Paying up for playing ball; Rockies aim for comeback on tighter budget.

• Position: Colorado Rockies Baseball Club

His revenues are tumbling. His customer base is eroding. Some of his best employees have been snatched up by the competition. And his market value is dropping by the millions.

So why is this CEO so damn happy? Because he's Charlie Monfort. Because he's an optimist by nature.

And because in his business, early in spring, just about anything seems possible--even winning the NL West with a rotation of castaway starters looking to reclaim the satisfying snap of fastballs past.

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"We need a lot of things to go right," says Monfort, the chairman and CEO of the Colorado Rockies Baseball Club. "But in the West, I like our chances."

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Monfort's enthusiasm is instantly infectious, but it masks a growing problem. In a metro-Denver market that's increasingly crowded with sports teams, Monfort's Rockies are mired in an economic slump far worse than Larry Walker's home run drought of last May.

The big problem: plunging attendance and waning fan interest. "I used to have people begging me for tickets," says Paul Berteau, a Denver insurance broker who has owned season tickets along the third-base line since the team's inception. "Now, by the middle of the season, I can't give them away."

He's not exaggerating much. Last season the Rockies drew 403,000 fewer patrons than in 2002, and 830,000 fewer than the 3.2 million who showed up in 2001.

For the beef and beer barons who own the team, those aren't just throwaway baseball stats. The Rockies, unlike big-market teams with rich local TV deals, depend disproportionately on ticket sales, concessions and parking. Fan-related spending accounts for more than 70 percent of the team's estimated $110 million in annual revenue.

The closely held Rockies don't disclose finances publicly. But based on average per-fan revenue of $28.57 per game, calculated from baseball's 2000 Blue Ribbon Panel on Baseball Economics report, last year's defections may have cost the team more than $11 million in lost revenue. Coupled with the need to redeem equity erased by former part-owner Oren Benton's bankruptcy, the decline contributed to a shortfall that forced Monfort, his brother Richard and the team's other partners to sink $12 million of their own cash into the Rockies last November.

The capital call of 2003 signals that the Rockies have more challenges to work out than getting their base-stealing signals right. Three straight years of sub-.500 seasons have chased away fans; and big...