The last days of Rockies spring training
Mark Cunningham
Looks like the joke’s on you, Reid Park Zoo in Tucson, Ariz. Although my dad and I parked our rental in your parking lot last weekend, and though we even sauntered near your front gate to check out the giant anteater, the truth is that we never even came into the zoo! Nay, when the septuagenarian parking attendant at Hi Corbett Field barked from beneath her pile of sunburned folds that the lot was full and we would have to turn around, park our car in a mall parking lot, then return via shuttle bus, we said, “Fuck you, Blanche from the Golden Girls. What you got here is a couple of stone-cold risk takers!” And risk we did, parking in the zoo lot for four hours when we weren’t there for the zoo at all. We were there for Colorado Rockies spring training!
But we had to park there! We were late for a clash between the Milwaukee Brewers and our Rockies, late for our last chance to see the boys of summer awash in the hues of Arizona spring at Hi Corbett, a place that a friend likened to seeing major leaguers in a high-school setting. Were we supposed to miss these last precious moments searching for a parking spot like a couple of assholes?
Of course we weren’t. Because Hi Corbett will no longer host the Colorado Rockies for spring training after this season, as it has since the franchise began. The needs of modern-day major-league baseball have outgrown the amenities provided by the tiny 9,500-capacity Cactus League outpost. So beginning next year, the Rockies will take their preseason squad to a larger, more modern facility near Scottsdale, a facility they will share with the Arizona Diamondbacks, a year-round type of place that will be used for rehab and minor-league squads as well. And when they do, the intimacy of the Rockies spring training experience will forever be changed.
“Hi Corbett is like an old shoe,” says Rockies spokesman Jay Alves. “It’s very comfortable, and part of me doesn’t really want to leave Tucson because I’m comfortable here. I think all of us are. But the Scottsdale facility is more the way of today’s spring baseball. The fans here have been great to us, though. And I will miss that part of it the most.”
When I learned the Rocks were leaving Hi Corbett, I had to take my old man to see it. Despite being an absolute baseball lunatic, he’d never been. So we made one of those classic American father-son pilgrimages in honor of the national pastime: James Earl Jones drove the whole way; Shoeless Joe emerged from the cornfields to join us for a hot dog. We built it; they came. And it was everything we imagined it could be.
We pointed out the places we recognized from Major League (which filmed its spring training scenes at Hi Corbett). We watched the player’s entourages strut around the facility, Latin posses decked out in tight jeans and jewelry, standing so obviously apart from those there in their slob-like mere fandom. We watched the seedy baseball card guys try to land autographs to hock on eBay. We shrieked like schoolgirls when Troy Tulowitzki emerged from the dugout. We commented on Aaron Cook’s slimmed-down physique. We watched desperate minor leaguers lunge toward their first real shot in the bigs. We sat within spitting distance of Carlos Gonzalez and Ryan Spilborghs and we let the sunshine hit our faces and we soaked it all in and it was brilliant. And in a couple of weeks it will all be gone.
On the way out, we drove back past the gob of skin that tried to make us park in the mall lot and my dad and I wondered what she’d be doing next year. Tucson sees a huge economic boom during spring training, and next year there probably won’t be enough interest or money to keep her on board. Then again, maybe she’ll be dead by next year. Or maybe she’ll live and the Reid Park Zoo will land a panda or some other crazy popular animal, thus necessitating increased monitoring of the parking lot, and they’ll hire the old bag for the job.
The funny thing about hope is that it always springs eternal.
