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.

Compadre Stadium opened in 1986 as the jewel of the Cactus League. The Milwaukee sentinel reported that the ballpark “…is in a postcard setting” and that it is “…vastly superior to the Brewers former home in Sun City.”

On March 7, 1986 6,075 fans saw the Cubs beat the Brewers 7-4 in the opening game at the new 5,000 seat stadium. The ballpark could hold as many as 10,000 because of a new concept—berm or lawn seating. This feature would become a standard feature in every Cactus League park built since. On March 10, 1991, the largest crowd ever at Compadre—10,161—watched the Brewers lose to the Cubs 9-3.

Unfortunately the stadium was caught in between trends. Compadre Stadium, built at a cost of $1.6 million, was designed in the tradition of the old style spring training parks. Compared to old Scottsdale Stadium and the other existing spring training sites, Compadre was a top-notch modern facility. Within two years the future of the Cactus League was in jeopardy. A bidding war with Florida began. Part of the efforts to lure teams included promises of new, elegant facilities. To compete with the Florida threat, new stadiums went up in Scottsdale and Peoria and major renovations were done to Phoenix Municipal Stadium and Tempe Diablo Stadium. Soon Compadre was no longer the jewel of the league; it was now a poor cousin.

Not wanting to be left behind, the Brewers started pushing for improvements. The Maricopa County Stadium District agreed in 1994 to front the money to the City of Chandler for improvements and plans were drawn up for a $9 million renovation. The park had been built and operated by the Compadres, a civic service organization. The deal fell apart when the City of Chandler wouldn’t agree to pay for the operating costs of the stadium during the time it wasn’t being used by the Brewers. Frank Pezzorello, stadium manager at the time, explained the dilemma. “We estimated that it took about $400,000 a year to maintain the facility and the Compadres were not in a position to pick up that expense on a year-round basis and the city wouldn’t do it.”

Without the improvements, the Brewers were lured to Phoenix where they have played at Maryvale Baseball Park since 1998. Maryvale Ballpark was constructed at a cost of $23.3 million.

It was thought at the time that Compadre would be torn down to make room for a resort hotel, but that hasn’t happened. Instead, the field has gone to weeds, the stadium seats and fixtures sold and the park left to decay. A health club now operates in what was once the home clubhouse; the Compadres’ office is still run out of the stadium; and the Ocotillo Community Association parks their vehicles around the ballpark and uses parts of the buildings on the concourse for storage.

From the outside, the park looks like there could be a game going on inside. But once you go through the gates, the illusion is betrayed. The scoreboard and dugouts are covered with graffiti. The press box that used to be frequented by Harry Carey and Bob Uecker is filled with chairs and rubble. It is hot, quiet and deserted; a sad scene indeed. But if you close your eyes and breathe deep, you may be able to conjure up memories of times when Robin Yount roamed the outfield and Paul Molitor banged out base hits. You might even be able to smell the aroma of the one dollar hot dogs that the Boys and Girls Clubs sold after the seventh inning stretch. The ghosts of spring trainings past surly linger in this forgotten corner of Chandler.

Compadre Stadium is located at 4001 South Alma School Road and the gates are open most days during the week.

Rodney Johnson has been researching spring training baseball for Play Ball: The Cactus League Experience for more than two years. He is the President of the Arizona Chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), an official scorer for Arizona Diamondbacks games and covers Arizona baseball for www.examiner.com. Catch his blog here for insights into Arizona’s rich baseball history.

Click here to view the video.

Starting in late June, a team of volunteers from the Peoria service group, known for their good work at Seattle Mariners and San Diego Padres spring training games, will descend on the newspaper’s archives in downtown Phoenix, looking for everything written or photographed about spring training. The materials then will be developed into a special show within the Play Ball exhibition. Due to the various archive methods used by the Republic over the decades, it is hard to predict how long it will take to find stories and photos relevant to Arizona’s spring training history. But organizers hope volunteers will find enough material to share as a first installment when the third season of “Play Ball” opens in February 2011.

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).

And so it went for a couple of decades. On March 19, 1929 the Bulldogs (they didn’t become the Sun Devils until 1946) finally got an opportunity to strut their stuff against a first class opponent—one from the major leagues! The Detroit Tigers were the first big league club to set up spring training camp in Arizona.

Following two weeks of workouts in Phoenix, Tigers Manager Bucky Harris took his troops to the coast for a series of games against PCL teams and the Chicago Cubs. Among those making the trip was catcher Ray Hayworth who would become the grandfather of future Arizona Congressman J.D. Hayworth.

The “B” team, known as the Tiger Cubs was left behind to continue training in Phoenix by playing games against local teams. One of those games came against Tempe State Teachers College. The park was filled to near-capacity with a special admission price of 25 cents.

A caravan of students made the trek from Tempe to Phoenix Riverside Park located at Central Ave. and the Salt River. The Bulldogs were no match for the Tigers as the major leaguers won 14-1. Tiger’s right-hander Lil Stoner pitched a 3-hitter. In a nine year big league career Stoner won at least 10 games three times. In 1929 he finished 3-3 in 25 games for Detroit.

There was one Bulldogs’ player who made an impression. Catcher Lattie Coor threw out three would-be base stealers at second. Coor had been a standout baseball player at Phoenix Union High School. His son, Lattie Jr., would later become president of Arizona State University.

This was the first game in what would be a long line of spring exhibitions that the school would play against major league teams over the years.

The Bulldogs finished their 1929 baseball season with a 5-6 record.

In 1959 Bobby Winkles became the head baseball coach at ASU and ushered in an era of success that has produced five National Championships. The Sun Devils continue to be one of the premier baseball programs in the country.

ASU’s Record vs. the Major Leagues (6-22)

Angels, 4-4
Cubs, 0-1
Tigers, 0-1
Pilots/Brewers, 2-5
A’s, 0-4
Mariners, 0-7

Rodney Johnson has been researching spring training baseball for Play Ball: The Cactus League Experience for more than two years. He is the President of the Arizona Chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), an official scorer for Arizona Diamondbacks games and covers Arizona baseball for www.examiner.com. Catch his blog here for insights into Arizona’s rich baseball history.

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.

Play Ball project leader Robert Johnson will lead a one-hour fun-filled session on baseball cards with kids who attend the free event. Kids will learn about the history of baseball cards, make their own team pennant, have a bubble gum blowing contest, and learn how to flip baseball cards.

Parents can also bring their cameras to get a snapshot of their kids as they “appear” in their own baseball card.

The event will be held Thursday, June 17 from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the Fountain Court across from Mojo Yogurt at 4 p.m. at CityCenter of CityNorth, 5515 E. Deer Valley Drive, in Phoenix.

The developers of CityCenter of CityNorth, the Klutznick Company and its retail partner Related Development, have donated several window and pole banner spaces to promote the Play Ball exhibition to their shoppers, restaurant-goers, residents and office tenants.

The partnership marks the first effort to promote the nation’s only collection of spring training history outside of the Cactus League environment, but one that could lead to more visitors to the exhibition and more interest in the history project.

The Rockies will play the final Cactus League games at Hi Corbett Field this week and then move to Scottsdale next year. And when they do, spring training will become just a little more corporate. 

Hi Corbett has been home to spring training since 1947, but few players are shedding tears about saying adios. “It’s old, very old,” Colorado first baseman Todd Helton said, trying his very best to come up with a non-derogatory description. “Yeah, a good way to describe it is very old.”

Off Base

Yes, it is, and that’s what I like about the place. Hi Corbett feels more like the way spring training once was, when a team’s objective was to get overweight players back in shape after a winter peddling insurance rather than to sell $30 “premium date” tickets, $8.50 beers and $40 souvenir shirts to wealthy fans vacationing from Chicago. Don’t get me wrong — spring training still is a wonderful time, and every fan should enjoy its many pleasures at least once (every date is a “premium date” when you’re layering on sunscreen while watching a Cactus or Grapefruit League game instead of shoveling snow). But as teams gouge taxpayers to build ever more lavish new “complexes,” spring training not only becomes a little more big league; it becomes a little less personable and a little less accessible.

Hi Corbett, however, is as old-school as a flannel uniform. Set amid Tucson’s Gene C. Reid Park, the stadium is surrounded by a golf course (the Braves really should have trained here), a zoo (the only one in baseball outside of the bleachers at Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park), picnic areas, walking paths, ponds and very public spaces. On a recent Sunday, you could see the Rockies warming up on one field, a dozen or so people performing Tai Chi beneath a small grove of trees a few yards away and a father and son playing catch just behind them.

It was so wonderfully pastoral that Georges Seurat should have painted the scene — “Sunday in the Park with Jorge De La Rosa.”

“You don’t feel like it’s a moneymaking venture here,” said former pitcher Roy Smith, who trained at Hi Corbett in the 1980s with Cleveland. “The guys are getting ready. You’re close [to players]. It’s more like a park over there instead of a complex. The fans can get close. That’s why I always liked it. It was like that at Vero Beach [Fla.]. It has some of the aspects of the Vero Beach when the Dodgers were there.”

Unlike at other facilities where the fans are fenced off from the players, the home clubhouse at Hi Corbett leads directly into a public area, requiring players to either come in contact with fans or never leave the stadium. And many of them are very willing to sign autographs. Not just a couple signatures, but autograph after autograph.

“The fans are right on top of you,” Helton said in an approving tone. “They have more access to you coming in and out. That’s good on some days, bad on others.”

Hi Corbett is not only figuratively a step backward in time, it is also literally backward, with home plate and the batter facing west into the sun. The strange geography is especially noticeable given that there is virtually no shade in the stadium — a meager roof covers only a very small section of the seats behind home — which means that the stadium’s unofficial slogan is “Always wear sunscreen.” With, one longtime fan added, the additional clause that you should also bring cold beer.

You’ve probably seen Hi Corbett even if you’ve never been to Tucson because they filmed the spring training scenes for “Major League” here. This gives Hi Corbett the distinction of having both Bob Feller and Charlie Sheen pitch from its mounds.

“That’s definitely a unique experience. I never thought of it that way but I had a chance to meet Bob Feller and he’s really a neat individual,” Rockies starter Aaron Cook said. “I’ve never had the chance to meet Charlie Sheen, but the chance to pitch on the same mound as a Hall of Famer and a great actor like Charlie Sheen is something that not too many people can say they’ve done.”

Granted, “Major League” made Hi Corbett look pretty rustic, but Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger and Wesley Snipes still had it better than when Feller and the Indians moved here in 1947. “It did not have a dirt floor, but we had scorpions in the clubhouse,” Feller said. “They were in the toes of your shoes. It was very close and very cozy. Not a lot of room but it wasn’t that bad. I actually saw worse clubhouses in the major league.”

Wait a second. Scorpions? “There were scorpions that would go and hide in the dark part of your shoe,” Feller said. “And you had to be careful when you put on your shoes because there might be a scorpion in there and he would come out and sting you. Those little scorpions could nail you pretty good.”

Feller was still a Hi Corbett presence long after he retired. Ex-players and writers vividly recall him standing in center field, practicing his pickoff move. He would stand there and look over his shoulder as if checking a runner at first base, then suddenly turn and fire the ball to the fence. He was doing that, mind you, when he was in his 70s.

All of this is what gives Hi Corbett its character. And it’s what’s missing from so many of the new spring facilities. They’re all very nice and useful for teams, but they’re also like the multipurpose, cookie-cutter stadiums built in the ’60s and ’70s. They all look alike. Peoria resembles Surprise, which resembles Goodyear, which resembles Jupiter. Stand in front of a Dippin’ Dots stand or wait in line for an $8 cheeseburger and, like Milton Bradley, you may not be sure exactly which team you’re with that day.

Colorado outfielder Jay Payton said he heard the Rockies’ new facility in north Scottsdale (which they’ll share with the Diamondbacks) will have a portable workout room that can be wheeled outside when the weather is nice. Great. Good to know the players can work on their bench press and their tans at the same time.

The Cubs, meanwhile, are threatening to move from Mesa unless the city agrees to more than $100 million in upgrades to their camp. The funding proposal would add another fee to rental car taxes that already are at 50 percent — my car cost $344 for nine days and the taxes were $175 — plus an 8 percent tax on every ticket to every game their rival teams play in Arizona (White Sox fans will be thrilled to pay money to the Cubs to see their team play in its own stadium). Few things upset me in sports anymore, but owners who blackmail communities into building them new stadiums (and then hypocritically bitch about government “socialism”) still make me turn so red in the face I look like Chief Wahoo.

I mean, come on. The Cubs need a $100 million makeover in this economy? In a state that has been hit about as hard as any by the recession? For a spring training site? Really? Get real. There are 14 other teams in Arizona — including a Chicago team that has won the World Series in the past five years, let alone the past century — and fans will be only too happy to go see them instead if the Cubs move.

I say let the Cubs leave. Better yet, have them move to Hi Corbett, a beautiful ballpark that will be available next spring. It may not have a portable fitness room or a high-priced steakhouse, but it was plenty good enough to send a team to the World Series in its second year of spring training (Cleveland in 1948) and another one in its 60th (Colorado in 2007). The Cubs are too pigheaded and greedy to take advantage of this opportunity, but a couple Japanese teams are considering moving their camps to Tucson.

It’s easy to see why. Hi Corbett has the sort of appeal that extends across oceans and beyond generations. Whether you’re a 10-year-old Little Leaguer, a faux “Major Leaguer” or an aging Hall of Famer, the park provides such a spring training feel that you just have to pick up a baseball and see how hard you can throw it.

BOX SCORE LINE OF THE WEEK

With minor leaguers trying to make the club and veterans simply getting their work in, you get used to high-scoring games in spring training. So that the Royals beat the Diamondbacks 24-9 on Friday was not surprising, nor that Billy Buckner gave up eight runs in two innings or that Aaron Heilman gave up seven hits in one inning. What was surprising was Brian Anderson’s award-winning line:

5 AB, 3 R, 5 H, 7 RBI

That’s right — five hits in a Cactus League game! Not only that, he hit for the cycle as well. He tripled home two runs in the first, doubled in a run in the second, hit a two-run homer in the third, singled home two more runs in the fourth and singled in the fifth when the Royals took a 21-0 lead. “You can’t have a much better day than Brian Anderson,” Royals manager Trey Hillman told reporters. “I was actually planning on playing him the majority of the game, but I was afraid he would pull something if I left him in there.”

DONNIE, YOU’RE OUT OF YOUR ELEMENT

• I received a review copy of the Willie Mays biography by James S. Hirsch just before I drove up to Vancouver for the Olympics at the beginning of February and experienced the weirdest thing: When I opened the book, the pages had the same wonderful smell as a freshly opened pack of baseball cards, circa the early ’70s, when Topps still included sticks of gum. I was instantly transported back to 1971, when my brother and I listened to the Giants’ night games over a fading radio signal from 700 miles away, and copied the box scores into a notebook each day, and Mays homered in the first four games of the season, and I taped a newspaper photo of his fourth homer to the wall above my bed, and Sister Joanna had me stand up in front of my third grade class and tell them about the homer (my first venture into sports “reporting”), and I checked out a battered copy of a Mays biography from the school library and read it from cover to cover. I bring all this up to drive home the point that I was as well-prepared to enjoy the new biography as anyone possibly could be. Which also explains my disappointment. At 628 pages (including notes), the book is long, so long that I wound up reading 3½ other books before finally finishing it while covering the Paralympics this weekend, six weeks after I started the bio. I brought it with me to spring training to read while waiting in clubhouses and on fields for interviews, and fans frequently asked me what I thought of the book. My response was “It’s OK, kind of long, but well worth reading if you’re a Mays or Giants fan.” The book includes a lot of good detail about Mays’ finances, and some of the racism he faced over the years, along with a pretty decent account of the Giants’ history from 1951 until Mays’ trade in 1972. The problem is that despite its length, only a final 24-page epilogue covers Mays’ life from his 1973 retirement to the present. There is only a brief account about his relationship with Barry Bonds. In many ways, the epilogue is the freshest and most interesting part of the book (his career has been well-chronicled previously) and I wanted much more of it. As I told the fans at spring training, if you’re a Mays or a Giants fan, you’ll enjoy this book. It just devotes too much time to Mays the player and not nearly enough to Mays the man.

• BTW: A fan who was there told me Mays was signing copies of the book for $250 (including the book) at a Giants spring game two weekends ago. At first I was stunned by the amount but quickly changed my mind after thinking about it some more. Mays was one of the three greatest players in the game’s history and yet he was cheated out of his deserved earnings by the owners, their greed and their reserve clause. The man deserves to make whatever money he can off his name.

• Joe Mauer’s contract extension is probably only a surprise to Boston and New York fans who couldn’t imagine the catcher playing anywhere but their cities next season. But Mauer, a St. Paul native, is as much a part of Minnesota as Frances McDormand’s accent in “Fargo” and I always assumed he would re-sign there. What is difficult to come to grips with is the Twins’ signing a player without using an IOU. I mean, the Pohlads are paying a player $184 million? On top of an $80 million contract for Justin Morneau? A payroll near $100 million? Seeing the Twins spend money like this is as strange as hearing a talk radio host saying, “Actually, I don’t know the answer to that. So let’s call up an impartial authority to explain all sides of the issue.” Pity the Pohlads couldn’t have felt this generous when it was time to decide whether to include a retractable roof on their new ballpark.

Arizona had a lot to offer as a place for baseball teams to hold spring training: abundant sunshine, dry weather and hungry fans. But what cinched the deal, back in 1947, was the thought that the state would be more racially tolerant than Florida.

Bill Veeck, then the new owner of the Cleveland Indians, started the exodus from Florida’s Grapefruit League and began training his team in Arizona. In his autobiography, Veeck wrote that he decided to leave the Sunshine State after a brush with segregation there.

The incident happened a few years previously, when Veeck was co-owner of the then minor-league Milwaukee Brewers, which trained in Ocala, Fla. Veeck wrote in his book, “Veeck as in Wreck,” that he had inadvertently sat in the segregated “Jim Crow” section of the stands, which was near the clubhouse. He started chatting with some Black men.

“Within a few minutes, a sheriff came running over to tell me I couldn’t sit there,” Veeck wrote. Veeck said he argued with the sheriff, who then called the mayor, who told Veeck he would force him to sit elsewhere. Veeck said that if he was forced to move, he’d take his baseball team out of the city and let everybody in the country know why. The mayor backed down.

Veeck sold the Brewers in 1945 and planned on retiring to his Lazy Vee Ranch near Tucson. But he reacquired the baseball itch and purchased the Indians in June 1946. The following spring, he decided to junk tradition and move the team’s training home to Tucson. He persuaded the then New York Giants to join the Indians in the groundbreaking move from Florida; the Giants would train in Phoenix.

Veeck wrote that he knew he was going to try to sign a Black player to his team that year. That July, he signed Larry Doby, who would become the second African-American player in the major leagues and the first in the American League.

But Veeck didn’t talk about those plans when he moved to Arizona, and stories from the time made it seem as if the teams had left Florida because they preferred Arizona’s weather.

The Giants landed in Phoenix on Feb. 7, 1947, and immediately headed for the Buckhorn Mineral Baths, east of Mesa. Players were “having excess poundage melted away in mineral baths and slapped and pounded off by masseurs,” an Arizona Republic story read.

Horace Stoneham, president of the Giants, said, “There’s definitely an exodus from Florida, and when the other clubs find out what this climate will do to our team, they’ll become interested in having Arizona as a training site.”

A Republic editorial predicted, “By 1950, with other clubs following the Giant-Indian lead, Arizona will be the winter home of baseball.”

Doby tested Arizona’s tolerance in March 1948 when he visited Tucson. Veeck wrote that he discovered that “the bleachers weren’t segregated, but the hotel was.” It took a year, Veeck wrote, before the hotel agreed to let Doby stay with his teammates.

But fans were welcoming. A Republic story about Doby’s first appearance in Tucson said this: “Larry Doby, Cleveland’s negro player, was given loud ovations on both of his trips
to the plate.”