ROCKIES FANS PLAN TO MARK “OPENING DAY”

At 4 p.m. Friday, Monte Radack will stand up and sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” He invites you to join him. “I have not missed a major-league opening day in more than 50 years,” he said. “And I’m not going to miss this one.”

Usually, the 71-year-old Radack would be at Coors Field on Friday, joining a sellout crowd for the Rockies’ home opener against the San Diego Padres. His wife, Nancy Griffith, would be alongside him. But the coronavirus pandemic has put the kibosh on LoDo’s annual baseball party. That’s not going to stop Radack from embracing his love affair with our national pastime.

“I’m still going to celebrate, even if it’s from my home here in Brighton,” he said. “Nancy is going to sing with me, and I’ve already emailed some of my friends and they

are going to do the same thing. It would be nice for this to grow, even if it’s just a few people. Maybe this is something that will grow elsewhere. Who knows?”

There are a number of ways to create an online singalong, via the internet and virtual choirs.

So why 4 p.m. Friday? The first pitch for the Rockies’ game was supposed to be 2:10 p.m., so Radack figured that the traditional seventhinning stretch would come about two hours later.

This is a project of passion for Radack, who worked as an usher at Coors Field for 16 years until a stroke in 2016 forced him to bow out from that labor of love. He has more than 50 Rockies bobbleheads on display in the study of his home.

It was at Coors Field where he met Nancy, who also loves the game. In 2008, Radack proposed to her in a way befitting their baseball romance.

“It was during a Rockies game,” he said. “We handed out boxes of Cracker Jack to everybody in the row, but she had the Cracker Jack with the engagement ring inside.”

They were married the next year.

Radack — born in the Bronx, just 3 miles from Yankee Stadium — made sure to pick a meaningful date for their wedding.

“We got married on April 19,” he said. “That was the Brooklyn Bridegrooms’ first game in the National League.”

The Bridegrooms eventually became the Brooklyn Dodgers.

AAron Ontiveroz, The Denver Post Debbie Griffith and Monte Radack, at their Brighton home, plan to sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” on Friday, which was to be the opening game at Coors Field. They invite all Rockies fans to sing along at 4 p.m.

AAron Ontiveroz, The Denver Post If these fellas in Griffith and Radack’s garden don’t win, it’s a shame. They will root, root, root for the Rockies.