Colorado Rockies owner Dick Monfort’s five most memorable quotes

When Colorado Rockies owner Dick Monfort opens up his mouth, you’re never quite sure what will come out.

As the lone Major League Baseball owner who wanted to cancel the 2020 season due to the pandemic, Monfort isn’t afraid to go against the grain. His grift is getting fans to watch mediocre baseball at Denver’s finest pub-turned-sporting venue so a year with no patrons just about ruined his whole M.O.

But back with fury are the Rockies. Fresh off trading the best player they have ever had and giving the Cardinals $50 million as a cheery on top, and then following it up by giving a massive contract to a former MVP that formerly played the same position as said star a year later—Monfort’s Rockies have done… well. um they’ve done basically nothing this offseason. A forgettable winter that has followed the most boring season in club history has spawned the team owner’s belief in his fightin’ Rockos.

Monfort said over the weekend, “I think we can play .500 ball.”

The quote comes a few months after Monfort penned a letter to season ticket holders they’d be gunning for a championship soon. Neither of these statements are among the craziest things he said in the past. But they got me, and also Nick Groke thinking, what are the most memorable things Mr. Monfort has said?

1: “If product and experience that bad don’t come!”

In the middle of a tough time in Colorado Rockies history, Monfort decided to buy an iPad and boy did he like using it. Among his favorite apps was email. And it was easy to connect with the billionaire too, his real email to this day is just first and last name at Rockies dot com. Almost 10 years later it’s still extremely funny to think about what he wrote in July of that year.

One @Rockies fan was displeased with the teams play this holiday weekend. This was the owners heart felt response pic.twitter.com/XFHTPu5dpR

— Brandon Thompson (@BThompsonNews) July 9, 2014

2: “By the way you talk maybe Denver doesn’t deserve a franchise, maybe time for it to find a new home. Thanks.”

Despite making a lot of news with the first round of rapid-fire emails, later in that 2014 week Monfort was back at it again, sending emails from his iPad. The Rockies have not moved, or come close to it since the team owner’s very empty threat.

3: Everything from the 2019 season

Fresh off a divisional tiebreaker loss to the Dodgers, the Rockies had never been closer or played better ball. But their window was quickly shutting unless general manager Jeff Bridich could do something about it. Logically he signed Nolan Arenado to the richest contract in club history. That was far from enough, as they’d go from 90-game winners to 90-game losers in one season.

“I firmly believe that we have the tools to compete at an even higher level next year,” Monfort penned fans before the 2019 season. “We all know how close we are, and if the team prepares this offseason as well as they did the last, we can win the division and more.”

The Rockies would trade Arenado soon after the horrible season and begin a re-tooling? A re-build??? That seems rudderless.

“I haven’t seen many rebuilds that start with signing the face of your franchise, your best player, to an (eight-year) $260 million contract,” Monfort told the media right after the 2019 season ended.”When some teams don’t play good over a long period of time, they choose to do a (rebuild), but our goal is to play better and to win,” he added. “I also hear — what is the phrase? ‘You have a window of time’ — I think we have a huge window of time.”

Everything that came out of Monfort’s mouth before, during and after that season was the exact opposite of what befell his ballclub.

4: “In 2020, we’ll win 94 games and lose 68”

A staple of the baseball calendar in Colorado is the annual Northern Colorado Friends of Baseball breakfast at the Island Grove Event Center. This is where Monfort said the .500 ball comment over the weekend and it’s also where he predicted that the 2020 club was poised for 94 wins.

“In ’08, with basically the exact same team (as ’07), we won 74 games and lost 88,” Monfort explained ahead of the 2020 campaign. “But like a great American hero, Forrest Gump, once said, ‘(Stuff) happens.’ And that’s what happened in ’08, because in ’09 we won 92 and lost 70. Most of the people I talk to that were on those teams say the ’09 team was our greatest team.”

“I interpolated ’07, ’08 and ’09 — I had an analytical staff go through and interpolate those numbers — and so in 2020, we’ll win 94 games and lose 68.”

Besides maybe not knowing what interpolate means, it was very bold of the team’s owner to predict a still would-be record 94 wins. The Rockies record is still at 92 and 2020 didn’t even touch that number. Colorado finished with a .43% winning percentage after 60 games of play in a pandemic-shortened season. But the Rockies could play a full season and add their 26 wins onto and still not get to 94. In fact, 2022’s 68 wins plus those 26 gets, you guessed it, 94 wins!

It was among Monfort’s most bold claims and when it didn’t even come close to happening, he put himself on the hot seat.

5: “I have thought about firing myself”

In a staunch defense of his maligned general manager, who also liked to put his foot in his mouth, offered a hilarious comment. While most of the folks across the front range were thinking about firing Jeff Bridich, Monfort wasn’t.

“No, I have not thought about firing Jeff,” he said in February of 2021. “I have thought about firing myself.'”

There was a feud between Bridich and Arenado which resulted in the trade. But just midway through the next season, neither Arenado nor Bridich were with the club any longer. Leaving Monfort to run the Rockies, which he finally handed over to Greg Feasel as the team president after the role went unfilled for over a decade after Keli McGregor’s tragic 2010 death.

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