The MLB All-Star Game is moving 1,400 miles west and one mile up.
Denver will host the midsummer classic after Major League Baseball pulled the game from Atlanta following the passage of Georgia’s controversial elections law.
Rockies owner Dick Monfort is among the owners MLB commissioner Rob Manfred consulted before moving the game out of Atlanta. Manfred also spoke with the Players Association, Players Alliance — a group of current and retired Black players — and corporate sponsors before making the decision.
Opponents of the move have noted that Colorado also has voter ID laws and three fewer days of early voting, but the state’s ID requirements are less stringent, and, because the state mails all voters an absentee ballot automatically, Colorado has one of the highest voter turnout rates in the U.S.
The move also takes All-Star events and potential revenue from a city that is just over 50% Black to one that is 9.2% Black, for a game that will honor one of baseball’s most prominent Black legends, Hank Aaron.
The Rockies hosted All-Star festivities once before, in 1998. The game typically brings around $60 million to $89 million in economic activity to the host city. Cobb County’s travel and tourism bureau estimates that Georgia’s losses from MLB’s decision to move the event out of Atlanta will exceed more than $100 million.
Coors Field is known as a hitters’ paradise due to the rarified air, which allows the ball to fly further and cuts into the movement on certain pitches.
“The Home Run Derby would be pretty legendary,” said Rockies pitcher Jon Gray, before the announcement was made.
