Significance of 2021 All-Star Game means so much for Front Range fans

Baseball history is heading to Denver this summer for fans all across the Rocky Mountain region.

On Monday, widespread reports of Major League Baseball choosing the Colorado Rockies and Coors Field as the host of the 2021 All-Star Game began to circulate. Tuesday, it became official.

Mark your calendars: July 13. The eyes of the baseball world will be upon us.

The appointment by MLB includes the MLB Draft on Sunday, July 11, and Home Run Derby on Monday, July 12.

The 91st Midsummer Classic is one in a series of mythical exhibitions pitting the sport’s greatest hitters and pitchers against one another in a single game.

In 1933, the first official All-Star Game was held at Comiskey Park in Chicago and featured such Hall of Famers like Lefty Grove, Al Simmons and Frankie Frisch, not to mention a start by the iconic Lou Gehrig and a home run from – you guessed it – Babe Ruth.

No stranger to the spotlight, Charlie Blackmon has been selected to represent the Rockies four times in the spectacle throughout his career.

“To know that all that fanfare is because of some of the greatest in the game coming together on one field to showcase their ability as the best in the world and for me to be a part of that is really the greatest experience,” Blackmon said when discussing his favorite midsummer memory.

Sixty-five years after that first edition, a new franchise located in the Centennial State’s capitol city hosted the event at their three-and-a-half-year-old ballpark, Coors Field.

The Home Run Derby in 1998 featured a Cooperstown Classic in the finals, Ken Griffey Jr. against Jim Thome, with The Kid coming away with the title.

Hometown hero Vinny Castilla starred in the derby as well, placing third in front of his fans at 20th and Blake Street.

“I (was) very grateful to play in front of these fans,” Castilla said of the experience. “And I know the cheers they gave me and when they introduced me for the Home Run Derby, it was unbelievable… I still feel goosebumps on my skin.”

During the contest, Castilla played along side fellow Rockies Larry Walker and Dante Bichette in the highest scoring All-Star Game in history, a 13-8 affair won by the American League.

Following the official announcement on Tuesday, the Special Assistant to the General Manager said of the ’98 edition, “To share the field with my teammates, Larry and Dante and Big Cat (Andrés Galarraga) – he was in Atlanta that year – to share the field with those guys was unbelievable.” 

Flash back a few years to 1996, when yours truly attended the event at Veteran Stadium in Philadelphia. It was the beginning of a period remembered more for what players injected into their bodies than what they injected into the game following a strike that caused the cancellation of the 1994 World Series, a first in the modern era.

In that fateful Home Run Derby held in a concrete donut on Broad Street, a group of fanatics clustered together on the walkway of the third deck, between sections 638 and 738, in hopes of catching an obliterated ball sent sky high by Mark McGwire, while eventual winner Barry Bonds peppered ones into the right field stands.

While I was fortunate enough to attend both the marquee events, it was time spent at the FanFest that made a most indelible mark on this youngster. Artifacts from the Hall of Fame, autograph sessions with retired heroes of the game – both local and national – and countless activities throughout the convention center highlighted the beauty of our pastime.

It’s that kind of excellence that’s coming to your backyard in just three months.

The superstars of game will descend upon LoDo like they did in 1998.

Bonds and Alex Rodríguez homered in that one. Roberto Alomar did the same and was named MVP. Greg Maddux was the starting pitcher for the National League with Mike Piazza as his battery mate as Ivan Rodríguez and Cal Ripken Jr. waited to take their licks.

Now, it’s time for another generation to make their mark on the game.

Mike Trout. Juan Soto. Ronald Acuña Jr. Pack your bags and head towards the 16th Street Mall.

Jacob deGrom. Max Scherzer. Gerrit Cole. It may feel like you’re tossing batting practice, but it’s just the baseballs that never made it into the humidor.

All throughout the city, memories will be made. The day the demigods came to town will never be forgotten.

And it will linger in our consciousness long enough for us to recall them when Coors Field hosts against for yet another generation.