The Monfort Brothers Won’t Let Street Vendors Wet Their Beaks
If You Can’t Fix It With A Hammer Or Duct Tape, It’s An Electrical Problem
Opening day. Your Colorado Rockies. The music. The topless girls on the buildings across from Coors Field. Walt Weiss as the skipper. Your Colorado Rockies, the major league baseball franchise based in Denver, Colorado, takes the field.
But this year the game is being played outside. There are a group of men and women who have started brats and gourmet hotdogs and sausage businesses with carts. They have sites all around Coors Field. Now it’s important for you to remember and put you in the “way back” machine to when your Colorado Rockies were born.
In 1989 when professional baseball’s National League announced it would expand by two teams for the 1993 season, Colorado powerbrokers and legislators, bankers and bond daddies went yard. Those of us who have kicked around awhile remember 1980 when Marvin Davis almost brought Charlie Finley’s Oakland A’s to Denver. Somehow the deal fell apart but my understanding is Mr. Finley still has representation in the Mile High City. That of course crushed the dreams of local baseball enthusiasts. But in the middle of all of that, then Governor Roy “Deep Kiss” Romer, walked forward with a couple of real decent, clean handed, honorable men. Romer and National League President Roy White presented to the public John Antonucci and Michael “Mickey” Monus July 5, 1991. These boys were in the spotlight for about a year when the wheels came off. I know you all remember Phar-Mor, the financial scandal that sent Mickey to jail and Antonucci headed to the mattresses.
The next man in the batting order was Jerry McMorris, who, lest you forget, re-hired Antonucci. And by opening day that year, 1993, Johnny boy was gone again. Most recently I saw an interview where Mickey said he was responsible for major league baseball in Denver. I’m sure we’re all very proud of that moment.
So one of the things we all learned in the building of Coors Field is that the taxpayers were clearly on board. You paid for that sidewalk and you paid for that infield. So, as we say, the taxpayer, the everyday guy has a little skin in the game.
The naming of Coors Field to the Coors family and naming rights is another bright shining lie but that’s for another fun column. Street vendors with carts were told after paying licensing fees to lease the area of Lodo that for 20 years the city of Denver had made a mistake letting them be there. Each mayor from Wellington Webb to Michael Hancock, safety managers, council members, public health officials, police officers, DAs, sundry law enforcement and health and safety bureaucrats have walked in the main gate seeing the food cart entrepreneurs without realizing they were law breakers.
And with the crack of a bat and the opening of the fun party deck you can no longer buy water and inexpensive brats and a pretzel from vendors with carts.
Now The Denver Post has written some absolutely absurd columns but it’s hard to top the column that appeared saying that those vendors had to be moved out so the fans could have a clear path to the ballpark. By the way, isn’t it interesting The Denver Post is a minority owner in your Colorado Rockies.
Having worked my fair share of baseball opening days for radio I can tell that it is the media companies with their broadcasting vans, endless cables and other mass communication equipment that are the ones that present a real hindrance and danger to the public walking to the game and not a few push cart vendors selling hotdogs and brats.
The Rockies have their roots with some people suspected of being involved in organized crime. So does it really shock you that on or about the anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre that a bunch of hard working young guys and gals would be beaten down and forced out of business because the Rockies and their management group wanted that little bit of money?
So as you can see, they couldn’t fix it with duct tape or their political hammer, so the Rockies, with all the help from the mainstream media in the city, declared these small businessmen an “electrical problem.”
Play ball!!
— Peter