Once upon a time, the idea that fans should only root for their team when they’re good was met with the dreaded “fairweather” moniker. It was among the highest insults you could lob at a fan.
These days, internet culture has popularized a more cynical view, that continuing to support your team makes you complicit in their failures.
For far too long, Colorado Rockies fans – the diehards and the transplants – who populate Coors Field have gotten a bad rap. Over the years, as the losses have piled up, it has become popular in some circles to place blame on the fans or even the ballpark itself for somehow perpetuating the losing.
As the theory goes, the Rockies continuing to draw massive crowds, despite so many last-place finishes, allows Dick Monfort to rest comfortably in the mire. What incentive could he have, they say, to make the club better when he can “laugh his way to the bank” with all that ticket revenue?
Why invest in the team when you will make money anyway?
And 2025 has taught us an undeniable truth; It’s never going to change. If ever there was a time when a boycott could succeed, it would be when they are on their way to the worst record in MLB history, yet there they sit at 15th in attendance.
So there will be those who focus their ire first on the transplants. Surely, few diehard Rockies fans could stomach this nonsense, right?
But therein lies one of the many misnomers about this entire conversation. Most transplant fans are Rockies fans, too.
Maybe they don’t root for them when the Denver nine take on their Cubs, or Dodgers, or Giants but most who live in the city of Denver want the Rockies to be good and are happy to wear that interlocking CR cap around town. It’s fairly common for many baseball fans these days to have a second team to root for and plenty who have moved from bigger cities have chosen our little Rockies.
A false dichotomy has been created between transplants and Rockies fans when plenty of people are both.
Furthermore, even when some of the other worst teams in MLB come to town, the place is packed, and it’s not because of out-of-towners, rooting on their White Sox or Pirates.
Sure, in both of those specific cases, the crowd size was bolstered by special events. But still, those who came out to see the fireworks on the fourth or for Grateful Dead night were clearly Rockies fans.
Don’t believe me? Look at the reactions of the 35,000+ at Coors Field on Friday night. The butt of endless jokes on social media as journalists and cynics continue to ask why so many people would show up to watch two terrible teams, those in attendance got to witness one of the most entertaining baseball games of modern times. And then they still got their concert.
It’s almost like you can enjoy both things.
This argument has always been built entirely on vibes and not at all on evidence or logic.
If the owner is supposedly pocketing ticket revenue and not investing in the team, why is the Rockies’ budget almost always commiserate with their market? Also, if empty ballparks are such an incentive to spend more, then why hasn’t that propelled the Miami Marlins, Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates, or many others into contention?
The answer is that lower ticket sales ultimately just lead to lower budgets for next year’s team. That’s why you see things like the Pirates dumping Ke’Bryan Hayes’ contract.
So despite little to no evidence that boycotts or low attendance in general leads to increased spending (in fact, quite the opposite) and even less evidence that the Rockies are being cheap, why does this talking point persist?
The main reason is that this can be endlessly complained about and blamed, but nobody can do anything about it.
The transplants aren’t suddenly going to move out of Denver. The ballpark isn’t suddenly going to become inconvenient. The views will remain gorgeous. The ticket prices will remain reasonable. The park will remain full. And the people complaining the loudest about this, know it. If ever there was a time for an empty Coors Field, it was this year. It’s not happening.
This is a problem without a solution.
And that is why those who are more interested in throwing gas on the fire than they are talking about a better way forward will always bring it up. The fans are to blame. You are the problem. How dare you take your friends and family to a ballgame on a Saturday night in LoDo? You monster.
The truth is that Colorado Rockies fans have endured far more nonsense than most fanbases over the last 30 years, and they deserve praise, not scorn.
Cardinals fans have long had the gall to call themselves the best fans in baseball, but what have they had to overcome? For a long time, the Red Sox and Cubs were the most tortured fanbases, but they’ve long since joined the “annoying now that they’ve won” category.
Rockies fans have never seen a division winner and have only gotten past the first round of the postseason once. A lot of (wrong) people chalk that one time up to luck. They’ve only played in one World Series and didn’t win any games. There is a sad “what if” attached to every superstar player who ever wore the jersey.
Now, even if they don’t get there, they’ve spent all of 2025 flirting with the worst record in the history of the sport.
But on Friday night, none of that mattered. What mattered was Warming Bernabel. What mattered was Dugan Darnell. What mattered was Brenton Doyle, who has had a nightmare of a year, sending over 35,000 people into a frenzy.
Imagine believing that none of those people should have been there. Imagine thinking that those people are a problem, and those who sit at home complaining about them are a solution.
Yes, through all of it, Rockies fans will keep showing up. They will sit through crushing defeats, lifeless games, and historically terrible seasons. They will show up and watch and hope that this game they get to see something special. Because no matter how bad they’ve been, any game can become a lifelong memory.
And in a few years, when the team has pulled out of the muck, those who walked through the gates in 2025 will be able to say they were there for the early days, for the breakouts of Hunter Goodman and Jordan Beck. They were there for Warming Bernabel. They were there for the challenging starts for Zac Veen and Chase Dollander. They saw the seeds being planted. They endured.
For everyone else, they will see you when the weather is fair.
