When The Levee Breaks

Hi, just got back from Tucson Electric Park , where I took a bunch of pictures at today's game.  Our junket was plagued by all the same problems haunting spring training games up here in the valley, plus it took longer for us to get there. The metro area interstate is peppered with lane restrictions, but having lived in the Old Pueblo some years ago, I snaked my way around alternate routes to show off the city's sights to the family. Like the beautiful U of A campus, and my old apartment up near Country Club and Prince. That was where my brother and I got a knock on our door at 2AM from the National Guard, way back in 1983, as the swollen Rillito Creek  voraciously ate our neighborhood's condominiums in the middle of the night. Ah, good times.

Today's game, by contrast, was hot and dry. Not as hot as the other day, but still hot enough to almost kill people. We idled out on Ajo Way in a single file line for about twenty minutes waiting to enter the parking lot behind the stadium. As we've noted before, it's baffling how a game with 6000 fans inevitably takes twice as long to park as an MLB game with 30000. Oh well, at least the lady in the dusty gravel lot who took my money was cheerful.

Inside the stadium, there was a colorful concourse booth plastered with Dbacks signage where one could ostensibly enter to win season tickets. I figured you fill out a form, maybe apply for some crappy credit card, and stick your name in a bowl. Wrong. The sleazeball with the bad teeth in the Hawaiian shirt manning the booth was actually hawking timeshares. Turns out you have to sit through a "presentation" back up in Phoenix before you can even enter the drawing for nebulous tickets in an unspecified location.

A younger, less sleazy fella was trying to give away "free Dbacks shirts", the red ones, along the first base side. I watched him for about five minutes. Just one lady stopped at his table. They had a brief conversation and she left without a shirt. I guess she either didnt like it or it wasn't really free.

The stadium was pleasantly nondescript, trimmed more in generic green than Sedona Red, in deference to the White Sox who share the facility each March, or perhaps, simply to taste. Our seats were behind home plate, next to the guys with JUGS guns and expensive sunglasses , but the tiny seats were cheaply manufactured with little back support and no cupholders. The Catalina Mountains beyond left field look grand and provide a nice backdrop for the aerial jet maneuvers screeching out of Davis-Monthan AFB.

The game wasnt advertised as split squad but it sure seemed like it. Seattle was without Ichiro, Sexson, Raul Ibanez or Adrian Beltre and our side was missing Byrnes, Hudson, Quentin and Tracy among others. It'd be nice if they told you that before you shell out dough for the tickets. Maybe next time they'll fill me in after I attend a Hawaiian Getaway seminar.

The Dbacks played well, and I'm not referring to the score, which was something like 8 to 1. Edgar Gonzalez wasn't dominant but didnt beat himself either - he threw strikes and appeared to mix speeds well. Stephen Drew speared a sure hit up the middle and flipped from his back for a gorgeous 6-4-3 double play. Most of all, I was impressed by Arizona's hitters.  Not so much by the pair of homers and the eight runs - that's obvious enough - but more by some of the outs they made. At least half a dozen fly balls that Snyder, Drew and others clearly got under still managed to carry out near the track.

It's only one game and perhaps a function of a lame Jeff Weaver, Seattle's starter, as much as anything, but that's what I took away. Sometimes a team scores 8 runs and you see they combined good hitting with a break or two that busted things open, but this wasn't really like that. They weren't exactly driving rockets everywhere, but it was hard not to get the feeling that with a gust of wind, or if a barely foul liner had landed fair, the levee would've broke and with it a dozen or more runs. As it was, eight looked effortless and within character - at least for today.   

Tucson Trip Photos

(flood photos courtesy of Peter Kresan)