Home base

After years of major-league traveling, Vinny and Samantha finally settle into their Littleton 'castle'

By Lisa Marshall, Special to the Rocky

Originally published 03:00 p.m., May 16, 2008
Updated 07:13 p.m., May 16, 2008

Samantha owns Samantha Castilla Shoe Boutique at 226 Steele St.

Judy DeHaas / The Rocky

Vinny's baseball memorabilia lines the walls of the basement.

Judy Dehaas / The Rocky

The driveway circles a fountain.

Judy DeHaas / The Rocky

Two winding staircases lead up from the bright marble foyer of the home of Vinny and Samantha Castilla. "I've loved everything about it since the day we bought it," Vinny says.

Judy DeHaas / The Rocky

The Castilla boys - Marco, 12, Cristian, 4, and Daulton, 7 - have their own wing in the home, decorated with baseball wallpaper.

Judy DeHaas / The Rocky

Baseball action figures adorn Marco's room.

Judy DeHaas / The Rocky

The kitchen features black granite countertops, Viking double ovens, a six-burner stove and two busy dishwashers.

Judy DeHaas / The Rocky

A family portrait presides over the living room of the Castilla home.

Ask Samantha Castilla to show you her favorite spot in the 12,000-square-foot Littleton chateau she shares with her Colorado Rockies-legend husband Vinny Castilla and you may be surprised at where you end up.

"I'm so thrilled with my new closet. It's my favorite room in the whole house," says Samantha, 38. She's standing barefoot in the spacious, newly refurbished room, complete with a crystal pendant chandelier, a sleek glass case for her handbags, drawers for her jewelry and a towering wall of shoes that even Imelda Marcos would salivate over.

"One-hundred-fifty pairs, and that's including tennies," she says. "I know that because I've counted. Everybody always asks."

The $30,000 closet remodel was a long-awaited indulgence for Samantha, who spent years toting her three sons from town to town - St. Petersburg, Fla., Houston, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., San Diego - as Major League slugger Vinny moved from team to team. They owned houses elsewhere, she says, but the family would return almost monthly to their Colorado "home base" in the gated Polo Reserve community, knowing that someday (when Vinny retired) they could settle there full time.

That day came in the fall of 2006, when the revered third baseman called it quits after a 16-season career that included nine seasons with the Rockies (1993-99, 2004, 2006). Now, 40-year-old Vinny works as a special assistant to the Rockies' general manager, and Samantha is pursuing her own dream: selling high-end shoes via her Cherry Creek boutique, Samantha Castilla - and staying put in the house she's called home since 1998.

"We're big homebodies who just love hanging out here with our kids," says Samantha, a former fashion model who was crowned Miss New Mexico. "We're just now getting to know our neighbors."

Vinny was born in Oaxaca, Mexico, and Samantha grew up in a modest home in Albuquerque with three sisters.

In 1998, after five years of marriage, with a toddler in tow and with Vinny's career with the Rockies soaring (he reportedly made roughly $5 million that year), the couple decided it was time to go house-shopping. It didn't take long.

"As soon as we pulled up to the front, we said: 'This is it. We'll take it,' " Samantha says. "It looked like a castle."

It still does, particularly at the entryway, where two grand winding staircases lead up from a bright marble foyer. Visitors stepping farther into the house discover a home that's at once elegant and remarkably homey for its size, a home that reflects the tastes of five people for whom faith, family and baseball are life's big themes.

Throughout the house are glorious oil-painted family renderings from Baumgartner Portraiture, original canvas portraits of Vinny by famous baseball artist Vernon Wells and loads of prominently placed snapshots featuring the kids' bare baby bottoms and Vinny in his younger, mullet days.

Samantha's affinity for contemporary European decor is evident throughout the house, from the hand-painted ceilings and marbleized columns in the dining room to the winged angels hanging in the hallway to the classy European art in the master bedroom.

But beside the fashionable black king-size bed rests an insight into the couple's real priority: two twin-size mattresses on the floor where Daulton, 7, and Cristian, 4, often come to snuggle closer to Mom and Dad.

Their real rooms - located in a kids' wing near that of their older brother, Marco, 12 - are decorated with dinosaur carpet and, of course, baseball wallpaper. But the family members spend much of their time together in the six- seat home theater downstairs, where Vinny and the kids often sneak off to watch ball games or Animal Planet. Once summer comes, they spend a lot of time in the backyard pool.

"I've loved everything about it since the day we bought it," Vinny says. "Now I get a chance to enjoy it a little more."

Make your way past bags full of Vinny's baseball shoes to the basement and you find a full-size gym and a baseball-memorabilia collection, complete with a beautifully displayed arrangement of wooden bats, photo collages of Vinny on various teams, Silver Slugger Awards and memorable jerseys in glass cases.

"Why do you think I opened a shoe store?" Samantha says with a laugh. "I needed something girly in my life."

Which brings us back to that new closet: Samantha notes that the painstakingly organized wooden shelves and glass cases were not only for her benefit. "He's a shopper, too," she whispers. "When we go visit a new city, it's the first thing we do."

But these days, those visits are much shorter than they used to be - and she's glad.

"We're spoiled now. I don't think there's any way we could leave again," she says. "There's just no place like this house."

The store:

* What: Samantha Castilla, an upscale shoe boutique carrying such exclusive Italian designers as Sigerson Morrison and Alejandro Ingelmo, as well as high-end handbags and jewelry

* Where: 226 Steele St., Cherry Creek

Phone: 303-333-3206

The home:

* What: elegant European- style home in gated Polo Reserve neighborhood

* Built: 1996

* Square footage: 12,000