I keep looking, but I have yet to see when Coors Field is set to throw a ticker-tape parade down Blake Street for the World Series Champion Los Angeles Dodgers. I assume that is just an oversight from an organization that panders to their division rival and their fans.
For the second year in a row, Coors Field attendants took umbrage at me and a few fans cheering for the Rockies and against the Dodgers. But this year, they escorted us out for our temerity.
As I wrote last year, a group of Chelsea soccer fans makes an annual pilgrimage from our home bar at the British Bulldog to Coors Field. This year, it happened to be for the very last game of the season and the last game of Charlie Blackmon’s career. Consequently, we spent the days leading up to our excursion adapting soccer songs for the occasion:
Charlie Blackmon’s magic, he has a magic bat!
He could have played anywhere, but he said “no” to that!
He hits from the left side, he throws from the right,
And when we win the league again we’ll sing this song all night!
As loyal Chelsea fans know, that is a non-vulgar version of a Cesc Fabregas song. Nevermind that the Rockies have never won the division and won the National League only once in their 30 years of existence, we made an intentional effort to strip our chants of offensive language. We did not want to have that used against us after prior experience with attendants.
Note that the Coors Field House Rules do not expressly bar such language; rather, only in situations where it is offensive concerning another “person’s race, ethnicity, gender, religion, disability, age, sexual orientation or national origin” or if directed at players, manager, or umpires and concerning sports betting. That makes a lot of sense since booting anyone who drops an F-bomb at a sporting event would empty the stands quickly.
Nonetheless, we wanted to keep it clean. Loud, sure. Vulgar, no. We went in with a plan to make sure that we were above reproach. No drunkenness, no vulgar songs (besides, of course, “Your Love” — the ode to infidelity that served as Blackmon’s walk up music).
It did not matter.
It seems that two things eventually led to attendants being called down to our seats. First, in addition to pro-Rockies chants, we also employed some anti-Dodger chants. The two most prominent were both directed at Dodger designated hitter Shohei Ohtani:
Down to the minors!
You’re going down to the minors!
And also:
What a waste of money!
What a waste of money!
Both are obvious satire. Ohtani was finishing a historic season unparalleled in baseball history. In addition to hitting .310 and knocking in 130 RBIs, he hit 54 home runs and stole 59 bases. That made him the sole member of the 50/50 Club — only five other players have managed 40/40 seasons. And in the game we were at he was bidding to be the first National League Triple Crown winner in nearly 100 years.
He is the best player in the world and among the pantheon of greatest ever.
So, yeah, taunting that he would go down to the minors or was not worth what the Dodgers paid is ridiculous. Now if we had been singing about the Rockies’ oft-injured and not particularly good top earner, Kris Bryant, it would have been a different story. But we weren’t. To borrow a U.K. colloquialism, we were “taking the piss.”
But there were a lot of Dodger fans in attendance, even on the Rockies first-base side where we sat, who did not like our cheers and chants and jests. They let us know with their own, less-censored, taunts. And apparently they complained to officials about us, too.
Of course, it probably did not help that one of our number also came up with this doozy:
We don’t care about Monforts!
They don’t care about us!
All they care about is our money!
After two successive 100-loss seasons and being ranked by ESPN as the second worst club in baseball (citing a “tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged … rarely make trades or invest in free agents”) only because the White Sox were historically bad, my guess is that the Monforts will be subject to less thoughtful criticism by Rockies fans soon.
But it seems they really don’t care. As long as Dodgers fans (and Cubs fans and Cardinals fans) flood through the gates of Coors Field, maybe it simply does not matter to them whether the product on the field is any good.
We made that point to the attendant who came down and told us we needed to either stop cheering or we would be escorted out. Asked to explain what rule we had violated or what she heard us say that was offensive, she had no response. In fact, her only gotcha moment came when we sang:
Super, super John!
Super, super John!
Super Johnnie Elway!
As she properly noted, that was not a song about the Rockies. It was just a song we sang when a guy one section over, wearing a bright-orange Elway jersey, was prominently displayed on the Coors Field jumbotron (as a side note, can you imagine anyone in the South Stands being kicked out of Mile High for cheering too loudly for the Broncos?). I later called the folks at field operations to get guidance on what we did wrong, but never received a reply phone call.
In the end, we were nonetheless asked to leave in the ninth inning (which we did), Ohtani stole a base, the Rockies lost, and Dodgers faithful cheered. I guess there is always next year at Dodger Stadium East.
Mario Nicolais is an attorney and columnist who writes on law enforcement, the legal system, health care and public policy. Follow him on BlueSky: @MarioNicolais.bsky.social.
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