This is where the Seattle Mariners “play” their spring games, where every new line-up card brims with the promise of the franchise’s first halfway successful season, and where I sold beer for a living exactly five years ago right this minute. Hawking cold bullets up and down the gently sloping…
When the wickedly popular Chicago Cubs come to the Valley every spring, this ballpark becomes the epicenter of more activity than it can really stand. After all, the address says Mesa. HoHoKam has some charm, but it is in no way charming enough to make up for the March madness…
The Angels have their cleats in two worlds. For the first two weeks of spring training, the club practices and plays exclusively in the Valley, based at the Gene Autry complex on East McKellips. For the second half of March, the squad spends its time exclusively in Palm Springs. So…
?By whatever weird twist of logic, the San Diego Padres do their spring training in Yuma. This is a city of military people and retired people, two groups I don’t fit in with too well. Otherwise, Yuma is a good place to get gasoline on your way back from San…
In spring, Muni is home field for the Oakland Athletics, an American League team that I may never forgive for losing to the Los Angeles Dodgers in last year’s World Series. Still, the A’s probably will be the best team to watch, baseball-wise, during this year’s spring training, if that’s…
You’d think that a ballclub with a name like “Brewers” would play in a place suited for rollicking good times. But Compadre Stadium, the spring field for the Milwaukee baseball team, is located in the wilds of exurban Chandler, Arizona, the national center for overbuilt subdivisions. And, as such, not…
I’m not about to get into the Tucson-Phoenix squabble, which seems to exist only because people in both places need to feel superior to someone, anywhere. It’s boring. Suffice it to say that people in Phoenix believe they’re superior to their counterparts in Tucson because we’ve got several semiprofessional sports…
An obscure zoning case over a west- side garbage dump has turned into a twisted version of David and Goliath, prompting Maricopa County officials to accuse El Mirage of a double-cross that wreaks havoc with the environment. The county is steamed over a deal paving the way for Browning-Ferris Industries…
After cheerfully quoting from the Bible and almost getting his lawyer thrown in jail for contempt, Roger M. Hammond, the television and radio personality Phoenix once knew as “Mr. Fix-It,” was convicted of murder and sentenced to twenty years in an Arkansas jail. A jury in the small town of…
You’ve just spent a hard day squinting at a VDT, your eyes feel like pinballs, your tongue feels like a fish, your car is either in the shop or it’s your don’t-drive-one-in-five day and you are, well, riding the bus. While rumbling along yet another street under construction, you happen…
Current job: Second baseman, Chicago Cubs. Cool because: Has won six straight Gold Gloves. Needs 73 more games at second base to qualify as the all-time leading second baseman in fielding percentage. Lifetime batting average of .284. Resides in Tempe during the off-season because: “When I was with the Phillies,…
Current job: Player-personnel senior adviser, Montreal Expos. Cool because: Hit .279 over fifteen years as a big-leaguer. Former Cubs manager. Scottsdale resident. First spring training: “I came here as a player in 1947 with the New York Giants. The Giants were in Phoenix, and the Cleveland Indians were in Tucson…
Current job: Sports columnist, Chicago Tribune. Cool because: Has covered the Cubs in spring training since 1959. Biggest change in spring training since then: “Well, I’ve just gotten older, that’s all.” Other changes: “There’s more people watching. The Cubs now draw as much for a workout as they used to…
Current jobs: Motivational speaker (thirty to forty appearances a year) and inventor (Big League Chew, bubble gum made to look like chewing tobacco, and Big League Cards, personalized baseball cards for regular people). “My latest invention is called Table to Go, and it’s a combination plate, tray and table. It…
Current jobs: Cubs broadcaster on WGN TV and radio. Budweiser salesman extraordinaire. Cool because: Cub fan, Bud man. Third, fourth, fifth and sixth favorite local restaurants: “I go upstairs to Gregory’s, I go to Don & Charlie’s, I go to the El Chorro across the street from the Mountain Shadows…
Current job: Executive recruiter for Mattel and Hasbro toy companies. Cool because: While working as an usher at Phoenix Municipal Stadium (“I quit my job to go to spring training one year, and I was living with a girl and she said if I didn’t get a job, I’d have…
It’s a freezing winter evening, cold enough so that the streets of this Old Town Tempe neighborhood are devoid of activity. Even the usually omnipresent cats and dogs have either begged entry into living rooms or become icebound in their water dishes. But the musical sounds that are thumping and…
Whatever else you might say about Patriots Square, you can credit it with the overdue arrival of architecture criticism in Phoenix. The monsoons of invective that have buffeted the park and its architect, Ted Alexander, haven’t all sprung from cool and reasoned analysis, but there’s nothing wrong with bloody-fisted emotional…
If the widow of cartoonist Al Capp married actor Al Pacino, she’d be Mrs. Al Capp Pacino. Yes, everyone, it’s an Italian coffee joke. I know you people just love ’em. Speaking of coffee, it just so happens I’m not drinking any. I’m nervous enough already, thanks. I’m nervous because…
Rebuffed in previous attempts at closing down adult bookstores and movie theatres, Representative Leslie Whiting Johnson has reversed field and now says she wants to protect their customers. So the Mesa Republican is sponsoring legislation that would require testing of the machinery that shows dirty movies. Specifically, she wants the…
Two long-time friends recently decided to get married after seventeen years of dating. How this could happen in 1989 America is beyond me. But it did. The wedding was to be a major northern California to-do, attended by some two hundred of the bride and groom’s most intimate intimates, many…
An interviewer once asked Vladimir Nabokov: “What are the literary sins for which you could be answerable someday?” And Nabokov replied: “Of having spared in my books too many political fools and intellectual frauds.” I am, each morning, astonished by the Salman Rushdie story. Rushdie has written a virtually unreadable…
