My first Spring Training experience

This past weekend I had the fortune of making a trip down to sunny Arizona to take in some spring training baseball for the first time. A few of my sports-loving friends had told me about this experience encouraging me to do it. My friends Frank and Dennis made plans to do so this year and were kind enough to invite me along for the ride. How could I resist?

We flew down Friday morning to Phoenix, with the plan of renting a car and b-lining to A's - Giants game in Scottsdale. On the shuttle bus to the PHX rental center, there were a small group of guys that looked to be in their mid twenties, talkin' baseball. I didn't catch a lot of the conversation, but they used terms like OPS and WHIP, which is hard core language, often used by fantasy players. A friend had told me that I'd see mostly the die-hard fans down at spring training. This was a taste of that.

After grabbing a quick lunch at Cousin's subs (hey, that's a Wisconsin chain!) we went to the game at Scottsdale Stadium, a nice little park where we had bleacher seats down the third base line. It was a beautiful day for baseball, though it actually felt a little warm with the Arizona sun beating down on us. Thank goodness for Dennis's sun screen. It was definitely sun burn weather.

The game itself was a little boring, with not a lot of run production. The only A's names I recognized were Dan Johnson, who did homer, Jack Cust, and Alan Embree. Just some of the few spared by the Billy Beane house cleaning. Despite the lack of offense and name recognition, it was fun to kick back with a beer and check out some baseball. A nice feature of the Scottsdale stadium, which I think is true of other ball parks, is that there's a nice grassy hill (a little too big to be called a "knoll") behind the outfield fence where fans can graze and take in the action.

After the game, we headed to where our beds would be, in Tucson with our friends. It took us roughly an hour and a half to get to my friend Dan's with only some small patches of slow rush hour traffic. My nuvi did the trick on finding his place. "You have arrived at Casa de Dano." :-)

Dan was prepared for our growing appetites and took us to Zachary's Pizza, a place he had claimed to have gone to for 20+ years with lots of good memories. As we walked to our table, I scanned the draught beers on a chalk board where my eyes stopped on Left Hand Milk Stout. One pint please. Delicious.

Speaking of, Zachary's deep dish was wonderful. Dan recommended that we limit our topping choices to 1 or 2 (he even said that cheese would be just fine). He was right, we got a lot of pizza that was piled thick on rich crust. Three pieces later and I was stuffed. I washed that down with my second pint, this time some Ace Pear Cider that was just as good as the stout. I even enticed Dan's non-beer-drinking girl friend into a pint after giving her a sip. She now has a great alternative to water at Zachary's.

The next morning Dennis, Frank and I went on a mission to burn off that pizza and beer with a run in Sabino Canyon. We followed the Bear Creek trail for about an hour before turning back, getting a very scenic run in that included several creek crossings. Having not gone to Death Valley for the first time in 8 years, I was happy to be getting some desert canyon running in, especially while it was still cool and water was flowing. We saw lots of hikers and a couple runners sharing the morning with us at Sabino.

After the run, Dan took me to another haunt for lunch, this time for some sandwiches at Bison Witches on 4th street. Tucson doesn't really have much of a down town, but 4th street is where a lot of the charm and fun appears to be, with lots of shops and restaurants inside colorfully painted old buildings. It reminded me a bit of the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco. As for the lunch, I went for the "Tucson", trying to be appropriate, with a little bread bowl potato soup. Yummy. The place definitely had a college feel to it with some young-looking faces having some lunch and beer.

Afterwards we checked out the Giants and Sox at Tucson Electric Park, a spring home that the Sox share with the Diamond Backs. I preferred this stadium to Scottsdale, actually, because of the single seats (much easier on the back). The Sox led off with a familiar face in Nick Swisher, who I was happy to see double down the left field line. It was certainly strange to not see him wearing A's green and yellow, but fun to watch him play again. Again, I was glad to be offered some sunscreen, this time by Dennis's friend. The day started overcast, but the clouds were gone by the third inning and all the sun had left to burn was our skin. It wasn't terribly uncomfortable, but I was definitely not acclimated to summer weather yet.

That night, I had some fun playing some poker at Casa de Dano with a small group of his friends. He has two tables and lots of chips, many of which are customized with Dano Poker on them. I was amazed at how quickly everyone at the table was able to play and able to carry on conversation, often deriding each other, while I was focused on figuring out how to survive the game. I got knocked out 3rd, which I was actually happy about, given the experience in the table. I thought of the line from Rounders of "The first thing you do in Poker is spot the sucker at the table. If you can't spot the sucker, you are the sucker." That was me.

The third day of our trip led us to Kartchner Caverns in the city of Benson, roughly an hour south of Tucson. This living cave was discovered in 1988 by a couple of spelunkers from the University of Arizona. Having seen a few caves ruined by garbage and graffiti, they decided to keep the cave a secret until 2002, when word was beginning to spread and they had their hand forced by a member of the local media who had learned about the location of cave's entrance. They confided in the Kartchner family, who shared their feelings on conservationism, and eventually sold their land and the underlying cave that to the State of Arizona.

Well, the State of Arizona should be proud of what they've done with this national treasure because the tour was incredible. We took the Big Room tour, which led us along a nicely paved and railed path through the caverns. Our tour guide, an older man who beamed with enthusiasm and pride for the cave pointed out many of the cave's stalactites (hanging down from the ceiling), stalagmites (coming up from the ground) Helectites (going any direction they want), soda straws (the soda straw-thin fetus of the 3 mentioned features) and many others which had taken between 70 and 200 thousand years to form using single drops of water. The cave is still "living", which means these lime stone sculptures are still growing as I write this. The sights in the cave were breath taking, even without knowing their history, which boggles the mind. What a treat it was to be walking around in something of this magnitude. Despite all of the fun I was having watching baseball and eating great food, this was probably the highlight of the trip.

That afternoon it was back to baseball, this time trying a couple of new teams in the local favorites of the Diamond Backs and the Seattle Mariners. I was a little disappointed to not see Ichiro in the line up, but was consoled by the fact that Eric Byrnes led off and Brandon Webb was on the hill. It's fun to see Byrnsie play, as he was one of my favorite A's and still does a lot of filling in for Bay Area sports radio. My friend Dean met him in an airport a few years ago and said he's just as friendly in person as what you see on T.V. He's a refreshing character among a game of exposed villains. The game itself had a lot of offense and the temperature was in the high 60's. I had finally hit the sweet spot of baseball viewing. Ahhhh...good stuff.

That night, Dan, Debbie and his friend Sloodge took me to La Parrilla a Suiza, his favorite restaurant in Tucson. I had a #15, which was a combination of two soft tacos filled with sauteed chicken with green peppers, onions and a little bacon along with some chicken quesadillas and refried beans. This was one of Dan's favorites and I could tell why. It played well with my taste buds and I washed it down with a tasty frozen margarita. It was a perfect last meal in Tucson.

The next morning Dennis, Frank and I reluctantly made our way back to Phoenix, to fly back to the Bay Area. Before going to the air port, we hit the South Mountain Park for a scenic drive, climbing to the summit for a gorgeous view of Phoenix and the mountainous desert landscape that surrounded it. Yellow wild flowers were sprinkled on both sides of the windy road that we took to get there. It was well worth the ride.

Of course I must mention lunch one more time, as we decided to make a preflight stop at Veneto Trattoria in Scottsdale. Dennis had found this one on the internet of the top lunch spots in the Phoenix. We all had panninis with vegetable puree soup along with a glass of wine each for Frank and me. Our waiter sounded like he had an Italian accent, which was a great sign, and it was, everything was delicious, especially the bread.

So that was my spring training and Arizona experience. Pictures coming soon.