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DEL.ICIO.USPlaying ‘hardball’ no more at Coors
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Denver — The World Series was to resume Saturday night in the shadow of the humidor, and that in itself was pretty weird. The only previous collision between a device used for storing cigars and championship sports was when Red Auerbach was pulling one of his stogies out of storage to light up in celebration of another Celtic title.
The humidor here, for the uninitiated, is a walk-in closet just off the home clubhouse at Coors Field. It’s used to house baseballs, not cigars. It was built in 2002 out of desperation. The Colorado Rockies had simply grown weary of losing home games 13-12.
This was Clint Hurdle, the Rockies’ manager, speaking Friday of the humidor and its genesis: “Once they went through the scenario, it made perfect sense because I was like many people — I had no idea the balls were shrinking and getting harder. I was a hitting coach here, and some balls would get hit from time to time, and you’d go, ‘Oh, my. How did that happen?’ You would see the other teams hit, and you’d go, ‘Wow, I can’t believe that ball went out.’
“We kept attributing everything to the altitude, but through the astuteness of one of our employees in-house, the realization of the fact that balls are getting smaller, getting harder, they’re going farther — that adds to the complication of playing at altitude to start with. [Post-humidor] we could regulate that, just keep the balls regulation size.”
According to the Denver Post, the humidor was the brainchild of Coors Field electrician Tony Cowell, who’d come to work in dried-out leather boots after a hunting trip. From soggy shoes was a more uniform playing field created.
Hurdle again: “[It] has made the swing of home-road challenges much less. It’s given our pitchers, I think, a better foundation for confidence … The thing that was so challenging for so many years was you were never out of a game. That’s the way you felt. It’s not that you ever just turned it off and stopped playing, but every night, 81 times, [you’d be] six, seven runs down late and you’re thinking, ‘Hey, we can get this thing done.’ You’re continually grinding and grinding and grinding, and mentally it became very challenging and exhausting.”
But a little moisture-retention can go a long way. The humidor stores baseballs at 70 degrees and keeps them from hardening. The upshot: Home runs at Coors have dropped from 268 in 2001 to 185 this season. And the 2007 Rockies had a home ERA of 4.34, which was almost a match for their road ERA of 4.29. The place that pitching forgot is just another big-league ballpark, albeit a hitter-friendly one. (Credit much the Coors-generated offense now to the vastness of its outfield, which leads to a slew of doubles and cannot be remedied by a humidifier.)
Said Josh Fogg, who was to start Game 3 for Colorado: “When I was here a few years ago playing with the visiting team, the balls kind of felt like cue balls. If you play pool a lot, you [know how it feels when you] pick it up and it’s kind of slick and hard to get a good grip on it.”
In winning seven of their nine postseason games, the Rockies have pitched (3.33 ERA) better than they’ve hit (.229 batting average). Indeed, just giving their pitchers a chance is the reason they’re here. It used to be that nobody wanted to pitch in Colorado because nobody could pitch in Colorado, and that led the Rockies to overspend wildly for free agents ($172 million in one offseason for Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle, who together won 40 games for the franchise).
“Our pitching staff is dramatically improved over the staffs we’ve had here,” Hurdle said. Indeed, the Rockies led the National League in second-half ERA.
In baseball, it never changes. You can’t win if you can’t pitch. It took a humidor, installed for the modest price of $15,000, to change the course of a franchise.
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