June 22, 2037: An oral history

“Honestly, at a certain point it just became the norm.”

I’m sitting in a basement with Drew Goodman. Now retired, Drew spent 34 years as the play-by-play voice of the Colorado Rockies. Drew now spends his time gardening and watching his grandsons play basketball. He usually doesn’t watch baseball these days.

“You thought, for a while, ‘OK, the losing streak is bad but it’s just probability that they’ll win eventually.’ Only, they didn’t. They never could,” Drew sighs as he speaks these words. It’s difficult for him. “At least it’s over now.”

Drew wasn’t able to announce the last one, the game they finally won. But it doesn’t bother him.

“Would it have been a relief? Probably. Would it have changed anything for me? No.”

Drew’s story is a story many have now. For 20 years, the Rockies never won a baseball game. They played over 3,200 games and lost every single one. It defied logic, reason, math, religion, life. It was the craziest streak in sports and when it finally ended on June 22, 2037, it felt like we lost one of America’s most insane storylines. Every summer for two decades, we knew the Rockies were going to lose. It was as predictable as death and taxes. Now, that’s changed.

The Football Friday Documentary Series Presents:

June 22, 2037: An Oral History

On June 21, 2017 the Rockies entered a game against the Arizona Diamondbacks on a modest winning streak. It was looking like a pretty good season; the Rockies sat 21 games over .500 at that point. Then, the losing started.

“In hindsight I guess we could’ve seen it coming,” former Rockies player Pat Valaika told me. I met with Pat in the new restaurant he just opened, “Pat’s Steaks.” It’s pretty good.

“Jeff gave up that nine-run inning, we shrugged it off. That’s how baseball is sometimes, you know? But then it just kept coming.”

The Rockies lost their next 89 games to finish 2017 with a 47-115 record.

“At a certain point it just became a joke to even us,” Valaika said. “How in the world could this keep happening?”

Losing 89 straight games was the first defiance of logic in this historic streak. Eventually, it went from bad play to bad luck to acts of God.

Former Rockies general manager Jeff Bridich couldn’t fathom that the losing streak could keep going.

“We thought, ‘OK, 89 losses to end the season—that’s just terrible.’ But it’s a new year, a new chance,” Jeff told me.

The Rockies lost all 162 games in 2018.

“By June of that year we thought, ‘are we cursed?’ Surely we must be cursed.”

The curse narrative dominated 2019. So much so that the Rockies hired a priest to exorcise the stadium and the clubhouse of demons. They also brought in a voodoo priestess and, secretly, a wiccan.

“Dick [Monfort, Rockies owner] was really concerned that we had definitely encountered dark spirits. I mean, it was an over 300-game losing streak by that point. How could he not?” Bridich recalled. “We had a priest, we had voodoo, we had some guy who advertised on Facebook that he had killed 20 demons with his bare hands. It was insanity, but we were on the brink.”

In 2020, Bridich was fired. Even Monfort’s loyalty couldn’t protect a team that lost 500 straight games.

“I think when we couldn’t even sign a single draft pick because of our streak, that’s when the writing was on the wall.”

Bridich now operates a law firm in Sandusky, Ohio.

The Rockies continued to lose, dropping every single game in the entire decade of the 2020s. The team was now ranked 28th in attendance, still in front of Oakland and Tampa Bay. There were a few games in 2031 when the crowd was composed of fewer people than the rosters of both teams. It was dismal; Supreme President Zuckerberg proclaimed the Rockies a disaster zone at the start of his third term in 2033.

It seemed like the Rockies were never going to win—until June 22, 2037 came.

The Rockies were at home playing the San Francisco Giants. The Giants, winners of three World Championships two decades prior, had also come on hard times. Due to Buster Posey’s arrest and ban from baseball for being a huge handsome jerk, the Giants had been forced to reshape their organizational structure. This proved to be a difficult task and the team had not had a winning season since 2019.

The Rockies started rookie Zoran Borusch, their 133rd rookie of the season. Borusch was one of the better Rockies prospect starters, having been signed from the Serbian Penal League and sporting a 36.78 ERA in Triple-A. It may not look like it, but today was going to be Zoran’s day.

The Rockies trailed early, a usual sign that the loss was once again definite. But then something began to happen that hadn’t happened in two decades.

The Rockies began to rally.

“It was a hit and then another hit and then all of the sudden they had strung together five in a row. They led 4-3,” lifelong Rockies fan Nick Stephens said. A fun fact about Nick is he was super wrong in 2017 about Greg Holland and for a time, people blamed the losing streak on him.

Nick now operates a car wash that is definitely a legitimate business and any inquiries into his finances should be directed to his lawyer.

“They went into the eighth up 6-3 and you thought ‘could this be the one?’” Nick continued from the luxurious mansion he purchased with legitimate earnings from his car wash business. “They brought in their set up guy, a 70-year-old former pitcher they had found in Nebraska or something.”

That pitcher they found in Nebraska? Jamie Moyer. Jamie was now a school teacher in Nebraska when the Rockies called him up asking for one last ride. His fastball topped out at 48 mph but the Rockies had to take what they could get.

“When they called I remember telling my wife how stupid it was,” Jamie tells me. “I’m [freaking] 74 years old.”

74 or not, Jamie Moyer pitched a clean eighth inning on June 22. A minor miracle in itself, striking out two Giants and forcing Hunter Pence to pop up.

“It was nice to get Hunter out because we go to the same osteoporosis doctor.”

Then came the ninth inning.

“[The Rockies] were still up three runs but we all remembered in 2025 when they led 10-1 in the ninth inning and lost 34-10,” Stephens says of a truly gut-wrenching, 33-run inning in May of 2025 against the Dodgers. “It always seemed like that would happen.”

The Rockies’ closer was a man few saw pitch. But as he came out for the ninth inning, it was impossible to not cheer a little. Maybe, this was finally it.

“I couldn’t even remember the guy’s name, the closer,” Stephens said. “But as he strutted out I clapped a little. It was starting to feel real.”

The closer nobody could remember was 31-year-old Grayson Grayson. Just 11 when the losing streak started, the unfortunately named Grayson was an accountant for the Rockies when they asked if anyone could pitch. He said he could throw a decent change up, so they signed him. He still had to work as an accountant and pitch in his free time. He had racked up 13 appearances in six seasons.

“I didn’t really have a gameplan, no,” Grayson said. He still works for the Rockies. “I never really did. I only had two pitches and my fastball was only 82 mph. So my plan every time was to just throw it and hope they didn’t hit a home run.”

That hope, combined with that change up, worked to perfection.

“I got all three guys out on the first pitch. They all popped it up. I almost felt like they were trying to lose.”

The Giants went down quietly, the crowd roared. Some, like Stephens, cried.

“I bawled my [freaking] eyes out,” Stephens recalled.

For fans of the Rockies, the win meant they could move on. Even though they finished the 2037 season 6-156, they knew they could win again.

For Bridich, it was something he didn’t even notice.

“I hope the guys celebrated, I wish I could’ve been there. But I’m the number one cow lawyer in Ohio now. Cow Law takes no breaks.”

For Goodman, the former broadcaster who dedicated his life to the team, it was just another day in the garden.

“To tell you the truth, I forgot they were playing that day.”

June 22, 2037 will always be a moment in history. The day a losing streak ended, the day hope could reign again.

All hail President Supreme Zuckerberg.

All hail baseball.