In less than a century the Monfort family digressed from livestock to laughingstock. Once the proud possessors of a premier national stockyards company, the Monfort migrants from Illinois are owners of the world’s worst team in a ballyard.
The Richard “Call Me” Dick Monfort’s Roxbottoms just concluded compiling 500 losses over five consecutive seasons. Monfort certainly understands the demeaning of defeat.
He also must know the definition of insanity – an aphorism of the principle of doing the same thing over and over again and never getting different results. It’s a guinea pig in a spinning wheel.
Despite the hue and the cry of the multitudes Monfort never will sell the Rox franchise. He’ll give it to his sons. Both already are executives, and the elder brother Walker will be the executive vice president now while younger sibling Sterling continues as director of professional scouting. Who knows if they are capable?
But change is a’comin’ at Coors. Monfort’s gofer has resigned as team president/COO, and days ago the general manager and long-time limp lackey, who was out of his league for two decades, said he was stepping down, although he actually was shoved off. The assistant GM also left.
So, for the first time since Dick assumed control of the partnership from his brother Charlie, the franchise claims to be searching for leadership outside the organization. It took an incompetent owner only 15 years to realize he shouldn’t be the owner, chairman of the board, chief executive officer and power monger over snow remover, party decks and decision-maker for overpaid, underachieving free agents who never had played first base before and were expected to drive in 100 runs and drive the Rox to the postseason. Dick couldn’t get anything right other than his buildings and bars and Fireworks Nights, and he should get out of the business and concentrate more on feedlots and Slaughterhouse 500.
So he must sit still in his penthouse suite atop McGregor Square and stay seated in his suite upstairs at Coors Field and get out of the way.
Some among us had been telling Monfort for years he didn’t belong in baseball. Finally, he is listening. It’s time to give up the president’s position with the Rockies and hire a horde of new professionals to keep the team from losing another 500 games by 2030.
Listen up, Dick. You can be the CEO in charge of playing with bobbleheads and batting helmets.
Hire a new president of baseball operations, and allow Walker to sell tickets and sponsorships.
The team president will handle all baseball matters, including the naming of a new general manager, and the two can choose a manager, directors of amateur and professional scouting, a vice president of analytics and an entirely fresh staff of executive. Loyalty is good with a dog, but not with a guy who just hung around with a team for 33 years that lost 2,818 games and missed the postseason 28 times.
The Savannah Bananas, who sold out two games at Coors Field this season without bringing the Dodgers or a Christian singer to town, have scheduled two more games for 2026 against the Clowns. But not Our Dusty Old Clowns.
For the first president of the Rockies in club history with a baseball background, Thad Levine is the correct choice, with a caveat. The 53-year-old Levine, who most lately was exec VP and GM for the Twins (winning three division championships and appearing in four playoffs) before leaving after the ’24 season, should bring with him as executive VP/GM Jon Daniels, who is a senior advisor with the Rays.
Levine and Daniels were top executives and closest friends with the Rangers for years. Except, then, their roles were reversed. Obviously, they could cooperate and collaborate again. The Rangers reached the playoffs in five of seven seasons from 2010 to 2016, and, unlike the Rockies, both Daniels and Levine hired managers of the year, including Ron Washington in Texas. The Rockies must consider for manager Jeff Banister, late of the Rangers, and Rocco Baldelli, fired by the Twins, with Washington as bench coach.
The two should fire all the Rockies scouts – they have fewer than any other team, and too many have been around for decades – and hire a director of scouting and his assistant in international scouting from the Dodgers.
Start anew, Monfort – experts. Where’s the beef? Where’s the ball? Where’s the end of the bullstock?