Unfair Measures

Are the Rockies' feats in Coors Field just a mile-high version of what Boston does by smacking balls off its left field wall? Should we view both Fenway and Coors as curiosities to be enjoyed, not aberrations to annoy us? Or are they different?

For decades, fans have adored Fenway for its Green Monster, deep triangle in center field, spacious right field, tiny foul territory and cozy Pesky Pole in right field. It's quirky, individual, unique: so like life. That's the company line for generations.

As a result, Fenway's sins are forgiven. The game, as played there, is warped, but how could it be helped? The park had to be squeezed into a crowded neighborhood. So, the goofy statistics generated in Boston are accepted. Some hitters, like David Ortiz, do better there than they could anywhere else. Big Papi has hit .321 in his career at Fenway and .280 elsewhere. Some pitchers, especially southpaws, are penalized at birth. Is that "fair?" Baseball's received wisdom about Fenway: That's life. Get over it.

However, many of those same fans, including me, have disliked Coors from the day it opened. Baseball at high altitude was a necessary-evil accommodation that the industry made so that a sports-hungry town could be brought into the game.

This series has finally forced me to recognize why mile-high baseball bothers me so much. And why it may not bother others, including 99 percent of the population of this city, at all. I'm one of those people who finds beauty in the geometry of baseball -- the accidental distances established in the 1860s, which somehow turned out to be perfect. At times, Fenway may be a fluky bandbox but at least all the proportions of the game, all the relative distances that have proved so enjoyable for so long, are maintained.

If baseball had been invented in Denver, perhaps the bases would be 94 feet apart and the pitchers mound only 59 feet 7 inches from home plate. Maybe the hitter would only get two strikes, and there would be 10 men on a team, so that there would be enough fielders to cover the enormous outfield. Or, perhaps, if the sport had begun here, it would have died here, too, because something hard to define, the very aesthetics of the sport, would never have come into existence.

In Game 3 of this series, much of what is worst about Coors was on display as the Red Sox scored six runs in the third inning. Colorado starter Josh Fogg is not a "Coors-style pitcher." His ERA here this season was 5.97, as opposed to 4.15 on the road. He doesn't specialize in either strikeouts or ground balls -- the two results that a pitcher welcomes here.

The Red Sox may not have played much in Coors before. But they know the first rule of attack here: Don't stop running. Always take the extra base. Because every outfielder is, by normal definition, out of position and every base-running calibration is different. Only the slowest runners can't go first to third. Anybody should score from second base on a single.

In that one inning, the Red Sox had seven hits and six runs off Fogg without a home run. But the lumbering Ortiz scored from second on a single. Manny Ramirez attempted to do the same and, if he had not visited the Red Sox' dugout as he rounded third, would have been safe by feet instead of out by inches. Two runs, not one, scored on a bases-loaded single by a pitcher because, even for weak hitters, outfielders must play deeper. And a slicing fly that would have ended most innings elsewhere eluded the Rockies for an RBI double.

So, what are we to make of the athletic activity being attempted here at Coors Field? Is it baseball?

For others, including many here, it is a perfectly valid, though radically different, form of the game. For me, it's junk.

Luckily, the Romans had a phrase for such disputes: "De gustibus non disputandum est." There is no use in disputing about matters of taste. When in Denver, do like the Romans. That way, maybe the nice folks here will let me out of town alive.