Diamonds in the Desert : Arizona’s Cactus League Is Where Baseball Fans Catch Spring Training Fever

Good news, everybody. Bill Robinson is managing in Shreveport this year.

I know this because I’ve been five days with the Cactus League in Phoenix and environs, inspecting diamonds of dirt and grass, gazing upon wide skies and distant hills, listening to desert birdcalls and baseball chatter about the famous and the half-forgotten.

On a Thursday morning, I sat in the gorgeous new $7-million Scottsdale Stadium and watched Willie Mays, 60 years old and squeezed into a San Francisco Giants uniform once again, casually snap his mitt to make a catch behind his back.

On Friday at more crowded, less lovely (but nonetheless beloved) HoHoKam Park in Mesa, I sampled a $2 slice of ballpark pizza as Cubs second baseman Ryne Sandberg, recent signatory to a $31-million contract, yawned and stretched before his turn at bat.

On Saturday, I stood under a burst of spring showers in Phoenix Municipal Stadium, home away from home of the Oakland Athletics, as a rainbow rose beyond the center field fence.

For more than 40 years, baseball players and baseball fans have been gathering here for the annual rite of spring training, and they’ll be at it this year until April 2.

“My favorite part of the whole thing is the workouts,” said Mike Haugen, a 47-year-old baseball pilgrim from Bremerton, Wash., who stood in a damp stadium hallway that day, waiting to collect autographs for his grandson. “Every year, I know I’ll be down here.”

The players pass uncluttered hours under the sun, fighting for jobs and feigning nonchalance. The fans watch and loll, talking of matters such as Robinson, a player, coach and manager for two decades, and Shreveport, La., home of a Giants minor league team since 1980. The retired old-timers share bleacher space with depressurizing middle-agers and young families, whose children scramble after home run balls and cling to the dugout tops, pleading for autographs.

“Thanks, man,” said Brandon Hannaman, 13, of Tempe, to Mariners outfielder Ken Griffey Jr. after such a transaction one afternoon at Diablo Stadium in Tempe. “God, he’s a stud,” the boy added, inspecting the scribble.

The most serious fans treat this ritual accordingly: They make reservations three months in advance, perch behind home plate and earnestly question coaches, using first names. The less serious arrive on a few days’ notice and watch what games and workouts they can. There’s plenty of atmosphere to go around, and even though latecomers are sometimes left with costly, cruddy or inconvenient hotel rooms, they seem satisfied.

“I don’t even know what I’m paying for my room. I was reading the sports page the other day, and I just said to myself, ‘What the hell,’ ” said Mel Teulon, watching batting practice on the first day of exhibition games. He had driven 1,800 miles from Swift Current, Saskatchewan, picking up two speeding tickets on the way, and he may have been the most cheerful man in the Tempe ballpark.

This year the Chicago Cubs, San Francisco Giants, Milwaukee Brewers, Oakland Athletics, Seattle Mariners, San Diego Padres, Cleveland Indians and California Angels have training camps in Arizona, most of them in or adjacent to Phoenix. (The rest of the major league teams play in Florida’s Grapefruit League.)

Within about 45 minutes’ drive, one can find home games of the Cubs--who for years have been the hottest ticket in town--the Giants, the Brewers, the Athletics and the Mariners. Consequently, a committed fan can spend a lot of time driving around Phoenix, admiring its red earth, regretting its scores of strip malls and seeking out its ballparks.

Still, this is not paradise with batting gloves. When the Giants and Cleveland Indians started coming to Arizona in 1948, it was a chance for athletes to train in Spartan conditions, warm weather and relative isolation. These days, ticket sales are transacted months in advance, owners and civic officials dicker yearly over team relocations, a retail autograph market burgeons, and scalpers get as much as $50 for a Cubs ticket. The whole thing, some old-timers say, is on the verge of being ruined by big money.

“Because of the sheer volume of people who are coming out now, we’re having to adopt some of the policies you see in big-league parks,” acknowledged David Salow, spring training coordinator for the A’s. “I’ve heard some stories about when the Red Sox trained out here in the 1950s, and you could walk right out on the field and talk to Ted Williams. We don’t let folks walk on the field.”

But no enterprise that offers a free peak at Willie Mays in uniform (employed in an unofficial capacity as an instructor during the spring) is quite ruined yet. Baseball in Arizona merely operates these days on a more complicated equation, equal parts innocence, indolence and commerce.

The news about Bill Robinson and Shreveport, La., came to me in the grandstand of Scottsdale Stadium. My informant was Dubb Ford, 72 years old, usually a resident of Hornersville, Mo., and a fine example of a serious fan.

Ford, a retired rural mail carrier and 40-year Little League coach, inherited Giants fanhood from his father. He has been coming to spring training for 10 years. He and his wife book their accommodations months ahead, buy reserved seats to Giants games and spend hours there chatting with other old-timers.

“If somebody doesn’t show up, you know they died,” said Ford, who wore a bright red jumpsuit.

You find veterans like Ford in the mid-range hotels in Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, Tempe and Chandler, often staying where their favorite teams do. At the Best Western Mezona Motor Hotel on West Main Street in Mesa, the Chicago Cubs take up about half of the place’s 136 rooms. The remainder were reserved before New Year’s Day. If I wanted to stay there next year, the man at the counter said, I should make my reservations this September.

“Spring training today,” said Mesa Convention and Visitors Bureau director Robert Brinton, “is as much fan conditioning as it is player conditioning.”

Brinton, 40, grew up playing hooky to watch Ernie Banks arrive at the ballpark in his spotless Cadillac. These days, Brinton urges a more formal approach: Fans should write their chosen team in the fall, he said, and request notification when the spring schedule is released about Dec. 1.

But every spring, of course, Phoenix is crawling with unconditioned fans--those, for instance, who in mid-March decide to dash over from a neighboring state. Brinton pleads to any Southern Californians with such a notion that they visit midweek, and that they don’t come until hotel reservations have been secured.

He also recommends Seattle Mariners tickets--their games last year drew the smallest crowds among the Phoenix-area teams--and the Cleveland Indians, who play their home games 80 miles away in Tucson and have 9,500 seats to fill. The Padres, play in Yuma, 180 miles southwest, and the Angels, in Palm Springs, are beyond comfortable driving range (although they train in Mesa’s Gene Autry Park through Wednesday).

Beyond those tactics, latecomers can buy tickets from scalpers (usually closer to $15 than to $50) or stick to watching morning workouts, which begin from 9 to 10 a.m. and are usually open to the public and free.

Part of the Cactus League’s attraction, fortunately, is that the stadiums can’t contain all the baseball people and baseball talk. Take the Pink Pony restaurant in Scottsdale on any night in March, for instance.

“These are some of the clubhouse guys of the Chicago Cubs right here,” said Charlie Briley, the Pony’s proprietor, nodding toward a black upholstered booth full of beefy middle-aged men.

Briley spoke from his customary seat at the elbow of the restaurant’s bar, while his wife, Gwen, worked the door. Moments later, a Seattle Mariners announcer stepped up to say hello, followed by Al Forester, who for 35 years has raked the infield of Fenway Park in Boston.

Briley, who will be 77 next month, has run the Pony since 1950. His friends have included Ty Cobb and Ted Williams, neither of them known for his friendliness, and his list of past customers would make an autograph broker blanch. One night about 10 years ago, Briley counted five Hall of Famers in the place.

These days, the restaurant serves more management types and sportswriters than it does ballplayers, but the game’s presence is palpable. Two decades’ worth of commemorative World Series bats hang behind the bar, and half a dozen famous jerseys grace the opposite wall. Roger Angell, baseball writer for The New Yorker magazine, once described the Pony as “the best baseball restaurant in the land”; he is honored with a caricature on the wall, as are dozens of regular customers and stars. Departed friends Billy Martin and Dizzy Dean are visible from Briley’s old seat.

“My wife says I’ll die right on this bar stool here,” said Briley. “I probably will.”

They may be less profound than the scene at the Pony, but there are plenty more cases of baseball-outside-the-ballpark to be discerned around Phoenix this month. One turned up last week at the otherwise unremarkable Bobby McGee’s Conglomeration restaurant in Mesa.

During the height of dinner traffic, a tall, striking man appeared at the door. He stood not far from the dress-code sign barring warm-up suits, and he wore a black warm-up suit.

“Andre!” cried one of the hostesses, and immediately ushered Andre Dawson, star Cubs outfielder, to a preferred table.

“They’re baseball fanatics around here,” Brian Smetana, a recent emigre from Chicago, had affirmed earlier that day. Smetana, 28, is general manager of the Robo Pitch batting cages in Mesa, and reported that he has seen 6- and 7-year-old boys in his cages swinging at pitches traveling 50 and 60 m.p.h.

Many of those kids are attracted to the Robo Pitch machines, which are dressed in uniforms to resemble real pitchers. (“You actually see the knee come up, and the arm lifts, so the timing aspect is there,” said Smetana.) But some nights during spring training, Smetana also sees 22-year-olds with intent looks on their faces. They are minor leaguers, looking to get a few extra licks in.

Even the Scottsdale Center for the Arts, usually more inclined to aesthetics than athletics, until April 19 is exhibiting a show that marries the two.

“Diamonds Are Forever,” organized by the New York State Museum five years ago, underwritten by American Express and overseen in Scottsdale by pin-striped docents, presents images and writings provoked by baseball in America. The display includes a Red Grooms gouache of the Montreal Expos in the rain, a John Updike passage on Ted Williams’ last home run and a Ron Cohen acrylic and oil painting of Willie Mays making his most famous catch, in the 1954 World Series.

I was looking at the last of those when Vince Demmer and John Delamater of Santa Fe, N.M., first-timers at spring training, stepped up. On March 4 they had decided to come, and arrived a few days later.

The day before, they had seen Mays on the field--”His hands are still terrific,” marveled Demmer. Now, seeing him on the canvas and taking in the whole spring training scene, ascendant commercialism notwithstanding, seemed to have reduced them to a more innocent age.

“It’s great,” said Demmer, a 47-year-old builder. “I got five balls in batting practice today.”

GUIDEBOOK

Arizona’s Baseball Spring

Where to stay: Two high-end, well-located hotels are The Buttes (800-843-1986 or 602-225-9000), just uphill from the Seattle Mariners’ Tempe Diablo Stadium, with rates of $175-$205, and the Pointe Hilton on South Mountain in Phoenix (800-876-4683), with double rooms about $250. (Corporate rates are lower.)

In the middle range, the Dobson Ranch Inn Best Western (800-528-1356) has double rooms for about $100, as does the Tempe Holiday Inn (602-968-3451).

The cheapest lodgings, such as the San Jo Motel (602-833-9810) and the Trava-Leers Motel (602-962-8936), both in Mesa, have that Route 66 look and run $35-$40 nightly. More budget hotels can be found on Van Buren Street in Phoenix and Main Street in Mesa.

The Phoenix and Valley of the Sun Convention and Visitors Bureau runs a lodging reservation line: (800) 528-0483.

Where to eat: In Scottsdale, the Coyote Cafe (602-947-7081) offers entrees from $6-$15 and specializes in black bean cakes with sour cream ($4). In Phoenix, Vincent Guerithault on Camelback (602-224-0225) offers main courses from $18.50-$22 (soup and salad extra).

How to get tickets: Most Cactus League teams sell tickets through Dillard’s Box Office (800-638-4253 or 602-678-2222). Seattle and San Francisco tickets are sold through TicketMaster (602-230-9112). Unsold tickets available at the gate.

To order 1993 tickets, write teams at the Arizona ballpark addresses and request information. Be forewarned, however, that some teams will move to different parks next spring. Phoenix-area ballparks: Giants: Scottsdale Stadium, 7402 E. Osborn Road, Scottsdale, Ariz. 85251 (602-990-7972).Tickets, $4-$8; parking, free; hot dogs, $2.25.

Cubs: HoHoKam Park, 1235 N. Center St., Mesa, Ariz. 85201 (602-964-4467). Tickets, $4.50-$9; parking, $4; Chicago dogs, $3.

Brewers: Compadre Stadium, 1425 W. Ocotillo Road, Chandler, Ariz. 85248 (602-895-1200). Tickets, $4-$7.50; parking, $2-$5; hot dogs, $2.50.

A’s: Phoenix Municipal Stadium, 5999 E. Van Buren, Phoenix, Ariz. 85008 (602-392-0074). Tickets, $6-$8; parking, $3; hot dogs, $2.25.

Mariners: Diablo Stadium, 2200 W. Alameda Drive, Tempe, Ariz. 85282 (602-438-8900). Tickets, $5-$8; parking, $3; hot dogs, $2.50.

Outside Phoenix, call the Angels in Palm Springs (619-322-7753), the Indians in Tucson (602-881-5710) and the Padres in Yuma (602-726-6040).

Cactus League Sites Major league spring training camps in the Cactus League. San Diego Padres, Desert Sun Stadium, Yuma Cleveland Indians, Hi Corbett Field, Tucson Milwaukee Brewers, Compadre Stadium, Chandler California Angeles, Gene Autry Park / Mesa (Palm Springs 3 / 20-4 / 1) Chicago Cubs, HohoKam Park, Mesa San Francisco Giants, Scottsdale Stadium, Scottsdale Seattle Mariners, Tempe Diablo Stadium, Tempe Oakland Athietics, Phoenix Municipal Stadium, Phoenix

When You’re Tired of Baseball . . .

Six attractions in the Phoenix area that don’t involve baseball (area code for all telephone numbers below is 602):

Southwestern cuisine. The baseball people seem to favor steakhouses such as the Pink Pony, but greater Phoenix is rich with regional cuisine. I tried the Coyote Cafe in Scottsdale, which, while not related to the much-celebrated restaurant of the same name in Santa Fe, N.M., has a good reputation and reasonable prices. At the more expensive Vincent Guerithault on Camelback, the chef mingles French and Southwestern sensibilites, emerging with results like crabcakes with avocado corn salsa, presented in the outline of a cactus, and duck confit on a bed of Anasazi beans. (For telephone numbers, see Guidebook on opposite page.)

Desert flowers. It is spring in the desert, after all, and heavy rain fell earlier this month. The Desert Botanical Garden (1201 N. Galvin Parkway, Phoenix; 941-1225) includes hundreds of cacti and desert plant species. In addition, there’s a Spring Wildflower Hotline (481-8134) that offers directions to other wildflower sites.

Mall prowling. The four-story Scottsdale Galleria (4343 N. Scottsdale Road) is the area’s newest destination shopping center. Scottsdale Fashion Square, with more than 1 million square feet of retail and restaurant space, is nearby at Scottsdale Road and Camelback. At East Camelback and 24th Street, there’s Biltmore Fashion Park, anchored by I. Magnin and Saks Fifth Avenue, and the Casa Grande Factory Stores mall (exit 194 off I-10), which includes more than 30 manufacturer’s outlets.

Museums. The Heard Museum of American Indian Cultures and Art (22 E. Monte Vista Road, Phoenix; 252-8848) stands a few blocks from the Phoenix Art Museum (1625 N. Central Ave, Phoenix; 257-1222). Elsewhere in town are the Hall of Flame (6101 E. Van Buren St., Phoenix; 275-3473), which holds antique firefighting equipment; the Arizona State University Art Museum (Mill Avenue and 10th Street, Tempe; 965-2787), and a handful of others.

Live Theater. Two productions are running through the end of the month at the Herberger Theater Center, 222 E. Monroe St., Phoenix. “The Heidi Chronicles” is being staged by the Arizona Theatre Company, with tickets running $16-$22. “Eleemosynary” is being staged by the Actors Theatre of Phoenix, with tickets running $11-$20. Performance dates and more information on both shows: 252-8497.

Golf. There are a score of courses in the Phoenix area. Also, the 1992 Standard Register Ping LPGA Tour Event, a major women’s golf tournament, runs from Monday through next Sunday. Tickets cost $10-$70. For more information: 495-4483.