Rockies longtime player Charlie Blackmon takes a final curtain call before his retirement

DENVER (AP) — Charlie Blackmon trotted out to center field all alone and stood above the giant No. 19 that was etched into the grass at Coors Field.

The longtime Colorado Rockies player known for his bushy beard tipped his cap to the cheering fans one last time on Sunday before a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

It was Charlie Blackmon Day at the ballpark as the four-time All-Star waved goodbye to the game after 14 seasons with the Rockies, the only team he's ever known. Blackmon was back in a familiar spot on the lineup card, too — starting in center field and batting leadoff. This was the first time he's been in center in six years.

“Literally, the best teammate I’ve ever had,” third baseman Ryan McMahon said. “He's the most unselfish person I’ve been around. The total pro’s pro.”

A second-round draft pick of the Rockies in 2008, Blackmon blossomed into one of just 50 players in major league history to amass more than 1,800 hits, 325 doubles, 225 home runs, 65 triples and 800 RBIs. He was the NL batting champion in 2017 when he hit .331. He leaves as the franchise's leader in triples (68) and second behind Hall of Famer Todd Helton in games (1,624), runs (996), doubles (334) and total bases (2,956).

Blackmon long has been a fan favorite — along with his catchy walk-up song, “Your Love,” by The Outfield, which never failed to get the crowd singing along. Not only that, but his determined play earned respect from dugout to dugout.

“For me, he’s everything I would want in a baseball player — outside of that big, old, ugly beard,” cracked Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, whose playoff-bound team closed out the regular season with a 2-1 win. “You look at the last, call it 10 to 12 years, he’s one of probably my top five players I’ve enjoyed watching play.”

This sunny afternoon was all about Blackmon. His wife, Ashley, and two young kids, Josie and Wyatt, joined him on the field for a pregame ceremony, where he was presented with a plaque. He also received a Toyota truck that had been perched on top of a sign in left field. His kids each threw a pitch to him.

“The organization’s done a really good job, just far exceeded expectations of celebrating the week and the moment,” said Blackmon, who finished his career hitting .293 with 227 homers and 801 RBIs. “It’s just been really incredible for me and my family.”

On the way into the park, a fan held up a sign that read, “Let Chuck pitch.” That didn't happen and wasn't in the plans, manager Bud Black said before the game. He asked Blackmon if he wanted to carry out the lineup card to the umpires, but Blackmon politely declined.

After all, he had a game to get prepare for.

Black did have a emotional meeting with Blackmon in his office before first pitch.

“We hugged,” Black said. “And then we sort of pulled away, and we smiled at each other and said: ‘Hey, I’m going to see you again. This is not it.’”

Blackmon announced his decision to retire last Monday. He's expected to remain with the organization in a non-playing role.

Translation: He will still be around come spring training.

“We'll be like: ‘Hey, Charlie, you’re on field four. You’ve got the outfielders,'" Black joked.

Initially, Blackmon balked at taking the field by himself for the start of the game. He doesn't need — or crave — being the center of attention.

“I go, ‘Chuck, you’re going to run out to center, but everybody’s not going to go out there with you,’” Black recounted. “He goes, ‘How long am I going to be out there by myself?’ I'm like, ‘20, 30 seconds maybe.’ He goes, ‘OK, but not any longer than that."

Blackmon took the field to applause and the playing of “Centerfield” by John Fogerty. His teammates — and the Dodgers — clapped for him on the top rail of the dugout. He played the first inning in center before moving over to right for the second.

“The way I play this game," McMahon said, “it’s all based off things I’ve learned from him.”

Blackmon singled up the middle in the third inning and was subbed out for a pinch runner. He received another ovation from the fans.

“It was really cool to end on a hit,” Blackmon said. “I don’t think you could ever get tired of that feeling of getting a hit. One last time getting to savor it on the way out was really great."

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

Retiring Colorado Rockies outfielder Charlie Blackmon, right, thanks fans alongside wife Ashley and children Josie and Wyatt during the team's ceremonial walk around the field following a loss in the season finale, Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Colorado Rockies' Charlie Blackmon, right, hugs first base coach Ronnie Gideon (53) after hitting a single in his final at-bat in the third inning of a baseball game againstt he Los Angeles Dodgers, Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Colorado Rockies' Charlie Blackmon heads up the first base line after singling in his final at-bat off Los Angeles Dodgers relief pitcher Landon Knack in the third inning of a baseball game Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Colorado Rockies pinch-runner Jordan Beck, front, hugs Charlie Blackmon as he is replaced on first base after his single in his final at-bat in the third inning of a baseball game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Colorado Rockies' Charlie Blackmon heads to the dugout after he was replaced by a pinch-runner following his single in his final at-bat in the third inning of a baseball game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Colorado Rockies' Charlie Blackmon, third from left, carries his 2-year-old son, Wyatt, while walking with his wife, Ashley, and 3-year-old daughter, Josie, during the team's ceremonial walk around the field to acknowledge fans following a loss in the team's season finale, Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Retiring Colorado Rockies outfielder Charlie Blackmon, left, is hugged by his 3-year-old daughter Josie, right, during the team's ceremonial walk around the field to acknowledge fans following a baseball game loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers, Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Colorado Rockies center fielder Charlie Blackmon, center, greets, from front left to right, general manager Bill Schmidt, manager Bub Black and team co-owner Dick Monfort while Blackmon's wife, Ashley, looks on with their children, 3-year-old Josie and 2-year-old Wyatt, during a ceremony to mark his retirement after 14 seasons as a member of the team before a baseball game against thee Los Angeles Dodgers, Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Colorado Rockies center fielder Charlie Blackmon, center, holds his 3-year-old daughter Josie, while his 2-year-old son Wyatt, sits on the hood of a pickup truck given to Blackmon during a ceremony to mark his retirement after 14 seasons as a member of the team before a baseball game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Colorado Rockies center fielder Charlie Blackmon acknowledges the crowd as he takes the field in the first inning of a baseball game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kris Kristofferson, a Rhodes scholar with a deft writing style and rough charisma who became a country music superstar and A-list Hollywood actor, has died.

Kristofferson died at his home on Maui, Hawaii on Saturday, family spokeswoman Ebie McFarland said in an email. He was 88.

McFarland said Kristofferson died peacefully, surrounded by his family. No cause was given. He was 88.

Starting in the late 1960s, the Brownsville, Texas native wrote such classics standards as “Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down,” “Help Me Make it Through the Night,” "For the Good Times" and "Me and Bobby McGee." Kristofferson was a singer himself, but many of his songs were best known as performed by others, whether Ray Price crooning “For the Good Times” or Janis Joplin belting out “Me and Bobby McGee.”

He starred opposite Ellen Burstyn in director Martin Scorsese's 1974 film “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” starred opposite Barbra Streisand in the 1976 “A Star Is Born,” and acted alongside Wesley Snipes in Marvel’s “Blade” in 1998.

Kristofferson, who could recite William Blake from memory, wove intricate folk music lyrics about loneliness and tender romance into popular country music. With his long hair and bell-bottomed slacks and counterculture songs influenced by Bob Dylan, he represented a new breed of country songwriters along with such peers as Willie Nelson, John Prine and Tom T. Hall.

"There's no better songwriter alive than Kris Kristofferson," Nelson said during a November 2009 award ceremony for Kristofferson held by BMI. “Everything he writes is a standard and we're all just going to have to live with that.”

Kristofferson retired from performing and recording in 2021, making only occasional guest appearances on stage, including a performance with Roseanne Cash at Nelson's 90th birthday celebration at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles in 2023. The two sang a song Kristofferson wrote and Nelson — one of the great interpreters of his work — recorded the best-known version of.

Nelson and Kristofferson would join forces with Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings to create the country supergroup “The Highwaymen” starting in the mid-1980s.

Kristofferson was a Golden Gloves boxer and football player in college, received a master’s degree in English from Merton College at the University of Oxford in England and turned down an appointment to teach at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, to pursue songwriting in Nashville. Hoping to break into the industry, he worked as a part-time janitor at Columbia Records’ Music Row studio in 1966 when Dylan recorded tracks for the seminal “Blonde on Blonde” double album.

At times, the legend of Kristofferson was larger than real life. Cash liked to tell a mostly exaggerated story of how Kristofferson, a former U.S. Army pilot, landed a helicopter on Cash’s lawn to give him a tape of “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” with a beer in one hand. Over the years in interviews, Kristofferson said with all respect to Cash, while he did land a helicopter at Cash’s house, the Man in Black wasn’t even home at the time, the demo tape was a song that no one ever actually cut and he certainly couldn’t fly a helicopter holding a beer.

In a 2006 interview with The Associated Press, he said he might not have had a career without Cash.

“Shaking his hand when I was still in the Army backstage at the Grand Ole Opry was the moment I’d decided I’d come back,” Kristofferson said. “It was electric. He kind of took me under his wing before he cut any of my songs. He cut my first record that was record of the year. He put me on stage the first time.”

One of his most recorded songs, “Me and Bobby McGee,” was written based on a recommendation from Monument Records founder Fred Foster. Foster had a song title in his head called “Me and Bobby McKee,” named after a female secretary in his building. Kristofferson said in an interview in the magazine, “Performing Songwriter,” that he was inspired to write the lyrics about a man and woman on the road together after watching the Frederico Fellini film, “La Strada.”

Joplin, who had a close relationship with Kristofferson, changed the lyrics to make Bobby McGee a man and cut her version just days before she died in 1970 from a drug overdose. The recording became a posthumous No. 1 hit for Joplin.

Hits that Kristofferson recorded include “Why Me,” “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do),” “Watch Closely Now,” “Desperados Waiting for a Train,” “A Song I’d Like to Sing” and “Jesus Was a Capricorn.”

In 1973, he married fellow songwriter Rita Coolidge and together they had a successful duet career that earned them two Grammy awards. They divorced in 1980.

The formation of the Highwaymen, with Nelson, Cash and Jennings, was another pivotal point in his career as a performer.

“I think I was different from the other guys in that I came in it as a fan of all of them,” Kristofferson told The Associated Press in 2005. “I had a respect for them when I was still in the Army. When I went to Nashville they were like major heroes of mine because they were people who took the music seriously. To be not only recorded by them but to be friends with them and to work side by side was just a little unreal. It was like seeing your face on Mount Rushmore.”

The group put out just three albums between 1985 and 1995 before the singers returned to their solo careers. Jennings died in 2002 and Cash died a year later. Kristofferson said in 2005 that there was some talk about reforming the group with other artists, such as George Jones or Hank Williams Jr., but Kristofferson said it wouldn’t have been the same.

“When I look back now — I know I hear Willie say it was the best time of his life,” Kristofferson said in 2005. “For me, I wish I was more aware how short of a time it would be. It was several years, but it was still like the blink of an eye. I wish I would have cherished each moment.”

His sharp-tongued political lyrics sometimes hurt his popularity, especially in the late 1980s. His 1989 album, “Third World Warrior” was focused on Central America and what United States policy had wrought there, but critics and fans weren’t excited about the overtly political songs.

He said during a 1995 interview with The Associated Press he remembered a woman complaining about one of the songs that began with killing babies in the name of freedom.

“And I said, ‘Well, what made you mad — the fact that I was saying it or the fact that we’re doing it? To me, they were getting mad at me ’cause I was telling them what was going on.”

As the son of an Air Force General, he enlisted in the Army in the 1960s because it was expected of him.

“I was in ROTC in college, and it was just taken for granted in my family that I’d do my service,” he said in a 2006 AP interview. “From my background and the generation I came up in, honor and serving your country were just taken for granted. So, later, when you come to question some of the things being done in your name, it was particularly painful.”

Hollywood may have saved his music career. He still got exposure through his film and television appearances even when he couldn’t afford to tour with a full band.

Kristofferson’s first role was in Dennis Hopper’s “The Last Movie,” in 1971.

He had a fondness for Westerns, and would use his gravelly voice to play attractive, stoic leading men. He was Burstyn's ruggedly handsome love interest in “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” and a tragic rock star in a rocky relationship with Streisand in “A Star Is Born,” a role echoed by Bradley Cooper in the 2018 remake.

He was the young title outlaw in director Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid," a truck driver for the same director in 1978’s “Convoy," and a corrupt sheriff in director John Sayles' 1996, “Lone Star.” He also starred in one of Hollywood biggest financial flops, “Heaven’s Gate,” a 1980 Western that ran tens of millions of dollars over budget.

And in a rare appearance in a superhero movie, he played the mentor of Snipes' vampire hunter in “Blade.”

He described in a 2006 Associated Press interview how he got his first acting gigs when he performed in Los Angeles.

“It just happened that my first professional gig was at the Troubadour in L.A. opening for Linda Rondstadt,” Kristofferson said. “Robert Hilburn (Los Angeles Times music critic) wrote a fantastic review and the concert was held over for a week,” Kristofferson said. “There were a bunch of movie people coming in there, and I started getting film offers with no experience. Of course, I had no experience performing either.”

AP National Writer Hillel Italie contributed to this report.

FILE - Producer Jon Peters, from left, Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson appear at a preview of the film, "A Star is Born," in Dec. 23, 1976, in New York. Kristofferson, a Rhodes scholar with a deft writing style and rough charisma who became a country music superstar and A-list Hollywood actor, has died Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Suzanne Vlamis, File)

FILE - Kris Kristofferson poses for a portrait in Nashville, Tenn., Aug. 15, 1995. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)

FILE - Country stars Johnny Cash, left and Kris Kristofferson sing during the Country Music Awards in Nashville, Tenn., Oct. 1983. Kristofferson, a Rhodes scholar with a deft writing style and rough charisma who became a country music superstar and A-list Hollywood actor, has died Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - Kris Kristofferson performs in concert at The American Music Theatre, April 12, 2019, in Lancaster, Pa. (Photo by Owen Sweeney/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - Kris Kristofferson performs on stage in August 1973. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - Kris Kristofferson performs at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, June 13, 2010, in Manchester, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)

FILE - Actor Kris Kristofferson walks down the red carpet during the premiere for his new movie "Dreamer," Oct. 9, 2005, in the Westwood section of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ric Francis, File)