Thursday, May 7, 2020

Down on the Farm: The 1997 Portland Rockies


A team that only existed briefly. 

After the Portland Beavers moved to Salt Lake City following the 1993 season, Portland had a professional baseball stadium but was devoid of professional baseball. Enter the Bend Rockies, who moved to town shortly thereafter, replacing AAA ball with short season A ball. I was living in for the majority of the brief time of the Portland Rockies (a stadium renovation and a return of the Beavers would happen in 2001) and only had the chance to attend one game if I recall correctly.

There's really no star power in this set, which was sent to me at some point last year by Rod of Padrographs. I wasn't able to find any players in this team set who actually made it to the majors. The following season's team counted future MLBers Aaron Cook and Chone Figgins among its ranks. I think I still have a game program from that season somewhere.


The biggest name of the set ends up being this guy. Colin Cowherd spent some years as a local TV news sports guy here before branching out locally into mostly insufferable talk radio. Eventually the big networks came calling, because the nation loves its insufferable sports talk.

Many of the pitchers in this set have this same close-up shot of their follow through.


Solid photo here. This seems like it was probably used for a newspaper photo.


This is a little blurry with the ump in the back, but I still like it.

5 comments :

  1. Nice Colin Cowherd rookie card!

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  2. I appreciate the Portland rose touch on the standard Rockies uniforms.

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  3. Cool set, I really like when a minor league team bases their uni on the parent club, but adds their own twist to it.

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  4. I loved going to Rockies games- I’ve got a game used Juan Pierre Portland Rockies jersey in my collection along with two others- the 98 team was great for short season A ball.

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  5. Seifert's throwing that Rockies logo right at ya!

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