When Braves manager Walt Weiss returned to Coors Field in early May, I gave him a present. It was a CD of Barbra Streisand’s greatest hits.
“Very nice,” he said, giving me a wry, knowing smile and a short laugh.
Some background is definitely required here.
In 2014, Weiss was managing the Rockies on a hazy, humid September Sunday morning at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. Somehow, Weiss, MLB.com’s Thomas Harding, and I started talking about our 1970s crushes. We mentioned, of course, Farrah Fawcett and her famous poster, Cheryl Tiegs and her poster, as well as other supermodels and Hollywood stars. I said I once had a poster of pop singer Linda Ronstadt.
Then came the bombshell.
“I had a crush on Barbara Streisand,” Thomas said. “I thought she was hot.”
Walt and I were aghast. As Walt pointed out, “Babs” had a nose like his own. No way Thomas was telling us the truth, right? To this day, insists he was.
The kicker came after the Rockies lost to the Cardinals that day. Walt pulled us aside and said, “You know, when I was going out to the mound to make a pitching change, I kept thinking about Barbra Streisand. Thanks a lot, Thomas.”
The point of my ramble down memory lane? My nearly 28-year career at The Denver Post ends Wednesday when the Rockies host the Red Sox at Coors Field. I’ve covered World Series, Super Bowls, Final Fours, Nuggets games and scores of high school state championships alongside Kyle Newman. In the end, my fondest memories are not about games, highlight reels, strategy, upsets, or scoops. My fondest memories are about people. It’s what I wrote about best.
Being a baseball beat writer is the most gratifying of any of the major sports beats, in my humble opinion. You get to know the people, from owners and managers to players and clubbies to broadcasters and fellow writers. Meanwhile, the walls between the NFL and the media grow thicker and taller with each passing year. I can’t imagine Broncos beat writers talking about their boyhood crushes with coach Sean Payton.
I was hired by The Post in October 1998, joining Adam Schefter as a Broncos No. 2 beat writer, just in time to cover John Elway’s second Super Bowl title. In the summer of 2005, I was yanked off the Broncos beat and moved to the Rockies, as the No. 2 writer behind current Post columnist Troy Renck. It was a demotion for me, no doubt.
My wife, Nancy, and I were shocked by the grind of the baseball beat, especially back in the days when The Post still traveled to cover the Rockies. We eventually embraced the lifestyle, though it wasn’t easy.
Covering a team afflicted with chronic losing wasn’t easy either. I covered the Rockies for nearly 20 years, and during that time, they had five winning seasons, made the playoffs four times, and made one magical run to the World Series in 2007.
I’ve had to rewrite more deadline game stories than I can count. The adage in the Coors Field press box: “The Rockies blew another lead. And they blew another lede.”
But, all in all, it’s been quite a wonderful ride. What follows are excerpts from some of my favorite stories I wrote for The Post. The common theme is people.
McCaffrey family legacy
When I started covering the Broncos, first for the Longmont Times-Call and then with The Post, training camp was still held at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley. The players stayed in one dorm, the media in another, and we shared the same cafeteria. Access to the players was incredible. I once interviewed Elway while riding in a golf cart as the fans screamed for autographs — Elway’s, not mine.
That’s how I got to know wide receiver Ed McCaffrey and his wife, Lisa. In 1999, I profiled their family’s rich sports legacy:
When 5-year-old Max McCaffrey plays soccer, his 3-year-old brother, Christian, can’t bear to watch.
“Christian is always trying to run out on the field to be with his big brother,” his dad said. “We have to keep reeling him back in.”
Christian can’t help it. The need for speed, the energy driving his little motor, the desire to follow the bouncing ball — they’re in his genes.
His grandfather won a silver medal in the 100-meter dash at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. Uncle Billy became a legend in the Pennsylvania Rust Belt and later won a national basketball championship with the Duke Blue Devils.
When she was a pixie in South Florida, Christian’s mom scored so many goals for her high school soccer team that her mug shot ended up in Sports Illustrated’s “Faces in the Crowd.”
Christian’s dad? All he’s done is win three Super Bowl rings, earn a trip to the Pro Bowl, develop a stiff-arm that could stop a rhinoceros, become one of the best receivers in Denver Broncos history and destroy forever the notion that white men can’t run.
Arenado’s SoCal roots
In 2016, Rockies third baseman Nolan Arenado was a budding star. I traveled to his boyhood home of Lake Forest, in Orange County, California. While the Rockies hosted the Blue Jays at Coors Field, I sat in the living room of Fernando and Millie Arenado as they watched the game on TV. It was a remarkable day, topped off with a trip to El Toro High School, less than 10 minutes from the Arenado home. I spent an hour reminiscing with Mike Gonzalez, Arenado’s high school coach.
Here’s the beginning of my story about Arenado’s baseball roots:
LAKE FOREST, Calif. — The trim, stucco home looks like many others in this quiet, middle-class Southern California neighborhood. There is a basketball hoop out front and a beautifully tiled swimming pool in the backyard.
Step inside and you’re enveloped by warmth. Family photos cover every wall, every shelf, every nook and cranny. The family dog, a white Havanese named Mojito (“Mo” for short), hops up on the comfy couch to greet visitors.
Baseball is everywhere, too. Indeed, the home is something of an impromptu museum. Near the TV in the living room sits Nolan Arenado’s gleaming 2015 Silver Slugger Award. Open a nearby cabinet, and one of Arenado’s three Gold Glove Awards sits among a sea of memorabilia.
Likely more baseball stuff will be added after Tuesday nightap All-Star Game in San Diego, where Arenado, the Rockies’ third baseman, will be appearing, the second year in a row he was voted in by fellow major-league players. Who knows? Perhaps an All-Star Game MVP trophy will be his newest baseball heirloom. At the very least, his All-Star Game jersey will find a place in the Arenado home.
Upstairs is the “Bonus Room,” as the family calls it. In the middle sits a pool table, now overflowing with framed photos, jerseys and signed baseballs. On the couch in front of a big-screen TV sits a Star Wars stormtrooper helmet. Back in the day, Arenado wore it while playing video games.
A day in the life of Buddy Black
I covered five managers in my time with the Rockies: Clint Hurdle, a force of nature and philosophy; Loquacious Jim Tracy, one of the nicest men I’ve ever met; Weiss, a fellow Bruce Springsteen fanatic; Bud Black, a walking baseball encyclopedia who’s beloved throughout the game; and current manager Warren Schaeffer, full of incredible passion and heart.
Of all of the Rockies’ managers, I know Black the best. We’re near the same age and share the same sense of humor. We still text frequently. In 2018, in the midst of a race for the National League West title, Black allowed me to go behind the scenes and chronicle a day in the life of a big-league manager:
Itap the second week of September, the Rockies are chasing their first division title, and Bud Black has former Bronco Peyton Manning on his mind.
He’s trying to figure out a way to get the legendary quarterback to appear in a video that would play on the giant scoreboard at Coors Field as the Rockies make their run to a possible National League West crown.
“I want Peyton, waving his arms up and down, to get the crowd going,” Black says. “Hey, we don’t care about the snap count! We want it loud! ‘Omaha! Omaha!’ ”
Later in the afternoon, he’ll call in Julian Valentin, the director of social media, to see if there has been any progress on Project Peyton. (Valentin tells Black that itap being looked into).
Black’s office, down the hallway from the players’ spacious clubhouse, contains a comfy black-leather couch and a tidy desk. Photographs of Coors Field adorn the walls, including one that captures the joy of a young boy watching a game. Encased in a glass frame is the lineup and a baseball from Black’s first game as Rockies manager. Itap dated April 3, 2017, a game in which the Rockies beat the Brewers at Milwaukee, 7-5.
Black has plenty on his to-do list, though he goes about his chores with a relaxed, easy manner. Colorado’s second-year manager, age 61, plans to watch video, meet with his coaches, chat with some players and confer with head trainer Keith Dugger. The night before, the Rockies hammered the Diamondbacks, 13-2. With nothing to stew over and no second-guesses haunting him, he got an excellent nightap sleep. Today, he’s open to having a reporter shadow him, from arriving at the ballpark just after noon through another critical game that night vs. Arizona.
Helton gets the call
Todd Helton is the greatest player in Rockies history. He’s a complex, moody, smart and extremely funny man. His sense of humor can be cutting and takes some getting used to. Somehow, we bonded.
In January 2024, Helton invited Thomas and me to his home outside Knoxville, Tenn., to be there with his family and close friends when he got the call that he’d been elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. We all figured he’d get in, but there were no guarantees. It turned out to be one of the most memorable days of my career:
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Todd Helton, arms folded across his chest, nervously paced the living room of his home Tuesday afternoon.
“I haven’t been superstitious for 10 years, not since I retired,” the Rockies’ iconic first baseman said. “Today, I’m superstitious. I didn’t look at anything, I didn’t watch anything, I didn’t look at the internet.”
He could have spared himself the angst.
Because, fittingly, at 5:17 p.m. Eastern time, No. 17 got the call of a lifetime. Told that he had been elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Helton pumped his fist and finally took a deep breath.
“Itap the greatest honor you can get as a baseball player,” Helton said. “Getting your number retired and getting elected to the Hall of Fame are the two greatest achievements you can get.”
Still, Helton wasn’t quite ready to let it all go.
“I’m going to go (crazy) when y’all leave,” he said.
The sweet-swinging Helton, the beloved heart and soul of the Rockies for 17 seasons and one of the most accomplished players of his era, received 79.7% of the vote, clearing the 75% bar required by the Hall of Fame and the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
Matzek, ‘The Yips,’ and me
We’ve all got something. Mine is anxiety and depression, something I’ve dealt with for much of my adult life.
That’s why I was so interested in Tyler Matzek’s story. The former Rockies pitcher had such a bad case of the yips, brought on by performance anxiety, that it nearly ruined his baseball career. In December 2015, we met in a Southern California coffee shop and talked for nearly three hours. He was remarkably candid.
In 2021, he won a World Series as a shutdown reliever for the Braves. But before that, I wrote this story:
LAGUNA HILLS, Calif. — On Sept. 5, 2014, at Coors Field, Tyler Matzek pitched a three-hit shutout against the San Diego Padres. Poised and confident, and throwing a 94 mph fastball with graceful ease, the Rockies’ rookie left-hander was dominant. Over his final six starts, Matzek went 4-2 with a 1.55 ERA. He looked like the Rockies’ ace of the future.
Yet demons lurked in the corners of Matzek’s mind, and by the time he took the mound for the Rockies’ 2015 home opener April 10, he was headed for trouble.
“Even when things were going the right way, there was this overwhelming stress inside me that just kept building and building and building,” Matzek said recently while sipping coffee at a Starbucks in Southern California. “(Then) I just couldn’t hold that stress any longer and my game collapsed.”
Matzek was suffering from performance anxiety.
It wrecked him on the mound and even began to creep into his everyday life.
“My wife, Lauren, said it was our worst time, relationship-wise, because I was so tight, so stressed, just waiting to explode from this thing,” Matzek said. “She knew it wasn’t about her, but it was hard.”
But the quiet, intelligent 25-year-old confronted his condition head-on, confident he would fulfill the promise that prompted the Rockies to make him the 11th pick in the first round of the 2009 draft. He is determined to compete for a job in the Rockies’ starting rotation in spring training.
Thanks, mom
The day after I cover my final Rockies game, Nancy and I are flying to Southern California. We’ll join my extended family to scatter the ashes of my mom, Anita, and my dad, Dusty, in Laguna Beach, their favorite vacation spot.
This is my final chance to say thanks, sharing past stories with you:
Somewhere up there, my mom is smiling.
Ryan McMahon hit a home run for the Rockies in their 4-3 win over the Giants on Thursday night. McMahon broke out of a horrendous slump.
“RyMac” was my mom’s second-favorite Rockie, right behind Todd Helton. Why? Partly because he’s Irish, mostly because I like RyMac.
She was thrilled when Helton invited me to his Knoxville, Tenn., home to witness his Hall of Fame phone call in January 2024. When my wife, Nancy, and I were invited to Helton’s party in Cooperstown last July, my mom felt like she was there.
During her last years, I watched Rockies road games with her when I could. She rarely asked why the team was winning or losing. Strategy was not her thing. She always asked, “Is so and so a good guy?”
Thatap the kind of sports fan my mom was. She knew nothing about OPS, yards after catch, 3-point percentages, or point spreads. She just liked how players played and hoped they were good people. She loved Dr. J, Nolan Arenado and Floyd Little.
In the Broncos’ infancy, when Little was their only star and the game plan was “Little off left tackle, Little off right tackle,” my mom would shout, “Don’t hurt Floyd!”
In her later years, she’d tried to stay up late enough to watch manager Bud Black’s postgame news conference, not because she wanted to hear his explanations but to hear me ask a question.
Thanks, dad
I wrote this journal a few months before my dad died in May 2022:
What do you get your dad for his 90th birthday?
I’ve been pondering that question for the past few weeks. I kept striking out.
Then, as I perused the web, I came across a cool T-shirt. Cardinals red, the shirt displays the image of Stan Musial, leaning on a baseball bat. The script simply reads: The MAN.
How many sports-related T-shirts, sweatshirts and books have I given my dad over the years? I’ve lost track. It doesn’t matter. My dad’s going to love his “Stan the Man” T-shirt.
A father and son bonding over sports is not unique, but it is different for every father and son.
Walter Patrick “Dusty” Saunders was born on Sept. 24, 1931, in Denver. He was a lonely kid. His father died when he was 9 years old, and his mom died when he was 10.
In the 1940s, my dad’s companions were the radio, books and sports. He became a St. Louis Cardinals fan because he could pick up the strong signal from KMOX radio in St. Louis. Musial was his favorite player.
In 2006, my first full year on the Rockies beat, I took my dad to St. Louis for Father’s Day to watch the Rockies play the Cardinals in the first year of the new Busch Stadium. He chatted with Clint Hurdle and Todd Helton. After the game, my dad, MLB.com Rockies beat writer Thomas Harding and I had dinner at former Cardinal Mike Shannon’s restaurant. Thomas and I still talk about that day.
