Soaking Up The Opening Day Atmosphere

I took the light rail train to Lower Downtown Denver yesterday afternoon to experience the Opening Day atmosphere around Coors Field and the surrounding neighborhood. It was a beautiful sunny day in the 70s, and so not surprisingly, the streets were packed. In addition to the huge crowds going into the ballpark, as seen in the photograph on the left, there were also long lines to get into the nearby bars, especially the ones with rooftop patios. The line to get into the View House was a block long, and this was just a short while until game time. Obviously, those fans were planning to celebrate Opening Day in an alternative fashion.

These days, at least here in Denver, it is not Opening Day, but Opening Weekend, which means they can charge higher prices for the Saturday and Sunday games, too. As I have mentioned before, I decided not to attend Opening Day anymore since in recent years it has become so overpriced. The same goes for the other two games this weekend, which no doubt will have high prices without the pomp and pageantry. Hopefully the results of those two games will be a bit better, since the Rockies lost yesterday's game to the Los Angeles Dodgers by a score of 5 to 3. 

There was a large police presence around the stadium yesterday. The underground bus terminal at Union Station has been getting a lot of bad publicity about drug deals and other criminal activity taking place there, and the light rail stop at the end of that terminal has been a popular gathering place for the homeless. The transit police were covering that area big time, while the Denver police seemed to be having a public relations campaign on 21st Street, just to the east of the ballpark They had on display an armored SWAT vehicle, a souped-up police muscle car, a booth featuring a bomb sniffing dog, and last but not least, three mounted police officers letting the public pet their horses, as seen in the photo on the left. After all, they had nothing better to do at that time of day. The shooting doesn't start in that neighborhood until after the bars close at 2:00 A.M. No doubt the day shift will all be safe in their beds by then. As for the night shift, well...