Last week, I mentioned we had a great crop of journalism school interns this summer and introduced you to UA School of Journalism student Elise McClain, who wrote the cover story on the political fight over the future of the Affordable Care Act.
This week, another one of our interns, Eddie Celaya, collaborated with Tucson Salvage columnist Brian Smith on a look at our hard-scrabble semi-pro baseball team, the Tucson Saguaros. As someone who has been going to baseball games in this town for more than four decades, I'm happy to hear that the cry of "Play ball!" is still ringing out somewhere here in the Old Pueblo, even if it's a long way from the glory days of spring training with the Cleveland Indians back in the day. The Saguaros aren't drawing big crowds to Kino Veterans Memorial Stadium, but they are playing with big hearts and, as Eddie puts it, "for love of the game."
Eddie is what they call non-traditional student; he's gone to journalism school after gathering what we in the biz call "life experience" through his 20s: He's been a bartender, a lifeguard down at Florida's Disney World and an extraordinary swim instructor. (Seriously: He's been working with my nearly 4-year-old daughter and she's come a long way over the last six weeks—yeah, interns do a lot of weird gigs around here!—so if you're looking for someone to come to your house in these final weeks of summer, hit me up and I'll put you in touch.)
Eddie caught the journalism bug from the late Scot Skinner, the longtime Arizona Daily Star reporter and editor who recognized Eddie's talent when he was taking a class in Pima College's journalism program. Scot encouraged Eddie to further study the dark arts and now he's off to the races. Eddie, who is starting at the UA School of Journalism this fall, has jumped on every assignment we've had for him here, from covering court hearings to heading out to baseball games—and, in my humble opinion, he's been knocking it out of park. We're going to be sorry to see him head out of here when his internship wraps up (but I'm hopeful he'll keep up with the swim lessons next summer).
Enjoy this week's look at the Saguaros and make it out to the final regular-season homestand this weekend, or get out to one of the upcoming playoff games to see if the Saguaros will once again be crowned the champions of the Pecos League.
— Jim Nintzel