A bittersweet memory about a no-hitter and a little boy’s disappointment.

Two of my Colorado grandchildren were headed to Coors Field the other day with their dad and uncle to watch the hapless Rockies try to win one for a change. Did we have any Rockies caps that the six-year-old and four-year-old could wear? My daughter wanted to know.

I knew we did. Her request sent me to the basement, to emotionally fraught territory. Down there sits a box — one of many, actually — that holds memories unbearably bitter and sweet.

Our family’s No. 1 Rockies fan, my son Jeffrey David, came naturally to his love of all things purple. Didn’t he, as a 5-year-old, have a ticket to the Rockies’ first-ever night game on April 12, 1993, which unfortunately became the brand-new franchise’s first-ever rainout?

Jeffrey loved his Rockies, and when my employer bought season tickets that often went to staff members, we eagerly took advantage of those outfield seats in the Colorado sunshine. He and his twin sister ate it up, and the company largesse gave us a treat we couldn’t have afforded.

When he was old enough, he played as much youth league ball as our growing family’s schedule allowed, amassing a collection of caps from each team. But his favorites were his Rockies caps. One that I found in that basement box was so faded that it appeared the Rockies’ colors were gray and lavender.

I climbed the basement stairs with three one-size-fits-all youth caps for the grandkids, including the gray one. I needed only two, and I wasn’t sure Joseph or Lydia would want to wear the old decrepit one. The other two were in much better shape, but they had long-ago Rockies’ signatures on the underside of the bills, so they were collectors’ items of sorts. I didn’t recognize the half-dozen scrawls inside one cap. I certainly did recognize the single autograph on the other. Ellis Burks. The memory it conjures is a sweet one. So why are there tears in my eyes as I type this?

We were excited to have scored tickets for a night game, September 17, 1996, at Coors Field, with the Rockies hosting the Los Angeles Dodgers and their Japanese phenom, pitcher Hideo Nomo. Nomo had moved permanently from the Japanese leagues to Major League Baseball the previous season, winning NL Rookie of the Year and All-Star honors with the Dodgers.

Meanwhile, Ellis Burks was having the season of his career, hitting .344 at the time and rapping two hits in the All-Star game; he would come in third in National League MVP balloting. Jeffrey probably didn’t know any of that. What he did know was that Burks was one of the Rockies’ power-hitting Blake Street Bombers and that the outfielder had become his hero that night by stepping out of the dugout during a two-hour pregame rain delay to sign autographs for the fans, including my son.

As the game progressed — late into the night for an eight-year-old — the words “no-hitter” started to be whispered around. My brother-in-law, Duncan, started to get excited, and we were able to move down from the (literally) mile-high nosebleed section to seats quite close to the field because so many fans had left during the delay. Jeffrey, being a childishly unsophisticated but fiercely loyal baseball fan, couldn’t understand why so many Rockies boosters, including his beloved Uncle Duncan, were joining the cheering of the Japanese Dodgers fans as Nomo got ever closer to the final out in the bottom of the ninth. The pure baseball fans wanted to see history happen in batter-friendly Coors Field, where a no-hitter was considered almost an impossibility. Little Jeffrey, he just wanted to see his Rockies win. With two outs, hero Ellis Burks came to the plate — the Rockies’ and Jeffrey’s last hope. He struck out swinging. The blow was too much for poor exhausted Jeffrey, and he dissolved into tears. I can’t look at that autographed cap without that memory of precious innocence being chipped away a little by the realities of life and sports.

I hope my memories are more or less accurate. I’ve had to check the details against internet sources because the other two people who shared them are gone. Yeah, my athletic, apparently healthy brother-in-law died suddenly of an unexplained heart arrhythmia when he was 33. And Jeffrey, my sweet, sports-obsessed Jeffrey, died almost a year and a half ago at age 36 after his pickup rolled off a cliff when he was driving to the mountain home he was building for a client.

I left the Ellis Burks cap at home for safekeeping. Yes, the memories would stay with me, even if the cap were lost. But still.