Baseball’s Back: Five Things in Denver More Competitive Than the Rockies on Opening Day

Though an even record may not seem like much, it could be a lofty goal for a team that won only 68 of 162 games last year — good for a mile-high .420 winning percentage. Still, it wasn’t terribly inspiring to fans to hear that their hometown team had its sights set on being average.

Much like the Denver mayoral race, the mere existence of players entering the field doesn’t make something competitive. At least the Rockies have one rising star people can rally behind in shortstop Ezequiel Tovar, who is set to start the season on the big-league roster.

Polls on the mayor’s race, meanwhile, have yet to show any one star that people are truly excited about.

But unlike the case with either the Rockies or city politicians, there are plenty of competitive scenes in the Mile High City for those who aren’t inspired by the Monfort strategy of acceptable mediocrity — including the city’s National Basketball Association and National Hockey League teams, the Nuggets and Avalanche.

Here are five ways Denver can get its competitive fix, since the Rockies seem poised to strike out on that front before the team even plays its Opening Day game in San Diego on March 30 against the Padres:

The line to get into Casa Bonita

Anticipation for the West Colfax pink palace’s May reopening — now under the ownership of South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone — is building rapidly. Nearly 1,500 people have announced that they plan to attend a Facebook event called “The Great Wait in Line Event to eat the first night at Casa Bonita opening night!”

Jesse Vogel, a Denver citizen, started the Facebook page amid his own excitement about Casa Bonita’s imminent revival and is still working out the details of the event. It might include a ticketed numbering system to get in line for a 24-hour party the day before the restaurant and entertainment experience — which closed during the pandemic — opens once more. The hype for the wait to get into Casa Bonita just might surpass the excitement for admission to Coors Field.

The ultimate Frisbee scene

Although the traditional “big four” sports of baseball, basketball, football, and hockey tend to dominate the news cycle, there are plenty of other incredible athletes from Colorado, including the state’s ultimate Frisbee aficionados.

A Colorado women’s and men’s team both took home the 2022 USA Ultimate National Championship this year in their respective divisions. It was the first championship for the women’s team, dubbed Molly Brown, since it formed in 2010. The Colorado Alpenglow, a women’s professional ultimate team, just became the eighth team in the Western Ultimate League, with its season starting in March.

The Colorado Summit, which formed in 2022 and won the Western division in the American Ultimate Disc League, is also a high-performing team, and its season will kick off in May. By that time, the Rockies might already have become irrelevant in their division.

The city’s pickleball players

There are few scenes as competitive as the race to find a pickleball court in metro Denver right now.

Passionate picklers have been pestering the city for more courts, and even found themselves in trouble for vigilante improvements they made to the popular Congress Park courts. Pickleball fever has reached such a peak that the City of Centennial just instituted a six-month moratorium on new courts within 500 feet of homes because of noise complaints.

Entrepreneurs are also getting into the scene, with Robert Thompson — owner of Angevin & Co., which pioneered the Punch Bowl Social eatertainment concept — planning to open a similar business for pickleball.

Camp Pickle, as it’s dubbed, will offer a scratch kitchen and about fifteen courts, with locations planned in Centennial and Globeville. As people compete to get in on the pickled delights, the Rockies will be competing for the attention of fans more interested in scouting pickle shots than Major League Baseball prospects.

The Denver Zoo’s baby sloth naming contest

In February, Westword got an inside look at the Denver Zoo’s cutest new addition: a baby sloth.

Now the facility is asking patrons what the growing boy should be named, with a naming contest in which fans can pledge $5 to pick from three options: Rain, Wicket and Cappuccino.

Voting ends March 31, and sloth enthusiasts have voiced their thoughts under several Denver Zoo tweets about the event this week. There’s probably more love for this little cutie than there is for oft-bemoaned Rockies mascot Dinger.

The line to get e-bike vouchers

On Earth Day in 2022, the City of Denver kicked off its e-bike rebate program, which helps city residents purchase electric bikes to get around in the name of sustainability. The Denver Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency quickly realized that the demand for e-wheels was much higher than anticipated and has since moved to a system of rolling applications every few months.

When the program returned in July 2022, interest was still so strong that the many users vying for a voucher crashed the CASR email verification system. Since then, the city department has made the process work, but the rebates are still the hottest commodity in town. After a new batch of rebates became available starting at 11 a.m. on March 28, CASR tweeted that all of them were claimed within nine minutes.

Coors Field has a great bike parking area for those who want to travel to the stadium on two wheels. Now it’s up to the team to show why it’s worth it to go to a game, no thanks to its owner.