Drunken goons at Coors Field make watching Rockies even more difficult

What's the worst story to come out of Coors Field this season?

Hint: It has nothing to do with dwindling attendance or Clint Barmes breaking his collarbone.

No, the worst story to come out of Coors - home to the worst road team in baseball - is the ongoing saga of Jeff Black. It's a story about a fan and his 9-year-old son whom in April 2004 were attacked three times by two drunken goons. It's the story of a fan who, incensed with how ushers were unwilling to remove a pair of disorderly fans, and seething over his assailants' ability to be repeatedly served beer by stadium vendors, fought back by filing a lawsuit against the team.

Black's story is also one of denial - the denial of a team, that is, and big-time professional sports in general, to recognize a serious drinking problem. The Rockies, refusing to acknowledge a larger issue of fan violence spurred on by alcohol, plan to fight Black's suit until the bitter end.

It's a sad story.

There's no denying this: Black and his son were attacked at Coors Field on April 14, 2004. Black's two attackers, Ethan Chumley and Steven Shideler, pleaded guilty to assault and were sentenced to suspended jail sentences, community service and anger-management classes.

John Redmond, the assistant city attorney who prosecuted Chumley and Shideler, told Denver Post columnist Jim Spencer the attack was undoubtedly "malicious." The judge agreed.

The Rockies, however, continue to quantity Black's attack as a "beer-spilling incident."

What, and the Basketbrawl at the Palace in Auburn Hills was merely a beer-throwing incident?

Black's suit, which he updated last Monday, claims that Chumley and Shideler first attacked him after he asked them to stop using vulgar language in front of his son. The two assailants were talking about having sex with fat women, among other things.

The second and third attacks came after Black had asked Rockies ushers to handle the situation. The two troublemakers were removed from their seats because - surprise - they were the wrong ones, but Chumley, claiming he forgot his cell phone in his seat, ran back down to pour an entire beer on Black and his son before pushing Black in the back.

The nightmare father-son outing wasn't over.

Chumley was ejected from the stadium, but Shideler managed to sneak back down to Black and his son's seats during the seventh-inning stretch and douse the pair again with another beer bought from stadium vendors.

Black's suit is looking for financial damages, but more importantly, it seeks a court order requiring the Rockies and Coors Field to establish a five-year plan designed to monitor alcohol sales and to provide satisfactory security for children and adults.

Sounds adequate, considering the circumstances.

The Rockies don't see it that way. They have refused to let a mediator settle the suit. Considering the team plays at a stadium named after the third-largest beer producer in the country - one of three stadiums in the bigs named after brewers - it's a predictable response.

To think that Coors Field would strenuously try to monitor alcohol sales? Yeah, and tobacco companies really don't want to attract young smokers. The Rockies' lawyers think Black's suit is out of left field.

A legal filing from the team, as reported in the Denver Post said, "This case involves a public beer-spilling incident at a baseball game, not allegations of any private or embarrassing events."

Right, and the two drunken fans who charged on to the field in Chicago in 2002 and attacked Kansas City Royals coach Tom Gamboa were just playing around. Those were just harmless beer-swilling incidents. The same goes for the drunken jerk who attacked an umpire seven months later in the same stadium, or the inebriated schlub at Fenway who took a swipe at Yankees outfielder Gary Sheffield this season.

I wonder, if everyone one of those fans had been slugging Pepsis instead of Pabsts or Buds - including the drunken idiots in Detroit - would they have thought it was a such good idea to try to fight hulking professional athletes? Beer courage is a force that is out of this world, it seems.

Literally, it puts you on a plane where the rules of the real world don't apply. It makes you think you have super-human powers that supercede everything - even laws that can put you in jail.

I'm not opposed to drinking prudently while watching sports. As I told Dave Logan and Lois Melkonian last week when I called into their afternoon show "The Ride Home," on Denver's 850 KOA, some performance-enhancing drugs are necessary for fans - especially those who head to Coors to take in a Rockies game this season. I had a beer with my Rockies dog both times I went to Coors this season. My dad who is a Lutheran pastor followed suit.

Also, this spring my college roommate from St. Paul, Minn. called me at 5:30 in the morning to tell me he was tailgating in the parking lot of St. Paul's Midway Stadium. He was drinking a Hamms and grilling while preparing for the earliest recorded baseball game in history between the minor league St. Paul Saints and the Sioux Falls Canaries. It's a good anecdote - one to show that beer, in appropriate quantities, definitely has its place in sports.

However, there is no place in sports for drunken idiots like Chumley and Shideler. There is no place for what happened to Black and his son.

If Black wins his lawsuit, it would help ensure that such an incident could be avoided in the future. It would help ensure that fathers and their young sons - or daughters - could watch a baseball game at Coors without having to worry about getting assaulted, either physically or verbally.

Here's hoping the Rockies lose big.

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Nate Peterson www.vaildaily.com .

Originally published July 20, 2005 10:49 am EST