The Colorado Rockies gave Larry Walker a permanent place outside Coors Field on a day that mixed gratitude, memory and a little bit of theater.
Walker, 59, the Maple Ridge, British Columbia, native, was honored with a bronze statue that will stand at the corner of 20th and Blake Street and welcome fans for years to come. The Rockies also announced that Todd Helton will get a similar statue on Sept. 19 next month.
Walker didn’t hide how he felt about the tribute.
“I Don’t Deserve That”
He also used the moment to revisit what his first season with Colorado meant. In 1995, Walker helped guide the Rockies to their first postseason appearance, and he made clear how much that year still matters to him.
“This organization gave me an opportunity to play the game I loved in front of the best fans in baseball. We shared some incredible memories together. The ’95 Wild Card showed that baseball wasn’t just surviving in Colorado, but it was thriving,” Walker said.
The day had its emotional spots, including a pause that stood out to those in attendance when Walker spoke about where his love of baseball began. That came from his father, who is still umpiring at 88 years old.
“I knew that was going to be the hard one.”
Walker also walked fans through the surprisingly involved process of creating the statue. The likeness was made by Lundeen Sculptures in Loveland, CO, and it wasn’t just a matter of handing over a photo and calling it a day. Walker said he went up to the sculptors, was instructed on the process, put on a uniform and held a pose for about 20 minutes.
“We went up (to Lundeen Sculptures) and I was told what to do and how the process goes. I had a uniform I put on and had to hold that pose for, gosh, 20 minutes or so.
I started shaking after a while,” Walker recalled. “Fortunately, it was a plastic bat that they gave me, so I didn’t have to hold my own bat.
There’s a lot of steps that go into making those things that I had no idea about.”
The reveal itself matched the occasion. Walker’s family helped lower the purple veil, confetti cannons sent purple and white into the air, and Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” rolled through the speakers. It was the song Walker used as his walk-up music for his decade in purple pinstripes.
“It comes up a lot,” he said of the song. “Even when I’m not around the ballpark, the song comes on the radio, or somebody plays it at an event or something.
It’s that immediate feel to give me a bat. Like, ‘It’s go time.’
That song that always brings back the memories of walking from the on-deck circle to home plate at Coors Field.”
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