Play Ball

By Garin Groff – Tribune

Shovels will begin turning dirt March 19 in preparation for the new Chicago Cubs spring training complex, which will bring an end to Mesa’s popular Riverview Golf Course.

Golfers can hit the links until the day before tree removal starts and nearly two years of construction begins on the $99 million complex.

The course is closing this month even though the stadium work won’t begin until June. Riverview has to shut down now because crews will begin salvaging about 300 trees that will be re-planted in the new facility, Mesa City Manager Chris Brady said. The trees are being uprooted now because they would die if dug up during Arizona’s scorching summers.

“We’d love to keep it open longer, but we can’t have these huge holes in the park and still be able to have activities there,” Brady said.

The tree work represents the first work on the training complex. The project will trigger the closing of Riverview Park on April 2, and the shuttering of softball fields June 28. After that, major construction will get underway on the stadium, practice fields and a revamped Riverview Park.

The golf course opened in 1987 and is the Valley’s only regulation 9-hole golf course. March is always a popular time there but the course has been overwhelmed at times by golfers who want to play a final round, said Don Flavell, who oversees the city’s golf courses and cemetery.

“We have people now wanting to get tee times and the tee sheets are full, and we’re not able to accommodate them,” Flavell said.

Mesa is offering discounts for Riverview’s final two days. It’s also giving coupons to encourage golfers to play the back nine holes at the city-owned Dobson Golf Course.

Riverview has hosted 1.6 million rounds in its 24 years. Its peak came in 1997-1998, with 87,500 rounds played per year. For the past two years, the annual number of rounds was about 49,000. Flavell said the decline reflects a small drop in the sport’s popularity but also the growing number of courses in the Valley.

“Supply obviously had caught up with demand,” he said.

The golf course’s days have been numbered since 2007, when Mesa voters approved plans to redevelop 125 acres into the Waveyard water park and resort. Waveyard’s agreement with Mesa ended after its owners failed to secure financing during the recession. The Cubs chose the site as they sought more modern training facilities than Hohokam Park and Fitch Park.

Mesa has never planned to replace the golf course.

The park will return with about 300 salvaged trees, Brady said. The city will rebuild the lake and construct an east-west trail that will span the entire park.

The spring training complex will be completed in late 2013 and host spring training in 2014. Riverview Park could open before the rest of the complex is done, Brady said.

“It’s going to be an enhanced version of the park,” Brady said. “The park is coming back in a big way.”

It took a random trip past the future site of the Chicago Cubs new ballpark site today to find out when the project approved almost two years ago by Mesa voters will get started at the Riverview Golf Course.

From the schedule posted on a huge project sign at the entrance to the park, it looks like the city-owned golf course will close on March 18 with a tree salvage operation beginning the next day.

The park then will close on April 2 followed by the closure of the softball fields on June 27. Construction begins in July and will be completed in December 2013!

By Peter Corbett – Arizona Republic

Arizona’s Cactus League is losing spring games to Las Vegas and Tokyo this season, but league officials are confident they can come close to matching last year’s record attendance of 1.59 million fans.

The Seattle Mariners and Oakland Athletics will leave the Valley more than a week before the spring season ends for exhibition games in Japan. Plus, the popular Chicago Cubs and Texas Rangers will play a pair of prime weekend games in Las Vegas on March 17-18.

Still, the Cactus League, which opened Friday, will have 232 games, weather permitting, through April 4, and ticket sales have been brisk, said Brad Curtis, Cactus League Association president.

“I anticipate another good spring,” said Curtis, noting that teams are reporting double-digit increases in ticket sales.

Attendance at the Cactus League’s first five games on Friday and Saturday averaged 9,215 fans, up from last season’s average of 6,848.

The Colorado Rockies hosting the Arizona Diamondbacks at Salt River Fields had a sellout crowd of 12,528. The San Francisco Giants hosting a Diamondbacks split squad also had a sellout of 12,127.

Arizona’s 58th spring-training season, with 15 major-league teams playing at 10 Valley stadiums, is a boost to local tourism with close to 60 percent of the fans coming from out of state, according to a 2007 report from FMR Associates of Tucson, the most recent study.

FMR’s report, commissioned by the Cactus League Association and Arizona Office of Tourism, estimated the league’s economic impact on Arizona at $311 million.

Taxpayers have funded the growth in the Cactus League with hundreds of millions of dollars going to new stadiums and practice fields for the teams over the past two decades.

Curtis said the league’s economic boost has grown to $350 million based on a 31 percent surge in attendance over the past five years.

Last year’s attendance jump followed the relocation of the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies from Tucson to Salt River Fields on the Salt River Reservation, east of Scottsdale.

The Rockies more than doubled their attendance last year, and the Diamondbacks reported a 90 percent box-office increase, to 189,737 fans.

Derrick Hall, Diamondbacks president, said the team has momentum with fans going into the spring season following its National League West division title.

“There is a good chance we will do better for the spring season,” he said, adding that ticket sales are trending ahead of last spring.

Not only has it been a box-office bonanza, but Hall credits the Salt River Fields complex with improving the team’s strength and conditioning. It’s been a big tool in attracting players, he said.

“It has improved our performance on the field and given us a competitive advantage in recruiting and retaining players,” he said.

Elsewhere in the Cactus League, the Los Angeles Angels have attracted their own free-agent superstar in Albert Pujols from St. Louis. That has created buzz for the Angels at Tempe Diablo Stadium.

Ticket sales are up 20 percent for the Angels, Curtis said.

The league is planning a new economic-impact study with fan surveys during the last two weeks of March.

For the first time, the study also will evaluate the yearlong impact of events at the 10 stadiums and expenditures from the players, training and coaching staffs for the 15 teams throughout the year, Curtis said.

“I think the numbers will be a big eye-opener to people,” he said.

Six Cactus League games are scheduled today at Salt River, Mesa, Peoria, Goodyear, Maryvale (Phoenix) and Surprise. All of today’s games start at 1 p.m. except at Surprise Stadium, where the first pitch is at noon.

By Dave Hoekstra – Chicago Sun Times

Hope springs eternal at the Buckhorn Mineral Baths, Motel and Wildlife Museum in East Mesa.

The roadside motel has been closed since 1999, but everything is in place as if owners Ted and Alice Sliger slipped out for a desert dip. Letters are unopened in the mail slots behind the motel’s front desk. A ribbon of pink neon still glistens on the outside of the motel.

Baseball’s New York Giants discovered the Buckhorn Baths in 1947, and players made the 15-acre resort a spring training stop until 1972.

Hall of Famers Willie Mays, Gaylord Perry and Ty Cobb were regulars at the baths. So was Ernie “Mr. Cub” Banks, who still believes the restorative powers of the baths helped him hit 15 home runs during one spring training.

The Buckhorn Baths gave birth to spring training in Arizona.

The Sligers bought the promised land in 1936 and opened the baths in 1939, tapping into the mineral waters of the East Salt River Valley. It operated under the same owners for 63 years. The business opened in 1926 as a gas station and general store on U.S. Highway 60,
a k a The Apache Trail.

The Mesa Historical Museum and Mesa Preservation Foundation has begun evaluation on preserving the Buckhorn site.

In the not-too-distant future, baseball fans and devotees of Western culture will be able to soak up the Buckhorn Baths, motel and museum. The baths closed in 1983, and in 2005 the site was put on the National Register of Historic Places. The Cubs’ new spring training site, which is slated to open in spring 2014, is about 13 miles west of the Buckhorn Baths.

Fans can see pieces of Buckhorn history today.

Giants and future Cubs manager Leo Durocher loved the place so much he commissioned a 1954 silver platter for the Sligers when the Giants won the World series. Durocher and Giants owner Horace Stoneham considered the Sligers part of the team. That tray with engraved signatures is now on display at the Play Ball! exhibit with other Cactus League items at the Arizona Historical Society Museum at Papago Park, 1300 N. College Rd., in Tempe. Stoneham invited the Sligers to come along on the team’s 1960 goodwill tour of Japan. Museum visitors can see items from that journey including tour booklets and custom made Giants transistor radios at Play Ball! exhibits at 51 E. Main St. in downtown Mesa, and the Scottsdale Center for Performing Arts (Playballexperience.com for details.)

During the Buckhorn’s heyday, players would congregate in the motel “trophy room” to watch a mid-sized black and white television. The room still contains the television, surrounded by sofas and chairs accented by wagon wheels and covered in leopard skins. It’s Arizona’s answer to Graceland’s Jungle Room.

The trophy room contains 403 stuffed animals. A fireplace is handmade from animal horns and stones representing every mineral from Arizona.

Dolly the four-horned sheep was born on the property. It was difficult for Dolly to eat since one horn intruded on her jaw. She died young. Dolly now watches over her flock from above the fireplace.

The mineral springs are directly behind the trophy room.

While searching for their own water source in 1939, the Sligers sunk a well. The water wasn’t cold, but it became gold. The water was 112 degrees and filled with minerals. Ted and Alice immediately turned the property into a tourist attraction, adding Pueblo Revival cottages, a bathhouse that could serve up to 75 people, cafe and beauty shop. Later they built a nine hole “desert golf course” (no grass) between acres of cactus and sagebrush.

Plans call for restoration of the site and new Little League fields. Housing for tournament players is already in place in the “tourist court” cottages.

The Mesa Historical Museum called in the Historic New England preservation group for an assessment. They called the Buckhorn Baths the most important site in the West in need of preservation because it goes beyond baseball to touch on car culture and the birth of tourism. The Society for Commercial Archaeology has listed the baths as No. 1 on its list of most endangered roadside places in the United States.

“I’d love to see the Buckhorn Baths open again,” Banks said last week after an autograph session in Chicago. “I took baths there. A lot. It helped me out, and the Cubs should be using the baths. Now! They had a masseuse in there, exercise areas. The Giants and the Cubs used the baths a lot. The Indians came up from Tucson. We didn’t stay there, but we traveled there from our hotel.” The Giants’ Stoneham invited his top players to use the baths, but not the entire team.

A pristine wood sign near a palm tree garden details the contents of the odorless water: “silica-calcium, sodium-nitrate, chlorides-sulphates, magnesium, bicarbonates, potassium, hydrogen.” Sounds just like Theo Epstein’s computer programming.

Gaylord Perry immediately flew to Mesa from his home in North Carolina when he learned that Alice Sliger had died in November 2010. She was 103. Alice lived on the property until three months before her death. Ted died in 1984 at the age of 81.

“Behind their place was hundreds of acres of nothing but desert,” Perry recalled this week from Arizona. “We would go for a long walk, take a long run. You’d take a sun bath, they would wrap you up. You’d get a massage. We’d be there a week to 10 days before spring training. Mentally it absolutely got you ready for baseball season. My Dad loved that museum, and I loved it too. Ted would tell you stories every day about how he started with the gas station, how he stuffed animals, things like that.”

Coincidentally, 15 feral black cats prowl the grounds.

Ted Sliger was a sportsman and a taxidermist. The walls are adorned with deer heads and the head of a large sea bass. You cannot miss a 4,000-pound stuffed buffalo called “Old Renegade.” I picked up a faded postcard in the motel’s lobby that explains how Old Renegade was ousted from his herd. In part, the back of the postcard reads, “… Living alone did not improve Old Renegade’s temper and he became so destructive to the property of cattlemen that the Arizona Game and Fish Commission ordered his destruction, and called upon Ted Sliger to do the job. After a hunt of two days Old Renegade was killed while charging his attackers. Now mounted life size, Old Renegade is on display at Ted Sliger’s Buckhorn Museum.”

◆◆◆

Sharon Brossett was Alice’s caregiver the last three years of her life. She connected with Alice because they were both Mormons.

Brossett is now general manager of the property and takes care of Ted Jr., the Sligers’ 63-year-old son who inherited the property. “I have a career in taking care of older people,” she said during a conversation in the trophy room. “I have never known anyone as sharp as Alice was at that age. That woman conducted her own business until a week before she passed.”

Brossett looked around the trophy room. Fighting cocks were on a nearby table, sparring for eternity. An angry bobcat is in full plunge mode. Woodchucks stand on a counter. “I was with Alice for a year and a half before I was ever allowed in this room,” Brossett said. “She protected it like a mother hen. Preservation was her focus ever since I met her. Before the real estate market fell out, a lot of people were willing to buy it. She was never serious about the offers because they weren’t including keeping all this intact. When she would hear they would destroy these animals, she stopped negotiations right there.”

The museum and preservation foundation began intensive research of the site in November.

Lisa Anderson, CEO of the Mesa Historical Museum, explained, “Our group is working to secure the material culture, cataloging the baseball items, the Native American collection, Ted’s gun collection, art collection. We’re creating a team with professionals from other museums throughout the valley. We’re looking at a three- to five-year plan to find a solution for the future of those collections.” Precious outdoor neon would be preserved.

The gas station that was the birth of the Buckhorn complex was a little less than a mile down U.S. 60 from the present site. “On Christmas Eve 1935, which was Alice’s birthday, Ted and Alice went to a party,” Brossett said. “The gas station-house they occupied burned to the ground. This place got its name because the only thing that survived the fire was one buckhorn. After the house burned down, they lived in a tent on this property while they rebuilt.”

The Buckhorn Baths is a much deeper experience than a bathhouse and historic baseball site.

“It is significant on so many different levels,” said Vic Linoff, president of the Mesa Preservation Foundation. “Baseball is just one. It is the largest collection of taxidermy of Arizona wildlife. It has the world’s largest metate (stones to grind corn into corn meal) wall. There’s over 1,000 metates in this wall. This a project few have ever encountered throughout the country.”

For warm baseball memories from Ferguson Jeknins, Gaylord Perry and the future of the historic Buckhorn Baths, visit blogs.suntimes.com/hoekstra.

By Jim Walsh – Arizona Republic

Today’s baseball fans would have a hard time recognizing the Cactus League during its formative years in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

The Chicago Cubs in 1952 would walk two blocks from their motel down Main Street in Mesa to rickety Rendezvous Park, where kids got in for 25 cents, the best seats went for $3 and downtown businesses closed for the afternoon so more people could attend the game.

While the small, wooden ballparks of yesteryear were unquestionably more intimate, with Cubs legend Billy Williams once trading a couple of autographed balls for half a barbecued chicken, most people seem to think fans, players and Arizona’s economy are far better off today.

When Hall of Fame pitcher Ferguson Jenkins was traded from the Philadelphia Phillies to the Cubs in 1966, the Cactus League had four teams, two in Arizona and two in California. A full roster of 40 players would train on one field.

Today, half of Major League Baseball’s 30 teams train in the Valley and each team has seven or eight fields for a variety of fitness and baseball drills that would have been incomprehensible to players four decades ago.

“The facilities are outstanding,” said Jenkins, who raises money for his charitable foundation by signing balls during games at Hohokam Stadium. “The conditions you play in make you a better player.”

The gleaming, modern constellation of Cactus League ballparks are more comfortable and far larger. Fans can choose from 15 teams, all within an hour’s drive of each other, rather than just the New York Giants and the Cleveland Indians, the first two teams that gave birth to the fledgling league in 1947.

Cactus League President Brad Curtis said fans can still get autographs if they know their way around spring training complexes, although everyone acknowledges professional autograph hounds have made players more reluctant to sign.

“For the fans, it’s better,” Curtis said, with the traditions of baseball still celebrated during Cactus League games.

Despite yearly price increases that have pushed ticket prices for the best seats into the $30 range, good seats still are cheaper than during regular season games, he said.

“You can still get a $6-$7 lawn seat and watch major-league players,” Curtis said. “I still think its cheaper in spring training. I still think it’s a bargain.”

Author Susie Steckner, an Arizona native who wrote a new book about Cactus League history, Cactus League: Spring Training as a fundraiser for the planned Cactus League Museum, said she can still take her sons to Tempe Diablo Stadium and get autographs.

“I think you can still have an intimate experience. I think spring training is still about the fans. It has retained that element,” Steckner said. “I don’t think fans are missing out. It’s just different.”

Robert Johnson, a Valley public-relations consultant also working toward establishing a Cactus League Museum, said the league has evolved, just like every other aspect of life.

“It’s absolutely different but so are the times. Players are more sophisticated and have greater needs,” he said, citing today’s advanced training facilities.

In the league’s early years, “it was really all about the weather. Now, it’s an event in and of itself,” Johnson said.

Bud Page, head of the Mesa HoHoKams, the civic group that sponsors the Cubs each year, said the Oakland Athletics were drawing 1,500-1,700 fans to Rendezvous Park when he joined the group in 1974.

The Cubs now draw more than 12,000 fans to some games, although tickets are still available for most games this year.

“We had no concept of the magnitude of people getting involved and following the team of their choice,” Page said.

Major League teams barnstormed in Arizona in the early part of the 20th century, but the league didn’t come about until owner Horace Stoneham moved the Giants to Phoenix in 1947.

Bill Veeck, the colorful Indians owner, moved his team to Tucson that same year and hotelier Dwight Patterson persuaded the Cubs to move to Mesa in 1952.

Other teams gradually floated in and out of the league, including the Baltimore Orioles and Boston Red Sox, who both trained in Scottsdale at various times.

Johnson said even though there’s still room for improvement, today’s league is exactly what Cactus League pioneers such as Patterson envisioned, with hotels and ballparks full of fans.

“This is what the pioneers of the Cactus League wanted it to be. They wanted it to be an opportunity for people to discover Arizona,” Johnson said.

By Jim Walsh – Arizona Republic

As Mesa settles into its comforting spring rituals, with pitchers and catchers reporting and hard-core fans discussing the Cubs’ rebuilding efforts, there is one fact no one can deny.

Spring training always ran like clockwork with Robert Brinton at the helm, and no one knows exactly what Hohokam Stadium will be like without him.

The 2012 Cactus League season will be a year of tribute and transition as the Mesa HoHoKams, the civic organization that sponsors Cactus League baseball in Mesa, carry on without a leader who was irreplaceable.

Brinton, who died unexpectedly in October after decades of devotion to the Cactus League, will be honored in a variety of ways. He was the executive director of the Mesa Convention and Visitors Bureau as well as past president of the Cactus League Association.

Family members will throw out the first pitch on March 5. Ushers will wear Robert Brinton pins. The HoHoKams will wear special hats, the first change to their trademark uniform in years.

All the Cactus League stadiums will honor Brinton during opening-day ceremonies using a ceremonial ball that will be displayed at one of his most beloved projects, the Cactus League Museum.

But everyone involved realizes that the best honor of all is to carry on Brinton’s selfless work at the stadium and throughout the league, helping terminally ill children, putting the fans first and their egos last.

While the HoHoKams labor through their first season without Brinton, the stadium also is auditioning for a future without the Chicago Cubs.

Oakland Athletics officials will be monitoring the operation closely as they evaluate whether to move from Phoenix to Mesa in 2015 to replace the Cubs, who are scheduled to open their new park at Mesa Riverview.

With the Cactus League’s thirst for new stadiums thwarted by a lack of revenue, the A’s would move into a larger, more modern park than Phoenix Municipal Stadium but would face training limitations at the nearby Fitch Park practice facilities, which are considered subpar by Major League standards.

It was Brinton, naturally, who first reached out to the A’s about a potential move to Mesa before his untimely death.

“What I always tell people is that we were always learning from Robert, whether we knew it or not,” said Gayle Savo, office manager at the Mesa Convention and Visitors Bureau.

“Now, it’s time for the dreaded final exam when we try to live without him,” said Savo, who worked with Brinton for 23 years, meticulously collecting statistics and doing countless other chores.

For stadium manager Mark Gallo, Brinton was “my answer man, that big brother everyone needs, that guardian angel.”

Gallo said the void everyone feels is a combination of Brinton’s game-day savvy and emotional withdrawal caused by his sudden death.

“We know what to do, but part of that is because Robert showed us how to do it,” he said. “He’s still watching over us but from across the street.”

Gallo was referring to Brinton’s resting place at the Mesa City Cemetery, across Center Street from Hohokam.

For Cactus League president Brad Curtis, the man who followed Brinton in the post, Brinton was a mentor and a trusted adviser with an encyclopedic knowledge of all things Cactus League.

Hohokam ticket manager Nancy Hunter said Brinton could solve virtually any problem using his people skills.

“He was a gentle giant,” she said. “He was a very calming factor in this little world around here.”

Bud Page, a Mesa Realtor who is president of the HoHoKams, said most members of the civic organization have worked at the stadium for years, but none have Brinton’s level of knowledge.

“I look up at the sky and say, ‘Robert, what would you do right now?’ ” Page said. “I think he’d want us to carry on the tradition he was totally involved with and see if can continue to be successful and do whatever we can to help the community.”

Dilworth Brinton Jr. thinks about his late brother every day and finds it ironic that a man who never wanted any honors during his lifetime will be honored in a multitude of ways posthumously.

“He said, ‘You take the honor, I don’t need another plaque,’ ” said Dil Brinton, who usually sells programs at Hohokam on game days. “The one thing I would like people to remember about Robert is service to others: Serve others before yourself.”

By Gary Nelson – Arizona Republic

Only nine days ago it was the center of the media universe, swarming with politicians and reporters after Mesa’s presidential debate.

Now the city-owned building at 51-55 E. Main St. is downtown Mesa’s newest tourist attraction.

The Mesa Historical Museum is opening its first stand-alone downtown satellite operation there on Saturday, featuring its popular Play Ball! baseball artifacts.

In addition, the site will host an exhibit celebrating Boeing Co.’s 30 years in Mesa and another featuring a collection of art from Buckhorn Baths, which in Mesa’s younger days was a haven for highway travelers and Cactus League ballplayers.

Play Ball! has been displayed downtown before, at the Arizona Museum for Youth. But this is the first iteration of the historical museum’s desire to establish its own, permanent presence in the burgeoning heart of Mesa.

“The new location for Play Ball! is much larger and is a strong addition to our downtown arts district,” Mayor Scott Smith said in a news release.

The exhibit will feature displays of the three Mesa stadiums used so far by the Chicago Cubs, and renderings of the team’s complex to be built beginning this year at Riverview. Memorabilia from the Oakland Athletics’ days in Mesa and from the New York/San Francisco Giants’ stays at Buckhorn Baths will be included.

There is a strong chance the A’s will return to Mesa beginning in 2015; the team is negotiating with the city to take over Hohokam Stadium after the Cubs leave.

The Historical Museum’s presence in the building is not intended to be permanent. The building is adjacent to the site of a future light-rail station and Mesa is not averse to its eventual demolition and redevelopment.

Elements of the Play Ball! exhibit also are on display at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, Goodyear Ballpark and the Arizona Historical Society museum in Tempe.

Admission to the downtown exhibit will be $2.50 through March when the Cactus League is in town, and $5 thereafter. It will be open 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays.

The museum’s main campus, 2345 N. Horne St., is open 10 a.m-4 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays.

By Mike Sakal – Tribune

He began selling programs at Chicago Cubs spring training games at Mesa’s Rendezvous Park when he was a little boy in the 1950s; he’d later help to solidify the foundation of the Cactus League and its foothold in Arizona. Now, the legacy of Robert Brinton — a lifelong resident of Mesa who died unexpectedly on Oct. 21, a week after his 60th birthday — will be honored before the Cubs take the field prior for Monday’s spring outing at Hohokam Stadium.

Brinton wore many hats for the city he called home. A former president of the Cactus League, he also served as a bishop in the Kimball stake of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints. At the time of his death, he was also the president of the Mesa Visitors and Convention Bureau, and a longtime member of the Mesa Hohokams civic group.

But through it all, those who remember him knew him to always make time for his family.

That family will be on hand to take part in Monday’s ceremonial first pitch at Hohokam, and a moment of silence will be held in his memory. After that, the Cubs’ ownership plans to honor him again prior to the team’s game on March 14. In addition, special-issue baseballs with gold embossed lettering in his memory will be thrown out for the first pitch at the opening spring training games at each Cactus League ballpark; the pro players who catch the first pitch will sign the ball before it’s placed in the Mesa Historical Museum’s “Play Ball” exhibit, dedicated to the history of spring training in Arizona. Brinton conceived the idea that the exhibit would someday have its own museum as part of the tourism draw that comes with families and fans.

Brinton’s impact on the advancement of the Cactus League in Arizona can be seen Valley-wide, but it’s his knowledge, as well as the friendly arm he threw around one’s shoulder with a smile on his face and a gleam in his eye, that will be missed many who felt his impact.

Among them was Mark Gallo, a 23-year employee for the city of Mesa who has been the manager of Hohokam Stadium for the last two years, where Brinton provided a steady and welcoming presence, often donned in a maroon Hohokam shirt and a white Indiana Jones-like hat.

“I never met anyone with a bigger heart,” Gallo said. “Robert was a helping hand, the big brother, and a friend. “I never had him not be there for me. When I became the manager for Hohokam Stadium, he and Dave Dunn, the stadium manager before me, took me under their wing. There’s days I sit at work and wonder who I’m going to get the answers from,” Gallo added. “You just have to take what he taught you and apply it. One time I asked him, ‘where do you find time to do everything?’ He kind of laughed and said, ‘I don’t. I just get it done.’

“There was more to Robert Brinton than just baseball,” Gallo added. “His family has a great legacy. His father [Dilworth Brinton] was among a group of businessmen who helped to bring the Cubs to Mesa in 1952, a school bears their family name and Robert was instrumental in persuading the Cubs to work with Mesa when the team was considering to leave for a new spring training facility in Naples, Florida.”

Gallo noted how there were a few things Brinton didn’t want anyone to know about — like his work with organizations like the Make-A-Wish Foundation; he wanted to make sure kids with a terminal illness or disabilities got on the field to meet a player or watch a game from the skybox, Gallo said.

“It’s huge for someone to away from the chaos and world of terminal illness, and he knew that,” Gallo said

Another friend of Brinton’s was Milt Fort. Fort was his colleague at the Mesa Visitors and Convention Bureau and is now the interim CEO of the organization.

“He was a great friend and a great mentor,” Fort said. “You name it, at one time or another, Robert was there. He was always about service before self. He moved a lot of projects in a positive direction, but never wanted to take the credit for it. He’d let his staff make their own decisions. He’d tell you both sides of the story, teach you the prospects and principles and then say, ‘what do you think?’ and let you direct yourself.”

Robert Johnson, vice president of public affairs for Highground, a political consulting firm in Phoenix who oversaw the Cubs’ Proposition 420 campaign supporting a new spring training facility and worked with Brinton on the Play Ball exhibit, said it is fitting that Brinton’s legacy is having its day.

“With all the things Robert Brinton did and was a part of, it would be easy to honor him longer,” Johnson said. “Even though he no longer is with us, we’ll always remember him and think about him as we move forward and accomplish the things he put in motion.”

Hall of Fame skipper Tommy Lasorda kept a Cactus League crowd laughing this morning during the annual breakfast held to officially kick-off the spring training season in Arizona.

Some 300 people from across the Cactus League gathered this morning to celebrate the start of another season of baseball in the desert.

Camelback Ranch, spring home of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago White Sox, hosted today’s event.

Next up for the venue? A free fan festival this Saturday, March 3 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Fans can get a copy of the hot new spring training book written by Susie Steckner, and for an extra $10 get it signed by Hall of Fame pitcher Gaylord Perry.

Perry is scheduled to appear from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. so make sure to get there early to catch him before he heads to Scottsdale for the day.

Steckner will be on hand until 1 p.m. to sell and sign the book.

Dodgers and White Sox players also are scheduled to spend time with fans on Saturday.

From the Scottsdale Republic blog:

The Spring Training Festival this weekend raises a question: Wow, why didn’t anyone think of this before?

The free festival at Scottsdale’s Civic Center Mall today and Sunday is the first in which Cactus League teams have come together to celebrate and launch a season.

Hall of Famers will be on hand to sign autographs. A collection of memorabilia will be on display at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts. The Arizona SciTech Festival will let people experience a 100 mph fastball zipping by. Bands will play. Food will be sold.

And teams from across the Cactus League will be on hand to sell tickets and promote themselves. They’ve never before tried a unified approach.

“If people can see this as a league instead of 15 teams scattered around the Valley, we can push attendance. There are about a million seats that go empty each year,” said Robert Johnson, project leader for the Play Ball Experience.

His group exhibits Cactus League memorabilia at five locations across the Valley.

There is a good business reason for the festival, for the teams and for tourism. But more than anything, this is for the fans. Spring training always has provided fans with their closest, most relaxed access to players. It gives those from cold-weather states a reason to get away for a week or so. It deserves a celebration that makes the fan the center of attention. What took so long?

Editor’s Note: An estimated 15,000 baseball fans turned out for the weekend festival in downtown Scottsdale.