It’s been a rough year for Colorado Rockies fans. Not only will their team finish its seventh straight season without a playoff appearance, but they’ve also lost a beloved beer vendor in the Coors Field bleachers.
Brent Doeden – known as “Captain Earthman” by thirsty Rockies fans – has served as a beer vendor at Coors Field since the Rockies joined Major League Baseball in 1993. Known for his wild personality, hair, and outfits, Captain Earthman was a fan favorite for generations of baseball fans. But now, in the final days of the season, Doeden is at home battling terminal brain cancer.
The Denver Post wrote about Doeden earlier this month in a piece filled with stories about his time serving countless Rockies fans. It also revealed how the two grade-IV glloblastoma multiforme (GBM) brain tumors cut short his season when they impacted his memory – one day he called his wife, Becky Scharfenberg, and said he didn’t know where he was.
Becky Scharfenberg thought her husband was having a stroke when he began saying strange things that day. “Things that were stranger than usual for him, because he often says some pretty strange things!” Scharfenberg joked from the waiting room of Good Samaritan Medical Center, where Doeden was undergoing a follow-up biopsy a week after his diagnosis.
The suddenness of the diagnosis is highlighted in a Mashable story that chronicles Doeden’s legacy among Rockies fans as well as his family’s fight to extend his life.
Doctors discovered a tumor on 60-year-old Brent’s brain stem on the last day of August. They told Becky it’s inoperable, but in a week Brent will start chemotherapy and radiation treatment. The idea is to stop the tumor’s growth.
“If we can hinder the growth,” Becky says, “I get to keep my husband past January.”
Doeden’s family set up a GoFundMe page – Parts for Earthman’s Spaceship – to help with medical bills and to travel for some concerts before his condition worsens. The page has since been flooded by thousands of dollars in donations from Rockies fans who remember the vendor as a staple of their Denver summers.
It’s a sad story for sure, but Doeden’s story is full of touching moments, including an origin story of his nickname. Because anyone who’s called “Captain Earthman” has to have a good story behind it.
He told The Denver Post’s William Porter in a 2012 article how he acquired his moniker as a teenager, “We’d be hanging out doing dumb things, I’d used to say, ‘If it’s from the Earth, man, I’ll do it.’ That’s where it began.”
Doeden’s GoFundMe campaign has raised more than $14,000 of its $25k goal in 19 days.
(via Mashable)
