James Keating | April 4, 2025

It’s October 1, 2007. The Colorado Rockies are hosting the San Diego Padres in a one-game playoff to decide the National League Wild Card. Game 163.

Winner takes all. Loser goes home. And not just home. Like, home home. As in “See you in spring training and maybe we’ll trade your best player for pennies on the dollar” kind of home. 

This wasn’t just a game. This was the game that would make the Rockies feel like a real team for the first time since their birth in 1993. It was their chance to finally do something that would make baseball fans and sports acolytes outside of Denver pay attention to them and, ultimately, care about them.

More from the 30 in 30 series

• Coors Field Moment No. 1 – Game 163: Colorado completes their improbable run to Rocktober
• Coors Field Moment No. 2 – Dante Bichette christens the Rockies’ new baseball cathedral
• Coors Field Moment No. 3 – Todd Helton, Troy Tulowitzki and the Colorado Rockies are World Series bound
• Coors Field Moment No. 4 – Nolan, Bloody Nolan: Arenado’s walk-off cycle spurs Rockies to end postseason drought

If you’re going to understand why Game 163 is the greatest moment in Coors Field history — and the greatest moment in Rockies history, period — you need to understand the journey. 

The Rockies were dead in the water in September. Some players were already considering travel plans for October. On Sept. 15, they were 4.5 games out of the final (and only) NL Wild Card. Their playoff odds were somewhere between “snowball’s chance in hell” and “my fantasy team winning the league after I drafted three pitchers who tore their UCLs in April.” But then something happened. They started winning. In fact, they could not stop winning. 

Colorado won 11 straight. They swept the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers in a four-game set. They swept the Padres. They swept the Dodgers again. By the time they got to the final weekend of the season, there was a whole lot of drama. They ended up tied with San Diego for the Wild Card lead follow the 162nd game of the season. Which meant… Game 163.

At the time, I lived in the middle of Nebraska, which is essentially a baseball desert. But the Rockies? They were our team. When Game 163 was announced, there was only one thought. We. Were. Going. 

No plan. No tickets. Just three dudes, a 5.5-hour drive and a dream.

Our seats were in the Purple Row. If you’ve never sat there, just imagine being so high up that you can count the craters of the moon. The players looked like pixels on a 1990s TV screen: small, blurry and hard to identify.

If you are a Rockies fan, you know what happened. You don’t need a play-by-play account mostly because you remember every last detail already. (In case you want a remind, you can watch the entire game on YouTube.)

Josh Fogg — aka the Dragon Slayer — took on eventual 2007 Cy Young Award Jake Peavy. Jorge Julio gave up a two-run bomb to the Padres’ Scott Hairston in the 13th inning. (Quick tangent, I will never forget the silence of a sold out and packed Coors Field in that moment. From the Purple Row I could hear Hairston, or maybe it was Brian Giles, shout some expletive-laden version of “LET’S GO.” Though I couldn’t see it, I certainly could hear high-fives being slapped in the Padres third-base dugout.)

The GOAT closer at the time, at least in the National League, was ready to yet another three-out save in the bottom of the 13th. Trevor Hoffman came in to close the door, but Kaz Matsui and Troy Tulowitzki kicked it down with back-to-back doubles. Matt Holliday tripled, and Jamey Carroll delivered a clutch, pinch-hit sacrifice fly to walk it off.

As much as the memory of Game 163 centers around the Holliday and the controversy surrounding the final play, Tulowitzki, Garrett Atkins and Todd Helton also get a lot of recognition. But true Rockies fans haven’t forgotten those other critical players that made that win possible. 

• Kaz Matsui: The switch-hitting lead-off hitter recorded two doubles, scored twice, drove in a run and contributed to that 13th-inning rally.

• Matt Herges: The 37-year-old reliever tossed three scoreless innings in extra frames. Three! In a game of this magnitude, he was an absolute rock. 

• Seth Smith: Mr. Late Night, remember him? A pinch-hit triple and subsequent run scored actually gave the Rockies a 6-5 lead in the sixth inning. (It’s understandable if you forgot that considering everything that happen during extras.)

They didn’t always make the highlight reels, but they were an important reason Colorado won that game. That game and that final run during the regular season is a reminder that baseball, at its core, is about hope.

So yeah, Game 163 is the pinnacle moment in Coors Field history.

For yours truly? It was one of the greatest moments of my life. Because that’s the beauty of sports. It’s not just games. It’s memories and stories and the moments that bring us together and make us feel alive.

Postscript: And if you want to feel alive, you can watch the greatest Rockies commercial ever made.

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• Frozen in Bronze: Larry Walker Becomes First Rockies Player Honored with a Statue Outside Coors Field
• Rockies Rally Falls a Run Short in 7-6 Loss to Dodgers
• The Data-Driven Rockies Lineup: Optimizing Lineups vs. Righties and Lefties
• The Message Behind Mickey Moniak’s Extension