Colorado Rockies Trivia
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49 free Colorado Rockies trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Colorado Rockies trivia quiz covers baseball at altitude from the 1993 expansion onward: the record 4.48 million fans at Mile High Stadium, Eric Young's leadoff homer, David Nied, Don Baylor, Andrés Galarraga's batting title, the Blake Street Bombers, Larry Walker's MVP, Todd Helton's .372, the Mike Hampton contract, Ubaldo Jiménez's no-hitter, Troy Tulowitzki's unassisted triple play, and the 21-of-22 'Rocktober' run capped by Matt Holliday's slide in Game 163. It also covers Nolan Arenado's ten Gold Gloves, the four-cities-in-five-days finish of 2018, and the record-setting misery of 2025. Coors Field gets its own round: the purple row marking one mile, the humidor, the dinosaur fossils that gave the club its mascot, the Rooftop, and the green-and-white City Connect uniforms with the license-plate lettering. Easy questions suit any Rockies fan; the hard ones are for people who know the Pantone number of the official purple. Every answer has been checked against an encyclopaedic source and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Rockies joined the National League in 1993 alongside which other expansion team?
Marlins
Florida Marlins: in 1991 the National League picked Denver and South Florida from a shortlist that also had Buffalo, Orlando, Tampa-St. Petersburg and Washington, and each new club paid a $95 million entry fee.
Q 02Where did the Rockies play their first two seasons while Coors Field was built?
Mile High Stadium
Mile High Stadium had been built for minor-league baseball in 1948 before growing into the Broncos' football home, so the game was coming back: 80,227 squeezed in for the Rockies' first home game.
Q 03The 1993 Rockies broke the single-season MLB attendance record set a year earlier by which team?
Blue Jays
Toronto Blue Jays crowds had set the mark at just over four million in 1992; a first-year team in a borrowed football stadium passed it on its 71st home date and finished at 4,483,350, unmatched through 2025.
Q 04Who in Denver had used the name 'Rockies' before the ballclub adopted it?
An NHL team
An NHL team: hockey's Colorado Rockies played in Denver from 1976 until 1982, when they moved east and became the New Jersey Devils; baseball picked the name back up nine years later.
Q 05Which trucking magnate saved the Rockies franchise in 1992 after an ownership scandal?
Jerry McMorris
Jerry McMorris, who ran a Colorado trucking firm, joined two other local businessmen in buying out the out-of-state partners seven months before the first game, after a fraud scandal engulfed the original lead investor.
Q 06In 1999 the Rockies and Padres played MLB's first season opener held outside the US and Canada, in which city?
Monterrey
Monterrey's ballpark drew 27,104 for the opener, and Colorado won 8-2 as Vinny Castilla, the Rockies' Mexican third baseman, delighted the crowd with four hits.
Q 07The Rockies' first pick in the 1992 expansion draft was which pitcher from the Braves system?
David Nied
David Nied was picked while more than 20,000 fans watched the draft on screens in a Denver hall; the intended ace won 14 games in two seasons, hurt his elbow in 1995 and never won for Colorado again.
Q 08Which second baseman hit a leadoff home run in the first inning of the Rockies' first home game in 1993?
Eric Young
Eric Young was a base-stealer, not a slugger, yet he homered in the Rockies' very first home at-bat; a record crowd of 80,227 then watched Colorado beat Montreal 11-4.
Q 09Who was the Rockies' first manager, named NL Manager of the Year in 1995?
Don Baylor
Don Baylor, the American League's MVP as a player in 1979, took the Rockies to the playoffs in only their third season; no expansion team had ever reached October before its eighth.
Q 10Which first baseman hit .370 in 1993, the first batting title for an expansion-team player?
Andrés Galarraga
Andrés Galarraga had hit just .243 for St. Louis the year before; the Cardinals' hitting coach, hired as Colorado's first manager, urged the new club to sign him, and he became the first Venezuelan batting champion.
Q 11The 1995 Rockies' four 30-homer hitters were nicknamed the Bombers of which Denver thoroughfare?
Blake
Blake Street is Coors Field's address, and 1995 was the ballpark's first season: four Rockies hitters each cleared 30 home runs there in a schedule the players' strike had cut to 144 games.
Q 12Which of the Rockies' four 1995 'Bombers' led the National League with 40 home runs?
Dante Bichette
Dante Bichette finished second in that year's MVP vote; back in April he had christened Coors Field by winning its first game with a three-run homer in the 14th inning.
Q 13Who became the first Rockies player to win the NL MVP award, in 1997?
Larry Walker
Q 21The Rockies' team colour purple was inspired by a line from which song?
America the Beautiful
America the Beautiful: its purple-mountains line came to Katharine Lee Bates after a trip up Pikes Peak in 1893, while she was teaching a summer term in Colorado Springs.
Q 22Which Dodgers pitcher threw the only no-hitter at hitter-friendly Coors Field through 2025, back in 1996?
Hideo Nomo
Hideo Nomo won 9-0 that September night, in the very week the Rockies set a modern record for runs scored at home; no pitcher has matched him there in the three decades since.
Q 23The lettering on the Rockies' 2022 green City Connect uniforms was taken from what?
Colorado license plates
Larry Walker grew up in British Columbia dreaming of being an NHL goaltender and barely played baseball as a boy; in 1997 he became the first Canadian ever voted MVP.
Q 14Mark McGwire hit a 510-foot blast, but who won the 1998 Home Run Derby at Coors Field?
Ken Griffey Jr.
Ken Griffey Jr. had planned to sit the contest out, changed his mind after the Denver crowd booed him during batting practice, and then beat Jim Thome in the final.
Q 15Todd Helton's 2000 run at .400 recalled which player's 1980 chase?
George Brett
George Brett was still at .400 in September 1980 before finishing at .390; Helton faded sooner but won the batting title at .372, with 59 doubles and 147 runs batted in.
Q 16Todd Helton played which position for the University of Tennessee football team?
Quarterback
Quarterback: Helton became Tennessee's starter in 1994 when the senior ahead of him was hurt, then injured his own knee three weeks later and lost the job for good to a freshman named Peyton Manning.
Q 17Todd Helton entered the Hall of Fame in 2024 alongside which former Rockies manager?
Jim Leyland
Jim Leyland managed Colorado for a single season, 1999, and later said he regretted taking the job; an era committee elected him, and he was inducted the same day as his old first baseman.
Q 18The purple seats in the 20th row of Coors Field's upper deck mark what?
One mile above sea level
One mile above sea level: the rest of the seats are dark green, and the single purple row sits exactly 5,280 feet up, marking the altitude that makes batted balls carry so far in Denver.
Q 19To cut down on home runs at altitude, Coors Field stores baseballs in what?
A humidor
A humidor, approved by MLB in May 2002: baseballs dry out and harden in Denver's air, so the Rockies store them in damper conditions and they come off the bat with less bounce.
Q 20The Rockies' mascot Dinger is what creature, inspired by fossils found at Coors Field?
A triceratops
A triceratops: builders digging the ballpark's foundations turned up dinosaur bone fragments, so the club's purple mascot 'hatched' from a giant egg on the field in April 1994.
Colorado license plates, with their green mountains and plain block type, inspired the jersey, which the club launched with players photographed at 11,990-foot Loveland Pass; a new design replaced it in 2025.
Q 24Which pitcher did the Rockies sign to an eight-year, $121 million deal after the 2000 season?
Mike Hampton
Mike Hampton's contract was the richest in baseball history for exactly two days, until Alex Rodriguez signed his; by 2002 he was 7-15 with a 6.15 ERA, and the Rockies traded him away.
Q 25The Rockies' 2007 run to the pennant, winning 21 of 22 games, was nicknamed what?
Rocktober
Rocktober really began in mid-September: the Rockies won 13 of 14 just to force a tiebreaker, won that too, then swept two playoff series, making 21 wins in 22 games over 29 days.
Q 26The Rockies' 2007 'Game 163' tiebreaker was a 9-8, 13-inning win over which team?
San Diego Padres
San Diego Padres closer Trevor Hoffman, then baseball's career saves leader, was handed a two-run lead in the 13th and gave up three; the winner scored on a head-first slide that may never have touched the plate.
Q 27The Rockies' only World Series appearance through 2025, in 2007, ended in a sweep by which team?
Boston Red Sox
Boston Red Sox ace Josh Beckett struck out the first four batters of the opener; Colorado, winners of 21 of 22, had gone cold during an eight-day wait, the longest layoff in postseason history.
Q 28Which Rockies hitter was named 2007 NLCS MVP after his three-run homer in the clinching game against Arizona?
Matt Holliday
Matt Holliday was also that year's National League batting champion, and two weeks earlier it was his disputed head-first slide that had scored the run sending Colorado into the playoffs.
Q 29Which Rockies shortstop turned an unassisted triple play against the Braves in April 2007?
Troy Tulowitzki
Troy Tulowitzki, a rookie, caught a line drive behind second, stepped on the bag and tagged the runner coming from first, only the 13th unassisted triple play in major-league history.
Q 30Which pitcher threw the first no-hitter in Rockies history, against the Braves in April 2010?
Ubaldo Jiménez
Ubaldo Jiménez walked six in the first five innings, then switched to pitching from the stretch and never walked another batter; a diving catch by Dexter Fowler in the seventh kept the bid alive.