USA TODAY US Edition

A scout and his hotel

Lakey’s love story with Arizona joint spans nearly 40 years

- Bob Nightengal­e Gordon Lakey

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – This eclectic 194-room hotel in Old Town has purple carpet, pink doors and yellow and orange walls.

It has changed names nine times. It has even changed addresses without moving.

Yet one man has managed to find his way back to this same joint every spring for the past 38 years.

Saguaro Scottsdale Hotel: the spring training home for Philadelph­ia Phillies scout Gordon Lakey, 73.

The esteemed scout not only has stayed at this hotel since stumbling upon it parking his car one morning in the spring of 1980 but, if you can believe it, has stayed in the same room every single year.

“I remember a couple of years ago the mayor of Scottsdale sees me, runs after me in the lobby,” Lakey says, “and tells me, ‘I just want to meet somebody who stayed at this hotel longer than I’ve lived.’ ”

Did you tell him you stayed in the same room, too?

“No,” Lakey says. “I didn’t want him to think I’m nuts.”

Lakey opens his door one recent morning to unveil perhaps the most bizarre streak of hotel accommodat­ions in the history of an industry where famil- iarity and brand loyalty are comfort food for employees who spend more days on the road than at home.

It’s a modest-sized room with two double beds, a 30-foot-long desk covered by scouting reports, media guides and a stopwatch, an old-fashioned wall-unit air conditione­r, an entire wall covered by a white curtain but no windows and a sliding glass door leading out to a small patio.

With purple carpeting, of course. “It looks like a funeral home,” Lakey says. “There’s got to be some dead bodies around here somewhere.

“I’ve never even ordered room service because I don’t think they could even find it.”

You wouldn’t know this is a hotel driving by it, a boutique spot tucked into the heart of Old Town Scottsdale, at the foot of the Civic Center, and just

“People don’t have any idea about this hotel. ... But for me, it’s just been such a unique part of my life.”

a five-minute walk to the San Francisco Giants spring training home at Scottsdale Stadium.

“I remember showing (former California Angels general manager) Mike Port where I was staying,” Lakey said, “and he says, ‘ Are you part of the witness protection program?’ Well, Mike Tyson stayed there one night, so come to think about it, maybe there was something to it.”

It started off as a DoubleTree hotel, became a Holiday Inn, switched to the James, the Old Town Inn, the Mondrian Scottsdale, the Saguaro and four other names in between.

“It’s still the only place in the world that changed addresses,” Lakey said, “and didn’t move.”

Indeed, the hotel’s address used to be

7353 E. Indian School Road and now is

4000 Drinkwater Blvd. Then again, Lakey has never changed rooms either, but his room number has switched from

400 to a four-digit number that’s typically used for sixth-floor residences. Only it’s on the ground floor. “I’m the product of a lot of changes in this place,” said Lakey, who looks across at the pool, which used to be two tennis courts. “I remember when I first came here, it was the first time I’ve ever seen white Astroturf. It was the first time I ever had a big-screen TV in my room, too. I used to bring my two English bulldogs here, and they’d swim in the pool.

“Now, you look around here, and it’s certainly not the place for the color blind.”

The only constant to this sea of change has been Lakey, who has scouted for 49 years. But when he checks out of his hotel Thursday morning, he doesn’t know if he’ll be back for Year 50.

Still, he’ll stick to his regular routine at checkout. He’ll put in his reservatio­n for March 1 to April 1, 2019. He’ll fiddle with the exact dates when he knows his schedule or whether he’s still working.

He once figured out that the hotel could store five years’ worth of reservatio­ns, so he kept a revolving reservatio­n. It lasted right up until the time management figured out it wasn’t a sound business plan permitting a man to have the same rate for five years when its room rates are spiking at $419 this weekend.

Lakey should get some kind of bonus for spending nearly three years of his life at this hotel, particular­ly when it was nearly shut down in its early years for serving drinks to underage teens.

“Supposedly, the police posed as kids, and the guy at the door said, ‘Welcome to underaged drinking night,’ ” Lakey said.

“Needless to say, I was not part of the raid.”

Besides, it didn’t affect Lakey considerin­g he doesn’t drink.

For a five-year stretch last decade when it was called the James Hotel, Lakey might have been the only occupant who never set foot in the lobby, which became the hottest bar in Scottsdale.

As Lakey pored over his scouting reports, celebritie­s such as Kevin Bacon and Run-DMC were a few feet away.

This, after all, is a baseball traditiona­list who arrived last month with four suitcases. He still has every Sporting News from 1960 to the mid-’80s, when it stopped printing box scores. He has kept every team’s media guide since 1979 and for years collected every major newspaper’s yearly baseball special section.

Lakey, one of three men who started baseball’s scouting bureau, which just laid off its remaining scouts last week, is indeed a creature of habit. Instead of talking about WAR, exit velocity and spin rates, he says, can’t a man please have box scores in his local newspaper?

Times are changing, and Lakey is trying to cope with it. It was a huge blow when the Pink Pony, baseball’s Cactus League landmark restaurant-bar, was shuttered. Now, Don and Charlie’s, a staple of baseball dining since 1981, where former commission­er Bud Selig still has his own table, is being razed next year for a new hotel.

“It’s really sad to see,” Lakey says. “It was unique to baseball. You’d go to Don and Charlie’s when you want to find baseball people, just like you’d always see Billy (Martin, former Yankees and Athletics manager) at the Pink Pony.

“Billy used to live in an actual trailer outside left field when the A’s trained at Phoenix Muni. He loved it there because he wouldn’t have to walk far to his office after being out all night at the Pink Pony.”

This is where Lakey and his wife, Elsa, raised their two kids, Ryan, 36, and Megan, 31, when they’d come down each year for spring break.

This is where he saw Ken Griffey Jr. hit his first home run at the Seattle Mariners’ old spring training site in Tempe, and he has never forgotten it.

“He played his way onto the team,” Lakey recalls, “right to the Hall of Fame. That was probably the most significan­t moment I saw in spring training.”

While the Valley is now a glittering collection of spring training complexes, hosting half of Major League Baseball’s squads for nearly two months, Lakey remembers when the Cactus League was endangered, consisting of only six teams. Much of the region itself was nearly washed away, hit with a 100-year flood back in 1980, destroying all but two major north-south road throughway­s, leaving Lakey stranded one day at the Milwaukee Brewers’ old complex in Sun City.

“It was built on a dry riverbed,” Lakey says. “I got over there, and you saw players and personnel linked arm in arm to get all of the equipment out of the clubhouse. Later that day, the clubhouse washed off its foundation and down the river.”

Now, here he is 38 years later, getting ready to pack up those four suitcases, his two briefcases, grab his book Leo Durocher: Baseball’s Prodigal Son from the nightstand and leave this hotel for perhaps his final spring training.

He might opt to retire, with his contract expiring after this season. It’s a conversati­on that likely will take place this summer. The Phillies have certainly been loyal to him, as reliable as Lakey’s unlikely desert oasis.

“I still remember the first day I parked here, going to a Giants game, and I thought it was part of the Civic Center,” Lakey said. “Lo and behold, it was a hotel. I immediatel­y switched over to this place, and I never left.

“People don’t have any idea about this hotel. Most don’t even know this place is here. But for me, it’s just been such a unique part of my life.

“I’ll never forget this place. Really, how could I?”

 ?? JOE CAMPOREALE/USA TODAY SPORTS ?? Gordon Lakey has been about the only constant at a Scottsdale, Ariz., hotel that has rebranded several times since he began staying there in 1980.
JOE CAMPOREALE/USA TODAY SPORTS Gordon Lakey has been about the only constant at a Scottsdale, Ariz., hotel that has rebranded several times since he began staying there in 1980.
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 ?? JOE CAMPOREALE/USA TODAY SPORTS ?? Phillies scout Gordon Lakey, 73, has stayed at the Saguaro Hotel in Scottsdale, Ariz., for almost four decades. He’s been among the few constants at an establishm­ent that has rebranded multiple times.
JOE CAMPOREALE/USA TODAY SPORTS Phillies scout Gordon Lakey, 73, has stayed at the Saguaro Hotel in Scottsdale, Ariz., for almost four decades. He’s been among the few constants at an establishm­ent that has rebranded multiple times.

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