There is a sense of baseball the way baseball used to be here in Phoenix this weekend. Old school, old names, and grass. And not the kind you smoke.
Phoenix, AZ – I took a walk long before first pitch Friday evening.
I took some notes (I always do), some photos (I always do), and I communed with baseball as I remember it (I always do).
The Buckeyes and Arizona State are playing their three-game series this weekend in one of what’s left of the golden age of spring training and minor league ballparks out West – venerable Phoenix Municipal Stadium – where Willie, and Barry, and Reggie once played. The Golden Age…baseball as it was!
When there was dirt, grass stains, wood bats, stirrup socks, cigar smoke, stale beer smell…and trough urinals. Retro. Just like me.
Willie Mays hit the first home run in Municipal Stadium in a spring training game, against the Cleveland Indians.
Municipal, built in 1963, is the old spring training home of the San Francisco Giants, where Willie Mays hit the first home run in a spring game against the Cleveland Indians. And for years it was home to the Giants’ Triple-A affiliate, the Phoenix Giants, members of what was then the Pacific Coast League. The Coast League still exists, but it’s hardly Pacific Coast anymore with teams located in Memphis, Omaha, El Paso and Round Rock, Texas over the years.
An hour away you can still visit Hi Corbett Field, in Tucson, where once upon a time the Cleveland Indians trained…and you read about it from Russell Schneider in the Plain Dealer. Municipal and Corbett are the only remaining original major league spring training ballparks in Arizona, with teams like the Reds, Guardians, Cubs, White Sox, Giants, Dodgers and Rockies now playing in gleaming state-of-the-art, sterile edifices that reek of rules and over-reach, $17 beer, and arrest for possessing a cigar. Everything is tobacco-free, of course. Hal McCoy couldn’t work.
The old comedian, George Burns, and a Dodgers’ fan, wouldn’t set foot here. Known to smoke as many as a dozen Cuban cigars a day, someone once asked the 93-year-old Burns if his doctors weren’t concerned about his cigar habit.
“My doctors are all dead,” said Burns, pulling out another Cuban.
Of course Municipal Stadium has been renovated and upgraded numerous times since 1964, and the Giants relocated altogether in 1981. Their Triple A team left for nearby Scottsdale in 1992.
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The Oakland A’s moved into Municipal in 1982 following the Giants departure and remained a spring training tenant until 2014, when they left for another new local ballpark. Upon their leaving, Arizona State moved from its old campus ballpark in Tempe, two miles away, to Municipal Stadium and have played their home games here ever since. Prior to 2014, in the 60s ASU played at Municipal for select dates, and Reggie Jackson was the first collegiate player to hit a home run here.
If you’re really into nostalgia, the original light poles at Municipal Stadium were those used at the old Polo Grounds in New York when the original New York Giants played there. When the Polo Grounds were demolished in 1964, following the Mets move to Shea Stadium, tight-fisted Giants owner Horace Stoneham brought the poles to Arizona and had them installed at Municipal Stadium – poles that witnessed Bobby Thompson hit his home run off Ralph Branca in the 1951 National League playoff game.
Publisher/editor Sonny Fulks writes the Big Ten and Buckeyes baseball for Press Pros Magazine.com.
This is where Bobby and Barry Bonds both played, McCovey and Mays, where Juan Marichal once pitched. Where teammate Bob Shaw taught Gaylord Perry the spitter, and Charlie Finley’s A’s played with orange baseballs.
But you’d never know, replaced now by the view of the Papago Mountains and the reminders of Arizona State’s baseball legacy – Sal Bando, Rick Monday, Reggie Jackson, Barry Bonds and Bob Horner, who hit 58 collegiate home runs here. They won the NCAA national title five times, in 1965, ’67, ’69, ’77 and ’81. In fact, ASU beat the Buckeyes for their first title, in 1965, but not here…not on this field.
I enjoy the ghost days of the Golden Age, the days of wood bats, stirrup socks, and before designated hitters…when Mays made those basket catches in center field…the stale beer smell and cigar smoke. Old-style urinals. It’s too damned clean now.
All that’s left is some grass and dirt…light poles.
You take what you can get…and a page of notes.