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The Range: The Tucson Weekly's Daily Dispatch

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Friday, April 2, 2010

Nostalgia Hi Corbett: "As Old-School As a Flannel Uniform"

Posted by Jim Nintzel on Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 11:09 PM

Colorado Rockies fans line up for autographs from their favorite players at the last spring training game in Tucson.

ALEX BUDISH
Farewell to Hi Corbett, an aging temple of baseball where the players meet the fans.

Jim Caple at ESPN gets it right about Hi Corbett:

Hi Corbett feels more like the way spring training once was, when a team's objective was to get overweight players back in shape after a winter peddling insurance rather than to sell $30 "premium date" tickets, $8.50 beers and $40 souvenir shirts to wealthy fans vacationing from Chicago. Don't get me wrong — spring training still is a wonderful time, and every fan should enjoy its many pleasures at least once (every date is a "premium date" when you're layering on sunscreen while watching a Cactus or Grapefruit League game instead of shoveling snow). But as teams gouge taxpayers to build ever more lavish new "complexes," spring training not only becomes a little more big league; it becomes a little less personable and a little less accessible.

Hi Corbett, however, is as old-school as a flannel uniform. Set amid Tucson's Gene C. Reid Park, the stadium is surrounded by a golf course (the Braves really should have trained here), a zoo (the only one in baseball outside of the bleachers at Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park), picnic areas, walking paths, ponds and very public spaces. On a recent Sunday, you could see the Rockies warming up on one field, a dozen or so people performing Tai Chi beneath a small grove of trees a few yards away and a father and son playing catch just behind them.

It was so wonderfully pastoral that Georges Seurat should have painted the scene — "Sunday in the Park with Jorge De La Rosa."

"You don't feel like it's a moneymaking venture here," said former pitcher Roy Smith, who trained at Hi Corbett in the 1980s with Cleveland. "The guys are getting ready. You're close [to players]. It's more like a park over there instead of a complex. The fans can get close. That's why I always liked it. It was like that at Vero Beach [Fla.]. It has some of the aspects of the Vero Beach when the Dodgers were there."

Spring training changed a lot when the Indians left Tucson and MLB started to milk it for every buck. Maybe a crazy new Japanese league is just what we need to bring back some of the magic we've lost.