Come here often? For Rockies fans, even in an awful season, the answer is 'yes'.

• Author: Schley, Stewart
• Position: SPORTS biz

IN A SAD ROCKIES BASEBALL SEASON, THERE'S one surprisingly bright statistic: attendance.

Somehow, in the middle of a year that's as grey and sober as the team's road uniforms, the Rockies averaged 34,055 fans at the All Star break. That's enough to rank the Rox 13th out of 30 MLB teams, ahead of National League playoff contenders Atlanta (29,834), Washington (29,677) and the Cincinnati Reds (28,396). The 2012 Rockies, with a 33-52 record at midseason, have managed to attract more fans to home games than the Pittsburgh Pirates, a young, resurgent team that was leading the NL Central at the break.

The numbers are interesting from an historic team vantage point. In 2009, the last year the Rockies made the playoffs, the team averaged home attendance of 32,902. That's 3.5 percent lower than this year's midseason figure, when the Rockies owned a .388 winning percentage that ranked second-worst in all of baseball.

It seems especially curious considering that in the past, losing has hurt. In 2005, when the Rockies posted a team-worst record of 67-95, average attendance at Coors Field fell to 23,929. This year, as the Rockies threaten to crack the ignoble 100-loss milestone, 10,000 more people are coming to the games at a typical homestand.

So what gives?

"Coors Field is a hit of a conundrum," says Robert McGowan, a Rockies season-ticket holder and a professor at the University of Denver's Daniels College of Business. He thinks the absence of a correlation between attendance and on-field performance reflects a number of inputs, from the weather to the baseball sensibilities of fans. Despite Colorado's early summer heat wave, the weather isn't nearly as stifling as the hot, muggy soup that often keeps East. Coast fans at home, McGowan says. He has a point: Even the Miami Marlins, in a spiffy new ballpark, can't match the Rockies' attendance levels this year.

McGowan, who lectures on sports management at DU, also thinks--brace yourself for this, sports fan--many Denver-area fans lack the sort of nuanced appreciation for baseball that Pans in St. Louis, New York and other baseball markets possess. In other words, don't expect a lot of cursing when the Rockies fail to advance a runner on a bunt with one out in the fifth.

"A lot of them simply are there for...