Play Ball

The Mesa Historical Museum’s collection of baseball artifacts and photographs relating to the history of spring training of Arizona continues to expand as part of an ongoing exhibit. But its project leader said the collection needs to keep moving forward so it can have its own museum.

The exhibit, “Play Ball: The Cactus League Experience,” is nearing its third year and is in its third phase of researching and identifying artifacts, vintage photographs and personal stories for its archives relating to spring training in the state. Arizona has a spring training history reaching back more than 80 years with the Detroit Tigers becoming the first Major League team to train in Arizona at Riverview Park in Phoenix in 1929. (more…)

More than 400 pieces of baseball memorabilia once inside Scottsdale’s famed Pink Pony Steakhouse and Saloon will be on the auction block Saturday, and a local historical organization has been given up to $5,000 to spend on items relating to the history of spring training in Arizona.

The auction, which begins 11 a.m. Saturday at the Antique Centre, 2012 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale, is the second and last of two auctions that feature items from the 60-year-old restaurant that once was called “The Best Baseball Bar in America.” (more…)

When Andre Dawson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, he became the 68th Cactus Leaguer to join the elite group.

Andre Dawson spent 21 years in the big leagues and amassed 2,774 hits, 438 home runs, 1,591 RBI and 314 stolen bases. He was an eight-time all-star and won the National League MVP Award in 1987 for the last place Chicago Cubs. Dawson and another Cub, Ernie Banks, are the only players to win the award while playing for a last place team. Dawson and Banks are in a small group of Hall-of-Famers who never played in a World Series. They are also members the Cactus League Hall-of-Famers club which includes 68 players, managers, owners and umpires. (more…)

Arizona has its share of frontier ghost towns. Baseball too has its deserted reminders of the past. In Chandler, Compadre Stadium sits empty and in decay where a once thriving Cactus League park hosted the Milwaukee Brewers. (more…)

Glendale hits a home run with Camelback Ranch, the city’s new spring training home for the Chicago White Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers. Experience the excitement of Opening Day as White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf and Dodger’s owner Frank McCourt explain the synergy between the teams and how they worked with the city to make the stadium a reality for baseball fans. (more…)

For more than one hundred years, journalists reporting for the Arizona Republic, and before that the Phoenix Gazette, have been covering the story of professional baseball in Arizona. When Horace Stoneham and Bill Veeck gave birth to the Cactus League in the 1940’s, the writers and photographers of the paper were there. And now thanks to a unique research partnership with the Arizona Republic and the Peoria Diamond Club, future generations of baseball fans will be able to relive those moments through stories and images captured as spring training news was being made. (more…)

As ASU prepares for the 2010 NCAA Baseball Regionals, it is hard to imagine the days when the school was known as Tempe State Teachers College and the baseball program was still scheduling games against local high schools. They have come a long way.

The school’s first baseball program began in 1907 when the college was known as Tempe Normal School. They compiled a 7-2 record for coach Fred Ayer who was also the school’s athletic director and the team’s pitching star. Their opponents were Mesa High (3-0); Phoenix Indian School (1-1); and the University of Arizona (3-1). (more…)

Developer Del Webb brought signature building projects and new home developments to Arizona in the boom years following World War II, but he also brought the New York Yankees to train in Phoenix in 1951. For the past three years, the Play Ball team has been working to contact anyone with a connection to his Arizona baseball story. Webb had no children so finding a living relative able to share the history has been impossible. But recently, thanks to a lead provided by new volunteer Jon Rosenthal, contact has been made to people in Sun City with information about Webb’s Yankees and a season when Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio warmed up in the Arizona sun before winning another World Series for the storied franchise later that year.

Kids who attend a special Kids Club event at CityCenter of CityNorth on June 17 will be treated to free baseball cards and a special magazine about the history of baseball cards donated by two of the biggest names in the game, Topps and the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Topps, the official baseball card manufacturer of Major League Baseball, donated packs of its Topps Attax baseball card game, and the Hall of Fame gave copies of its member magazine, “Memories and Dreams,” dedicated to the history of baseball cards. (more…)

Visitors to the new, upscale retail and dining experience known as CityCenter of CityNorth in northeast Phoenix can get their spring training baseball fix from a series of banners that are now up along High Street. (more…)