Dodger disciple

Each February thereafter, New York Giants players arrived in Phoenix and scattered to various apartments. After practice or a game they might visit restaurants and clubs before retiring to their rooms for the night.

It was functional, though it hardly galvanized a sense of teamwork.

Stoneham was aware of a recent development in Vero Beach, Fla., the spring-training home of one of his most bitter rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers.

“Dodgertown” was a collection of buildings and fields that allowed players to sleep, eat and practice together. Avisit there in 1951 convinced Stoneham that it was the way to go, but he wanted to do it on a grander scale, according to historian Johnson.

“That was the genesis of Francisco Grande,” Johnson said. “But the timing wasn’t quite right, so Stoneham put it on the back burner.”

The time got right in the late 1950s, when the Giants moved to San Francisco and Arizona suddenly became 1,700 miles more convenient.

Stoneham envisioned not just a camp where major- and minor-leaguers would work and play together, but a baseballthemed town with resort, golf course and subdivision. The town never made it to first base, but the complex came together exactly as planned.

Four practice diamonds were carved into the desert, and a small stadium built nearby. But Stoneham also wanted the complex to be a tourist draw. With teams now on the West Coast, baseball had a national reach. Who wouldn’t want to spend a few days amid America’s heroes, bumping into them on the golf course or buying them a beer after dinner?

The hotel started to rise in the seeming middle of nowhere, visible from sev-

Rubbing elbows

Stoneham and his partners, which included singer Pat Boone, also wanted the resort to be a centerpiece of the Desert Carmel community. With the new interstates planned to converge nearby, they thought it would be a home run.

“He saw it as a destination, where tourists could watch a game, play golf and hang out at the pool,” said historian Vascellaro. “And once people saw how great it was to visit, they would want to live here.”

Stoneham’s group, however, had miscalculated. Interstate 8 wound up four miles to the south, and Interstate 10 seven miles to the east. The sleepy town of Casa Grande would remain just that for decades.

Still, Vascellaro said, the population bloomed in February and March as the years went on, the hotel filling with fans when players reported.

“You could have dinner and players would be eating at the next table,” Vascellaro said. “These guys lived here, worked here, played here. Fans had incredible access. About the closest thing now would probably be fantasy camp where you pay thousands of dollars to rub elbows with former players.”

Francisco Grande also benefited from simpler times. There was no Twitter or Facebook, no “TMZ” or “Inside Edition,” no mlb.com or innumerable baseball blogs. Television was still fairly new, so few players were recognizable. Most earned decent but not extravagant salaries, so there was little to divide them from the average fan.

The fact the players lived two to a room in the “barracks,” as a pair of twostory dormlike structures adjacent to the hotel tower were called, lowered any barriers even further.

Days in baseball paradise became routine: Coaches would ascend the observation tower to keep an eye on all four baseball diamonds, and 100-plus players would run through drills. After practice or games, players might hang out at the bar, or relax in the baseball-bat-shaped pool. Some would take a soak in the whirlpool, where a tile mosaic of the Giants logo shimmered on the bottom.

Ghosts of Giants past

The Francisco Grande enjoyed its position as a premiere baseball destination for 20 years. But as spring training evolved and larger, more luxurious complexes were built, the resort would fall into disfavor with the baseball gods.

In 1976, after 40 years as owner of the Giants, Stoneham sold the team to busi-