Take me in to the ball game

Sunset, March, 1998 by Matthew Jaffe

Baseball has long had a fickle relationship with Arizona. Like all those snowbirds from Toronto, Minneapolis, and Chicago, each spring the game heads south to take advantage of the state at its best time of year. Players train for a couple of weeks, exhibition games are played for a few more, and then, just as the desert is about to turn hot and nasty, the show moves on.

Well, with the arrival of the expansion Arizona Diamondbacks, baseball has finally decided to stay down here for good. And not unlike a lot of Arizona transplants, it's moving into a brand-new home with a big lawn, lots of airconditioning, and even a pool.

That new home is in downtown Phoenix at the $354-million Bank One Ballpark. Call it BOB for short. Designed by Ellerbe Becket Inc. of Kansas City, Missouri, BOB is a big ole cuss. It dwarfs neighboring America West Arena, the hockey and basketball facility that has already helped spur a revival in this part of town.

With its retractable roof, BOB is an imposing structure. And in the wake of retro, born-with-a-patina charmers like Denver's Coors Field and Baltimore's Camden Yards, it at first seems a little baffling, perhaps a missed opportunity on a par with the disappointing new Comiskey Park in Chicago.

From the outside there's not a whole lot that says baseball. BOB doesn't have the diamond lines of traditional baseball-only structures, or even the recognizable doughnut shape of the now-lamented 1970s multiuse stadiums in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. BOB is hangarlike, looking more like a soundstage on hormones than anything that might so quaintly be described as a ballpark.

But like artichokes, lobsters, and nopales, the good stuff is inside.

Think of BOB as the baseball version of a Faberge egg. Set inside that big rectangle is an intimate baseball diamond seating 48,500. In the center of the park is a real grass field, the first nonartificial turf in a covered stadium. Houston's once-translucent Astrodome tried grass when it opened in 1965. But players fielding high flies and pop-ups kept losing the ball in the glare. Eventually a coat of acrylic was applied to the dome, which helped the ballplayers but killed the grass, thus paving the way for that affront to nature, AstroTurf.

BOB's shade-tolerant grass is a hybrid developed by researchers at the University of California at Riverside and grown out in California's Palm Desert. The challenge at the ballpark will be to figure out how to get the grass enough sunlight without frying the fans - Phoenix's average July temperature is a toasty 94 [degrees].

The seats themselves are canted toward home plate to ensure good sight lines, and 80 percent of the stands are located inside the foul poles, including 69 luxury boxes. But the section that will likely earn BOB the greatest buzz is a small area in the right center-field power alley.

This section takes one step further the shower that baseball maverick Bill Veeck installed in the bleachers at the old Comiskey Park: the ballpark has its own swimming pool, meaning that you can bob at the BOB. The Sun Pool Party Pavilion will be available for single-game lease, and can accommodate as many as 45 fans, who may just end up with the most unique vantage point in all of baseball.

Professional baseball in Arizona goes back only to the late 1920s, but the sport's presence in the state is almost 125 years old. The first game took place in Yuma, which later became a spring-training town. And in 1929, the Detroit Tigers became the first major-league team to hold all of its spring training in Arizona.

But it wasn't until 1947, when Bill Veeck brought the Cleveland Indians here, that the foundation for the Cactus League was laid. He moved the team to avoid segregationist policies in Florida after the Indians signed Larry Doby, the first African-American player in the American League. Veeck then persuaded the New York Giants to come down to Arizona so the Indians would have some competition.

Once humble and casual, the domain of baseball junkies and insiders, spring training has become a big business. Local communities have built major new facilities for visiting teams, and low-key, old-style ball fields like Scottsdale Stadium and Mesa's HoHoKam Park have been replaced by shiny ballparks that try to blend modernity with tradition.

You can change the stage, but spring training is still all about dreams found and lost. Take this Cubs fan's experience at a Cubs-Brewers spring-training game last season.

Fargo-style upper-Midwestern accents and the nasal vowels of Chicago's North Side were honking all around the stands, as if a flock of stuffed-up geese had landed for the day in Mesa. Although neither team has enjoyed much success in recent years (the last time the Cubbies were in the World Series, they still held spring training on Catalina Island), there was an excitement in seeing the 1997 lineup for the first time, especially with ace Steve Trachsel on the mound.

The optimism lasted for less than an inning. Trachsel hit the first batter, gave up a double to the second, served up a home run to the third, and then, for good measure, hit the cleanup batter. Even though the Cubs came back to win the game, to this fan's experienced eyes, the 1997 die was cast.