Those were the good old days
So long to $2 hot dogs, `iced' cold beer and a rickety stadium
Right next door to the left field entrance to Scottsdale Stadium there's a sign on a building that says, “Scottsdale Technology.”
My mind suddenly raced back to my first Spring Training junket when not only was there no Scottsdale Technology, there was no technology. In fact, Scottsdale Stadium wasn't even the Spring Training home of the Giants. The Chicago Cubs held forth there — the Giants were at Phoenix Stadium where their minor league affiliate played its games.
We stayed at the team hotel — the Caravan Inn. By comparison to the Caravan Inn, Motel Six looks like the Waldorf Astoria. The Caravan Inn was a motel where, if you got upgraded, you got a room that had an electric massage unit in the bed called Magic Fingers. I never used it, but the cockroaches really seemed to enjoy it.
That was in the days when players spent more Spring Training hours in the hotel bar than they did in the batting cage. Big sport for the assembled media was watching our Cy Young candidate pitcher weave his way from the bar to his room while avoiding that big step into the swimming pool. He consistently made it about three out of five nights.
When the Giants took over Scottsdale Stadium as their Spring Training home it was a rather rickety wood walled facility that looked like it might have been built as a high school carpentry class project.
There were no bleachers, nor very much of anything beyond the outfield fences back then. In fact, I'm quite sure if there were no outfield barriers at all, a well stroked ground ball could get all the way to Albuquerque.
There was a throwback kind of folksy feeling at Scottsdale Stadium. A collection of blue-hairs who'd taken up residence in Arizona because it was so good for their asthma; grandkids and grandparents bonding over a game that would become part of the fabric of both their lives; it was beer sold out of a bucket of ice and kids lining up for autographs of their favorite Giant.
The Caravan Inn has long since been razed and its memories — and several martini olives — are now a part of the landscape.
Scottsdale Stadium sits on the same lot but has transformed into a more modern-day ballpark and a far more efficient version of its rickety self. They don't sell beer out of buckets any longer and you can't smell the hot dogs cooking on a grill. There is a double decked bleacher section out in right field, so a well hit ball isn't going any farther than the Cava De Oro tequila sign.
And then there was the Scottsdale weather. As a
born-and-raised San Franciscan growing up in the outer Richmond district where sunshine is only a rumor, I inherently needed the balmy days of Spring Training just to get out of the gray doldrums of a Bay Area winter.
So here I am, with a suitcase full of shorts and tee-shirts and the daily temperature range is from 38 to 63. I'm convinced, it's all an elaborate scheme to make me think that those times of $2 hot dogs, ice cold beer that was literally iced, rickety stadiums and watching our sports heroes take a midnight nosedive into a swimming pool, were the good old days.
The “new” Scottsdale Stadium has the same oldtime feel in a far more comfortable facility. Today's players are way more likely to be found in a training room than a hotel bar. And the biggest and most welcome change as we look ahead to this season — the game of baseball itself.
I think it took today's generation of young people to open the eyes of a game that seemed to be caught in the grasp of its own history. Instant gratification in baseball was a batter
readjusting his gloves before every pitch. It was a pitcher throwing to first base eight times in a row. It was conferences on the mound, lots of scratching of body parts, putting two-thirds of a defense on one side of the field, and games that ran roughly the same length of time as a telethon.
I really wasn't sure how I viewed all these changes until I went to the game Tuesday at Scottsdale Stadium.
Staying through an entire spring training game was always something to be avoided at all possible costs. To begin with, after about an hour everybody whose name you would even recognize from a box score had probably already teed off on the third hole. By the second hour the entire lineup consisted of players wearing numbers only worn by a football tight end and the pitchers were mostly prospects who had Tommy John surgery — last week.
By the third hour the lineups consisted of players whose chances of making the big-league roster were so slim that instead of their name on the jersey it said simply, “occupant.”
The game ended roughly an hour later.
Tuesday's game, played under the new rules, began promptly at 1:05 p.m. — more than 50 players participated for the two teams, there were 12 runs scored in the game. It ended at 3:30 p.m.
A pitch must be thrown within 15 seconds; a batter gets eight seconds to get back in the box. Say goodbye to the shift that turned the game into a strikeout or home run swingfest. The bases are bigger by 4½ inches. A pitcher can only throw over to first base twice per hitter.
There'll be more stolen bases, more line drives up the middle, far less scratching, and most importantly — you'll be home in time to help the kids with their homework.
With due respect for my generation of curmudgeons; beyond the cold weather and a suitcase full of unworn shorts — these are the good old days.