Everything Happens to Me
Cactus League Parks, Guilty Pleasure Wednesday, the Summer of 1970 and Watching and Waiting
Happy guilty pleasure Wednesday.
It’s a shit show out there, ain’t it. I keep hoping that this is just a nightmare but, no, it’s real.
We start with the fourth and third best ballparks in the Cactus League. We continue with our stories about the best pubs for guilty pleasure Wednesday. We have a story about the summer of 1970. We go out watching and waiting.
Cactus League Ballparks
I’ll be in Arizona in less than three weeks. We’ve been rating and ranking the ten Cactus League ballparks according to me. We’re up to the fourth and third best parks today. Next time we’ll identify the top two ballparks.
Number 4 - Goodyear Ballpark, Goodyear, AZ
I was going back and forth on numbers 4 and 3 but I settled on Goodyear Ballpark because its location, way out at the southwest corner of the Phoenix Area in faraway Goodyear. As you can see, Goodyear Ballpark is a nice looking park. That structure outside the park is known as the Ziz which stands 60 feet 6 inches tall - 60’ 6” is the distance from the pitcher’s mound to home plate.
Goodyear Ballpark was constructed in 2009 to house the Cleveland Guardians. The next year 2010, the Reds joined the Guardians. For me, this was good news since I’m a Reds fan. When the boys first started going to Cactus League games I was bummed because the Reds had been playing Spring Training in Florida since forever so it was a pleasant surprise that they decided to move to Arizona.
The first time we went to Goodyear Ballpark I thought, gee whiz, are we going to drive all the way to Los Angeles? It’s about a one hour drive to the park from the East Valley although you are driving counter to the traffic. In our first game Aroldis Chapman was the starting pitcher for the Reds - he was a highly touted rookie. He also threw 100 + miles an hour - he’s still pitching although he’s now with the Boston Red Sox.
Just outside the park is an array of used fighter-bomber aircraft baking in the hot Arizona sun. It’s quite a strange sight. If you squint you can see a few of this aircraft in this photo.
Goodyear Park is one of the smaller venues in that it seats 8,000 fans with another 1,500 or so in the outfield berms. They also sell food and drink local to Cleveland and Cincinnati, namely that weird, watery chili that they serve on coneys - Skyline Chili.
They also serve this slop over spaghetti in Cincinnati. It doesn’t taste like your typical chili because it’s from a Mediterranean recipe so think of nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon, as opposed cayenne pepper, paprika and cumin. You’ll either love it or you’ll hate it.
Most games at Goodyear Park are sparsely attended. In fact, the opposing team often draws more fans than the host team, particularly if the other team is the Dodgers, Giants or Padres. So it’s not difficult to grab and great seat, get a cold brew and watch the game.
Number 3 - Camelback Ranch Ballpark - Glendale
The number 3 Cactus League ballpark is the spring training home to the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago White Sox, Camelback Ranch Ballpark in Glendale.
As we noted previously, Camelback Ballpark is unique in that it was built facing the southwest, the opposite orientation of every other ballpark in the Cactus League. On sunny days this can make it tough on the hitters since the sun is in their eyes. It also makes it difficult to fans who seated in places with no shade, although shading has been added in recent years.
Camelback Ranch features 10,000 seats and can fit 3,000 more in bermed grass seating in the outfield. It was built in 2009.
What sets Camelback Ranch apart from other parks is the surrounding facilities that includes 12 practice diamonds and 3 practice infield. There’s a fish-stocked lake that separates the Dodgers and White Sox training facilities. The entire complex features complex landscaping and nice rock retaining walls. It’s truly a beautiful place to watch a ballgame.
The food and drink is good - you can get your Dodger Dog if you want one. There’s plenty of good beer as well. I recommend that you go to watch the Dodgers play since the White Sox are a worthless baseball team.
Guilty Pleasure Wednesday - the Rubicon
The best pub I frequented was the Rubicon in midtown Sacramento and it’s not even close. The Rubicon was the brainchild of Ed and Sue Brown. They went to Europe one summer and enjoyed the various local pubs that served locally-brewed beer. They said, “Hey, why can’t we do this in Sacramento?” So, in 1987, they purchased an old site on Capitol Avenue in a sketchy midtown neighborhood and created Rubicon Brewing Company.
They worked with the U.C. Davis Fermentation Science Department to secure the brew kettle and equipment and then hired a solid brewmaster. Rubicon Brewing became the second brewpub to emerge in Sacramento, the first being a small pub in a basement in Old Sacramento.
As soon as the pub opened it became a big hit. I remember going there once or twice during the late 1990s, usually following a meeting with various state housing agencies in Sacramento. Like Valley Brew, the Rubicon attracted a wide variety of people - state workers, college professors, civil engineers and others.
I became a regular in early 2001 after we moved from Stockton to Sacramento when I was working for CHOC. I often met up with a group of guys, one of which was my lobbyist at the Capitol, Mike Herald who, at that time was the Executive Director of Housing California. You’ve seen the dude before - here he is wearing a Giants hat with the boys at Spring Training last year.
Over time I became friends with over 50 folks who were regulars at the pub. Where else could you meet 50 people where you enjoyed all of them? The pub itself was modest. It featured a small television to watch the games although it was so loud you’d never really catch a game there. The food was pub grub and they sold only beer and wine.
Ed and Sue Brown sold the pub in the early 2000s to Glynn Phillips who, over time, chased people away and burned down all of the goodwill along the way. But that was for another day. From 2001 to 2017, the Rubicon Brewpub was my regular stop - four or five times a week.
Summer of 1970
KDA-FM launched in the summer of 1970 which was a pivotal one for me. Bob Cole and his crew played anything they wanted to play on Radio Free Nashville, KDA-FM, 103 point 3. Everyone had a rear window sticker shaped like an album. I spent most of the time riding on the backseat of a motorcycle. All of my friends had motorcycles except for me. We’d drive all over town but usually to places like my girlfriend’s house - that would be Connie. She called me every morning at 10:15 or so. My mother would answer and would get annoyed. Girls aren’t supposed to be calling boys, she would say. But Connie did - every day.
Every day until we moved to Germantown in late August. For the first time in my life I was sad to move. I loved Nashville and all of my friends there. I’m still in touch with many of these good women and men. My younger brother, Joel, and I say we wish we had stayed there through high school. But, my dad had some growing problems. He left Meharry Medical School in Nashville to join up with the folks at St. Jude’s Children Research Hospital in Memphis. That meant we were moving to Germantown for more adventures.
Watching and Waiting
The summer of 1970 was also the time I was introduced to the Moody Blues through a recommendation of an older sister of one of my Nashville buddies. She thought I’d like them because I was interested in mixing rock music with classical music. The first album I purchased was their masterpiece To Our Children’s Children Children which is an explosive album based upon the moon landing in 1969.
The last song on side two of the album is the beautiful Watching and Waiting which was cowritten by Ray Thomas and Justin Hayward. So here we are with the final two songs from the album. We start with the short Justin Hayward tune I Never Thought I’d Get to be a Million followed by Watching and Waiting. Enjoy!