Former Denver Mayor Benjamin Stapleton’s name — which once graced the city’s airport and later an entire neighborhood — has been widely dashed through Denver because of his association with the Ku Klux Klan and its rise to power in the city and state.
He was also known, for a while, for one of the stranger scenes in political — and baseball — history. In his last months in office, the Democratic mayor flung himself face-first in the dirt in front of a crowd of rabid baseball fans. The pitch was thrown by none other than Richard Nixon, the future Republican president.
The story was told with glee in The Denver Post and chronicled years later, shortly after Nixon was sworn in as president, by Chet Nelson, longtime sports editor of the Rocky Mountain News…