Despite a pow­der blue shirt and a red cap, Nolan Are­na­do wore a pur­ple heart on his sleeve.

“I didn’t know the press con­fer­ence was going to hap­pen until this morn­ing,” the St. Louis Car­di­nals third base­man said Tues­day inside the vis­it­ing club­house at Coors Field, an hour after he’d con­spic­u­ous­ly attend­ed the news con­fer­ence down the hall, watch­ing for­mer Rock­ies team­mate Char­lie Black­mon say farewell to a game they both love.

“Got a few texts, and I’m hap­py that all the guys let me know. But obvi­ous­ly, I’m hap­py to be a part of it. I’m hap­py to just be here, to see it. I had a feel­ing. I want­ed to ask (Black­mon), like, what your plan was, but I was also scared to ask him. Like, ‘Hey, what are you going to do?’ Because then he might be like, ‘I’m still play­ing. Don’t even ask me that.’ So, I was a lit­tle ner­vous. I’m not going to lie.

“I had to ask him. He told me, and I’m hap­py for him. I was hap­py to hear him talk and see his whole fam­i­ly. It was great to see his par­ents. … I remem­ber when we clinched the play­offs in ’17, we all went out, and his mom and dad were with us. So, it was kind of cool to see them again. I feel like I haven’t seen them in a long time, so it was awesome.”

Awe­some. Bit­ter­sweet. The Yan­kees, Dodgers and Car­di­nals get dynas­ties. The clos­est Rock­ies diehards have to that was prob­a­bly ’17 and ’18, those back-to-back wild-card teams, with Black­mon, who announced his retire­ment late Mon­day, hit­ting lead­off and Are­na­do, the Mike Schmidt of his gen­er­a­tion, dri­ving him home. A core that took time to grow, then broke up in a blink.

“We were all play­ing at a pret­ty high lev­el, and it was spe­cial,” Are­na­do reflect­ed before his Car­di­nals met the Rock­ies to open Colorado’s final home­s­tand of anoth­er lost sea­son. “And I always kind of say (that) when DJ (LeMahieu) left, that kind of — it damp­ened us a lit­tle bit. That was our group, but … just going back to Char­lie, if it wasn’t for Char­lie, we prob­a­bly wouldn’t have made those post­sea­sons, I mean, with­out him. He was just so clutch, and huge for us, and set­ting the tone.”

Are­na­do watched his old friend say good­bye with Rock­ies play­ers in the back, lean­ing against a wall, stand­ing next to a row of tele­vi­sion cam­eras. His Cards were 79–77 as of Tues­day after­noon. They won 71 games a year ago. The grass isn’t always greener.

“He’s the yin to my yang in a sense, you know what I mean?” Are­na­do recalled. “So, you know, I love him.”

They grew up togeth­er in the Rock­ies orga­ni­za­tion. They both got mar­ried. They had kids. They went their sep­a­rate ways. Yet they became thick as thieves, as oppo­sites often do. The Beard­ed One even took Are­na­do fly-fish­ing one Jan­u­ary day in 2018.

“We had a cool time,” the St. Louis infield­er said. “It was just cool being in the wilder­ness like that, but (being) how Col­orado was, it was like a 75-degree day, and then by the time we were done, it was like 32 (degrees). Yeah, it was crazy, but it was fun, man. We had a great time going in his old Jeep that he had.”

For a Geor­gia guy, Black­mon fit the Front Range the way eggs fit a break­fast bur­ri­to. His­to­ry will label Black­mon a Coors Field “won­der,” but at the height of his pow­ers, Chuck was Naz­ty every­where. From 2016 to ’19, that “won­der” hit .273 on the road with 55 home runs in 1,269 at-bats.

The Rock­ies’ even more dys­func­tion­al Amer­i­can League cousins, the White Sox, need­ed a right field­er — left-hand­ed, good wheels, all-fields pop — who fit Nazty’s pro­file for most of the last decade. He stuck around. He stuck it out.

“This is where I want to play. This is all I’ve known,” Black­mon said. “I think to go some­where else and hope for the best, I didn’t see the ben­e­fit in leav­ing (this team). … It means a lot more to me to have been suc­cess­ful here and to have made it to the play­offs and to have guys that I’ve seen grow up in this club­house be successful.

“I mean, ulti­mate­ly, that is so much more reward­ing for me than to bounce around. Not to dis­cred­it any­body else who’s cho­sen to leave, but this is one of the few choic­es you get in a game, is where you want to play. And I made that choice to stay here at (the) Col­orado Rockies.”

Are­na­do chose a dif­fer­ent path.

“Did that ‘cho­sen to leave’ com­ment hit you fun­ny at all?” I asked the for­mer Rock­ies slugger.

“Not in any way,” Are­na­do replied. “No, I think, when I heard him say that, I’m just — I’m hap­py for Char­lie. This is Charlie’s road, and this is Charlie’s sto­ry. And he’s had an amaz­ing sto­ry, an amaz­ing career. He chose his career, his path. I’ve obvi­ous­ly cho­sen mine. And we’re both proud of each one of them.

“So, I mean, that’s the only thing I can real­ly say. But Charlie’s been a ter­rif­ic Rock­ie. I hope they retire his num­ber. I would like to come back for that. That would be pret­ty cool. He deserves it.”

He does. They will. When Black­mon retires, the mold retires with him.

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