Charlie Blackmon was born July 1, 1986, and Chuck Nazty on August 16, 2011.
Both should end their playing careers as Colorado Rockies, though not yet.
The only player so far who spent his entire career in purple pinstripes is Todd Helton, who is scheduled for induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame 10 days from now.
I’m not suggesting that Chuck Nazty merits a place alongside The Toddfather in Cooperstown.
But he should be a lifer like Helton, with his number 19 retired and displayed alongside 17 above the bullpens at Coors Field—when the time comes.
The temptation now is to ask if Colorado should move on from Blackmon after this season, as it was at the end of last season and will be every year until he retires. The Rockies are building for the future, and a guy who turned 38 this month does not qualify as part of a youth movement.
The answer, however, is that Blackmon belongs in that clubhouse as long as he can swing a bat effectively and douse teammates with post-game Gatorade showers.
He may not be a .300 hitter anymore, or hit home runs into the 20s or 30s, as he once did.
But the .260-ish batting average he has sported this season, albeit 30 points or more below his career average, nonetheless ranks among the top 60 to 70 marks in all of Major League baseball halfway through this season. He can still contribute.
More to the point, his example is just what young players need as they learn what it takes to excel in the Big Leagues.
Over the years, I’ve become convinced that Chuck Nazty’s greatest trait is his work ethic—his willingness to do whatever it has taken for him to become the best baseball player he could be, i.e. to get the most out of his abilities and talents.
What better example for young players?
Blackmon might have been a Marlins pitcher. They drafted him in the 28th round in 2004 out of North Gwinnett High School, where he was a three-time Academic Player of the Year.
Or he might have been a member of the Boston Red Sox, who drafted him the next year, following his freshman season at Young Harris College.
But he waited until the Rockies picked him in the second round in 2008. By then he was a red-shirt junior at Georgia Tech. (He graduated in 2011 with a degree in business administration with a concentration in finance.)
His Minor League stops between 2008 and 2010 were typical:
Pascoe, Washington (Tri-City, Short-Season Class A);
Modesto (California League, High A); and
Tulsa (Texas League, Class AA).
After hitting .337 in 58 games for Colorado Springs in the Triple-A Pacific Coast League in 2011, Blackmon was called up on June 7 and got his first Big League hit the next night, a one-out single off San Diego’s Dustin Moseley in the second inning at Petco Park.
About three weeks later at Coors Field, on his 25th birthday, he hit his first home run in the Majors, pinch-hitting for Carlos Gonzalez in the eighth inning of a 9-0 romp over Kansas City. Less than a week later he broke his foot running the bases in Atlanta and finished the season on the disabled list.
Charlie dubbed himself Chuck Nazty (with a ‘z,’ he specified) while out of action that August. Typically, when asked about it years later, he reflectively admitted, “I spent way too little time thinking about it . . . Had I known it would follow me around, I probably would have put more thought into it.”
Splitting time between Colorado Springs and Denver the next two seasons, he was clean-shaven and short-haired.
A well-groomed beard showed up in the 2015 Rockies Information Guide, following his first full season in Denver. Since then, it has grown into the bushy—some would say unkempt—mess of facial hair that dominates his look now.
In the past 11 years, Nazty has won a National League batting title, topped 30 homers in a season twice, and collected more than 1,600 hits. He’s second to Helton in most offensive categories on the Rockies’ All-Time Leaders list.
He’s playing this season on a one-year contract, which means the Rockies could let him go elsewhere in 2025.
That would be a mistake.Denny Dressman is a veteran of 43 years in the newspaper business, including 25 at the Rocky Mountain News, where he began as executive sports editor. He is the author of 16 books, nine of them sports-related. You can write to Denny at dennydressman@comcast.net.