BASEBALL: Spring Ritual Is Enduring Pastime

Spitting sunflower seeds between his knees, Reggie Jackson was sitting in the bullpen, signing autographs for vacationing fans and giving business advice to former teammate Doug DeCinces.

Robin Yount was outside the batting cage with a couple of baby-faced minor league prospects, showing off his latest batting stance.

That Cloudless Day

Later that day, young sluggers Jose Canseco and Will Clark posed for an awe-struck 12-year-old photographer, while Chili Davis regaled his teammates with a theatrical account of his previous day’s inside-the-park home run.

Since that cloudless day in March, 1987, Reggie has retired. DeCinces is playing in Japan. Clark has made his first playoff appearance. And Davis has been traded from the San Francisco Giants to the California Angels, where he’ll start in right field--once Reggie’s domain.

The uniforms change and old champions are replaced by new contenders, but travelers in love with the game claim baseball is a sport of continual renewal. That’s what makes the game such an enduring pleasure--and if you’re a fan, the best place to see the new season unfold is right here, at spring training.

From April through October, baseball is big-time entertainment, operating out of cavernous stadiums where, if you sit around the infield, you need binoculars to see who’s in the bullpen.

Casual Atmosphere

But here, where the exhibition season lasts from the end of February into the first week of April, baseball is still a game.

Ballparks are so small that if Angels manager Gene Mauch gets into an argument with the plate umpire, you can hear the colorful insults all the way up in the cheap seats. The atmosphere is so casual that if you wait till the players finish running wind sprints after the game, you can get an autograph from virtually anyone--even the biggest stars.

Most major league clubs train in Florida, playing in what’s known as the Grapefruit League.

But eight teams spend each spring playing in Arizona’s Cactus League (counting the Angels, who split time between Mesa and Palm Springs). The majority of squads are based in the Phoenix area, which means that you can stay here or in a suburb and drive to one of five ballparks, each no more than 30 minutes away.

The Cleveland Indians are down the road in Tucson, a scenic two-hour drive south, and the San Diego Padres are in Yuma a four-hour trip west.

Each club makes its home in a distinctive park. My wife is a loyal Milwaukee Brewers fan, so we spend much of our time at the Brewers’ Compadre Stadium in Chandler, a booming new suburb 30 minutes southeast of Phoenix.

The trip to the park gives you a sense of Phoenix’s amazing growth. When the ballpark opened three years ago, the last few miles of the drive were on bumpy dirt roads past acres of farmland and pastures full of cows and horses. Now most--but not all--of the streets are paved, and subdivisions are beginning to fill in much of the land.

Pennant Predictions

If you want to hear boisterous fans, go to the Chicago Cubs’ Hohokam Park in Mesa where you can see legendary Cubs broadcaster Harry Carey sunning himself in the box seats, offering unsolicited pennant predictions to anyone who’ll listen.

You’ll find plenty of engaging characters. We sat with an impulsive Chicago insurance salesman who’d ditched all his appointments and headed for Arizona; he sheepishly admitted that he’d called his wife from the airport, claiming he was leaving on a sudden business trip.

If it’s autographs you want, try the San Francisco Giants park in Scottsdale or stately old Phoenix Municipal Stadium, home of the Oakland Athletics, both of which offer the easiest opportunities to approach players as they reach the field.

Though kids are the noisiest autograph hunters, you’ll see plenty of adults with pens and programs at the ready--my wife once muscled her way through a pack of 12-year-olds to get to Brewers star Paul Molitor.

That’s the delight of spring training--it’s baseball’s folksy version of a Broadway dress rehearsal.

At the start of a Brewers game last year, we noticed that Manager Tom Trebelhorn was missing from his seat at the end of the dugout. Finally, at the end of the second inning, he casually walked past the stands and onto the field, stopping to chat with his first-base coach and the plate umpire.

A fan near us asked the first-base coach where Trebelhorn had been.

“He overslept,” the coach answered with a grin. By the fifth inning, Trebelhorn was so involved in the game that he nearly got thrown out after rushing onto the field to argue a close call.

Performance Counts

That’s the spirit of spring training--the games don’t mean anything, but they mean everything. Sure, the statistics don’t count, but everyone’s performance matters plenty, especially for young players fighting for a place on the roster or veterans trying to hang on for one last season.

You don’t see anyone doing the Wave here. The freckled ball boy, when he cleanly fields a wicked foul grounder, gets just as much appreciative applause as the Angels’ Wally Joyner after a lead-off triple. For baseball fans, spring is the time of endless possibility: Maybe this will be the year that the Cubs win the pennant or the Indians become respectable.

It’s also a place to discover budding superstars. There’s always a clump of fans leaning over the third-base guard rail, studying some new rookie phenomenon.

On our first Cactus League trip we saw a young Angels’ rookie, Mike Witt, dominate the Mariners; he’s now the team’s pitching ace. Two years ago we discovered Brewers’ slugger Rob Deer after he smashed a home run over the scoreboard at Diablo Stadium (he went on to hit 33 that year).

Last spring an old codger, his face browned by the sun, pointed out a muscular, clean-cut rookie waiting his turn in the batting cage.

“His name’s Mark McGwire,” the man said, shading his eyes. “And he can hit ‘em.”

The old fan was right. When McGwire stepped into the cage he sent the balls rocketing out of the park, each toward a crowd of savvy kids who’d gathered high up in the left field stands waiting for McGwire to take his cuts. McGwire went on to hit 49 home runs in 1987, a rookie record, and was voted the American League Rookie of the Year.

Hall of Fame Players

Plenty of other thrills await the observant fan. Get to the Giants park early (game time is 1 p.m., but the players are there by 10:30 a.m.) and you might see Hall of Famers Willie McCovey and Willie Mays giving minor leaguers a few batting tips.

Then move over to the railing by the Cubs dugout and listen to pitcher Rick Sutcliffe and catcher Jody Davis reminisce about their favorite off-season hunting trips.

A few other helpful tips: It may only be March, but this is Arizona and it gets hot, so bring plenty of sunscreen. If you want to be surrounded by baseball experts, sit behind home plate--that’s where the scouts congregate.

And plan: You can get seats for many games by arriving early that day. But most Cubs and Giants games, especially weekend ones, are sellouts. So make reservations by calling each ballpark.

Or if you don’t mind paying a small service charge, you can order tickets for virtually all the games (except Angels games in Palm Springs) through Dillard’s, a Phoenix-based retail chain. Call (602) 829-5555.

Don’t worry: If not everyone in the family is a die-hard baseball fan, there’s plenty to do here besides watch the games.

If you like to drive, head up to South Mountain or McDowell Mountain Park for great views of the city. If you’re intrigued by Indian history, don’t miss the Heard Museum of Anthropology and Primitive Art.

And if you’re feeling a bit goofy, try the Hall of Flame Museum, which boasts nearly 100 firefighting vehicles, dating to a Rumsey fire engine that battled (not particularly successfully) the 1871 Chicago Fire.

The more adventurous should take a day trip. If you head north from Phoenix on Interstate 17 you can explore old mining camps (just take the turnoff to Horsethief Basin and Crown King).

Make sure to stop at Sunset Point for a great view of the canyons along the Bradshaw Mountains. Look closely and you can see an old stagecoach trail winding through the hills.

Another alternative is to head south on I-10 to Tucson for an Indians game. On your way back, take a hike through Saguaro National Monument, a gorgeous preserve dotted with stands of saguaro cactus.

Farther north, about halfway to Phoenix, take Arizona 87 north to Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, which houses an old Indian lookout point. Experts say the fortress may have also been used for astronomical observation by the Hohokam tribe, whose name graces the Chicago Cubs ball park here.

Legendary Eatery

That brings us back to baseball--and if you’ve built up an appetite from all that exploring, we’ve got one final suggestion.

No visit to the Cactus League would be complete without a stop at the Pink Pony, a legendary Scottsdale eatery that serves as the after-dark watering hole for baseball managers, scouts, players and fans.

The food’s fine, the prices are right and baseball talk goes on all night. Why wait to read about a big trade in next week’s sports section when, if you’re at the right table, you can probably overhear the details right here.

Much of the time the trade talk is just that--talk. But that’s the fun of spring training--you can immediately test your information.

Last year we overheard a pair of scouts debating the merits of Cubs pitcher Steve Trout. The next day, when I spied him at the ball park signing autographs, I asked about the trade rumors.

He wagged his head and smiled. “Geez, does everybody want to trade me?”

By mid-season Trout was gone. Now he’s with the Seattle Mariners. They also train here, in nearby Tempe. So stop by Diablo Stadium, where you can see him working up a sweat in the bullpen.

Trout’s uniform has changed but he plays the same game, which resumes its lazy rhythms every spring under the hot Arizona sun.