Jays at the trade deadline last summer for pitching prospects Jeff Hoffman and Miguel Castro. To make the salaries match, they also received Reyes from the Jays.
Monfort declined to say what the Rockies will do when Reyes is reinstated. At the least, his return creates difficult roster juggling, if not a public relations issue.
“We’re paying him. So I really don’t know how to answer that other than we’ll deal with it,” Monfort said. “We knew when we made the trade, the only reason Toronto gave up those pitchers was because we took an equal salary back from them. We knew that going in. We knew that was what we were going to deal with. Now, because of the incident that happened, it makes it a little more difficult. But we’re going to work our way through it.”
Monfort also said it’s too early to assess the Tulowitzki trade. But despite Tulowitzki’s continuing frustration with his departure from Denver — he told USA Today: “I’ll never talk to those (Rockies management) people. You get lied to, straight to your face, you get upset” — Monfort remains sentimental about his former star.
“I miss Tulo. I miss having him. He’s a great talent,” Monfort said. “He’s a hard-working guy. But in an effort to get a lot of pitching, sometimes you have to make those moves.”
The Rockies played their home opener Friday at new-look Coors Field, where the fences have been raised nearly 9 feet in right-center field and 6 feet down the left-field line.
Monfort never considered moving the fences in, he said. But making them higher won’t be the end of the tinkering with the ballpark.
“If there are things we can do to take some of the offense away from it, that’s what we should try to do,” Monfort said.
Nick Groke: ngroke@denverpost.com or @nickgroke
