Tony Cowell was sick and tired of Coors Field‘s infamous reputation.
The media had dubbed the gorgeous ballpark “Coors Canaveral.” Talented Rockies players, their statistics inflated by baseball played at a high-and-dry mile high altitude, were being labeled “Coors Field creations.”
Cowell, an electrician and crew foreman who helped build the ballpark at 20th and Blake, took the criticisms personal.
“People were disparaging Coors Field, and that really bothered me,” said Cowell, who became a stadium engineer for the Rockies in 1996. “Look, I knew that baseball here wasn’t really normal big-league baseball. I wanted to do something about that.