On the road (How our boycott of Spring Training is related to Kerry being butt-dailed by the owner of an MLB team)

We will always have a soft spot in our hearts (and a few caps and jerseys in our closets) for the Colorado Rockies, because of their 18-year stint in Tucson for Spring Training, and Kerry’s deep connection with them for the last few years of that.

But let me start this with the fascinating history of Spring Training in Tucson.

In 1946, all 16 major league teams had spring training in Florida. But change was coming. World War II had just ended, and integration of the majors was inevitable. The story of Jackie Robinson, the first African-American player, is well-known. But it was the second African-American player, Larry Doby, and his team, who were instrumental in teams starting to move their spring training sites to Arizona.

Bill Veeck bought the Cleveland Indians (now Guardians) in 1946, and he liked the idea of integration, but didn’t like the idea of having to subject an African-American major leaguer to the Jim Crow South. For 1947, Veeck moved the Indians’ spring training to Tucson, and convinced New York Giants’ owner Horace Stoneham (who was also hiring players from the Negro Leagues) to move his team’s spring training to Phoenix, so that the two teams would have someone to play. Tucson and Phoenix were not color-blind, but they were better than the deep South.

Jackie Robinson debuted at the start of 1947. A few months later, Doby (he’s also in the Hall of Fame now) appeared with the Indians, and became the second African-American player in the majors, and the first in the American League. The next year, Veeck added Hall of Famers Satchel Paige and Minnie Minoso, and the Indians won their first World Series since 1920, and their last one with that team name (the Guardians are still looking for their first).

Tucson was the spring training home of the Indians for many years, and many other teams started spending February and March in Arizona. When the Indians moved back to Florida in the 1990s, the Colorado Rockies had just become a major league franchise and moved into Tucson. When Phoenix was awarded an MLB franchise, Tucson built a new two-team complex, and the Diamondbacks and the Chicago White Sox (ironically, the team Veeck owned when he conceived of the ill-fated Disco Demolition night) moved in there, so Tucson had three teams training in town. Not long after that, Kerry and I were wondering who took care of the players and their families for the non-sports medical issues that surely arose, so she sent letters to each of the teams, effectively cold-calling them and saying that she was a family physician, and would be interested in working with them.

Nothing happened for a couple of years, and then one spring, the Rockies called, and it was the start of a great relationship. She didn’t deal with sore arms or pulled hamstrings – that’s the job of the trainers and the sports medicine people. But players bring their wives and families, and there are the coaches and the staff and the umpires, and all these people coming in from all over the U.S. and Caribbean, passing germs to each other.

It didn’t provide a huge source of revenue for her, but she enjoyed (almost all) the people, and it gave us a far different view of the game. She’d always thought that major league baseball players wives were all bimbos, but grew to really like many of them.

·       One young player’s new wife was pregnant with their first child, and Kerry spent quite a bit of time taking care of her. At one point, she called an urgent care late at night, and they asked if she had a friend who could drive her in, and she tearfully replied, “I don’t know anyone here except Dr. Swindle.”

·       One pitcher ended up with the Rockies after stints with several other teams, including the Cubs. Kerry saw his wife, and Kerry said that the only time she’d been to Wrigley Field, she’d been surprised by how run-down it looked, and how much it smelled like urine. The player’s wife responded that the team had a day-care room for players’ children, but that it was so decrepit that none of the mothers would leave their children there. The mothers offered to pay to paint the room and fix it up, but the team declined. No wonder they went more than 100 years between World Series wins.

·       Another pitcher went into a prolonged slump one year, and there was lots of speculation about why he’d lost his stuff. Kerry wondered if it was because his wife had just delivered twins, giving them four children under the age of three.

·       Matt Holliday was one of the real stars of the team, and famously slid in safely (at least that’s what the umpire said) in the extra innings of a playoff game, allowing the Rockies to make the postseason, where they swept two teams in the National League before a week off took their momentum away and they lost the only World Series they’ve ever played in. Matt’s wife, Alicia, was one of Kerry’s favorites. Kerry liked her down-to-earth sensibilities. Despite Matt’s objections, Alicia refused to fly First Class to and from Denver with their young children. Besides being frugal, she was nice. Kerry and I were invited to the end-of-Spring-Training banquet one year, and the rules were pretty clear – the staff didn’t bother the players and their families. But Alicia made it a point to come over and say Hi to Kerry.

Kerry also took care of the folks other than the players.

·       Third-base coach Mike Gallego came in, and Kerry didn’t know him, but she said, “Oh, you must have been a second-baseman.” He was surprised, but confirmed it. Her clue? He’s 5-foot-8.

·       When an umpire wasn’t feeling well, she became the go-to doctor. She loved talking to the umpires, and they always thought she was crazy for saying she would have loved to have been an umpire. But they all got along well, and for a number of years, she’d recognize umpires at games we attended.

·       And she got to know the training staff well. She was particularly impressed with chief trainer “Dougie” (Keith Dugger). A couple of years after Kerry had stopped working with them, Rockies’ pitcher Juan Nicasio was hit in the head by a potentially lethal line drive during a game, but Dougie and the the rest of the staff was on the mound within seconds. Not only did they save his life, but he pitched again.

·       One year she was taking care of the owner and his family quite a bit, enough that they ended up with her cell number. So she’s the only person I know who has ever been butt-dialed by the owner of a major league baseball team (he apologized). He did give us the tickets for his seats for one weekend when we met Kerry’s dad and stepmom from Nebraska for a couple of games, and they were great seats (although the ushers were pretty strict about not putting things on the dugout).

But all good things must come to an end. The complex where the White Sox and Diamondbacks trained is a beautiful field, but in an industrial part of town, without restaurants or nice hotels nearby. So the White Sox entered into a deal to get a new stadium in the Phoenix area, and paid the city of Tucson a few million dollars to break their lease. Once they were gone, that meant the city had broken its lease with the Diamondbacks and Rockies (there was a guarantee of three teams), and those two moved out after 2010 Spring Training. We haven’t been to a Spring Training game since.

Our favorite memento from those days comes from one year when many of the players, including most of the starters, signed a jersey and gave it to her at the end of Spring Training. She framed it and it hung in her office for years, and it now hangs in her sewing room. It probably has some monetary value, but certainly has sentimental value. How many people have a jersey signed in March of 2007 by many of the players who would, at the end of the season, become the “Rocktober” Rockies, the only Colorado team to make the World Series?