In the Shadow of the Rockies: An Outsider's Look Inside a New Major League Baseball Team

by Alan Gottlieb

When Denver Post non-sports writer Alan Gottlieb set out to cover the inaugural season of Denver's first major league baseball franchise, his instructions were don't write a typical sports story.
Beginning with a remarkable opening day in which 80,227 fans watched the first Rockie-at-bat, Eric Young, hit a home run, Gottlieb takes us through this remarkable inaugural season. He pokes around behind the scenes - in the byways sports writers never explore and those who are close to the game take for granted - in search of the odd, the off-beat, and the hidden.
This cheerfully sardonic book examines everything from the fans in the $1 Rockpile seats to life on the road - "the millionaire gypsy caravan" where players, sports writers (and yes, the author himself) are all caught telling tales out of school.
Fun and at times even pithy, In the Shadow of the Rockies humanizes the heroes, peels back the veneer of a seemingly faultless organization, and takes the reader on a rollicking tour of major league baseball in the 1990s.

249 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1994

About the author

A native of Chicago, Alan Gottlieb received a Bachelor's Degree from Colorado College (1979) and a Master's Degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (1984). He served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ecuador in 1980-81. Ultimate Excursions draws, in part, from some of his experiences during that time. Alan spent 16 years as a newspaper reporter and editor, working for the Ute Pass Courier in Woodland Park, Colorado, The Bridgeport Post in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and The Denver Post. He spent 10 years working on public education reform for The Piton Foundation, a philanthropic organization in Denver. He is currently the Vice President for Policy and Business Engagement at Denvers Public Education and Business Coalition. There, he produces a monthly online education magazine, HeadFirst Colorado, as well as an electronic education newsletter and a blog.

Alan is also author of In the Shadow of the Rockies, a comical, offbeat look at the inaugural season of Denvers Major League Baseball team. The book was published in hardcover by Roberts Rinehart Publishers in 1994. It will soon be available in paperback on this website and through major online booksellers.

Alan lives in central Denver with his wife Elizabeth Randall, an Episcopal priest. Their daughter, Marian, is a student at Bennington College in Vermont."