Photo Flashback: 1989 Exhibition Finale

Lineups lined up

I missed Friday and was never married to the "Photo Friday" moniker anyway, so I'm going with "Photo Flashback" for this one.

While thumbing through an old photo album the other day, I came across several shots from various trips to Shea Stadium and Cooperstown. They were all taken with my meager Kodak Disk camera, so they images aren't great. The players look like specs on the film, so you'll pretty much have to take my word that they are indeed from April 1989.

It was a Sunday, the final day of the exhibition season. The Mets and Yankees had agreed to resume playing Spring Training games against one other in '89, culminating with two in New York during the final weekend. On Saturday, April 1, 1989, they played in the Bronx. On Sunday the 2nd, they were at Shea. And so was I, along with my father, his brother and my cousin, the only Yankee fan in the bunch.

The Yankees won, 4-0, their fourth win in six exhibition games against the Mets. But it was the Amazin's who would have the better season, finishing 87-75, though six games behind the NL East-winning Cubs. The Yankees went 74-87, trailing the champion Blue Jays by 14 1/2.

What follows are the photos I found worthy of scanning from that day (you can see them individually on my Flickr account). In the second one, you may notice two hands in the air, reaching just above the foul line in the center of the photo. That's Mayor Ed Koch, who was on hand for the game. Oh, and those pregame shots with players in the infield? Not batting practice -- infield practice. When's the last time you saw that at a big-league ballpark?

Photo Friday: Cactus League action

Fontenot flop

The vacation got off to a glorious start. Our flight arrived in Phoenix half an hour early and we got our rental car and headed over to HoHoKam Park in Mesa (with a pit stop at In-n-Out Burger in Tempe).

Moments after Randy Wells made the first pitch of the spring for the Cubs, it hit me and I turned to Casey and said, "We're at a ballgame!" Baseball is back. Thank God.

It was a great day for the Cubs, which made for a wonderful afternoon. We spent the first four innings in our seats on the first-base side, then got up to grab a beer, roam the ballpark and take in the atmosphere.

Upon reaching the left-field corner, Casey's eyes lit up at a sign advertising a group of former players signing autographs. "Rollie Fingers!" she said. "I have to see that mustache in person!"

Rollie was there, sitting next to fellow Hall of Famer Ferguson Jenkins. Joining them beneath the tent were Bert Campaneris, George Foster, Lee Smith and Pete LaCock. For a $30 donation -- as it was called -- I bought an autographed postcard of Jenkins' Hall of Fame plaque and an 8x10 color glossy photo of Fingers delivering a pitch in Oakland's glorious yellow jerseys of the '70s.

Sadly, this game is the only baseball stop on our Arizona/Utah vacation. From here, it's north to higher elevations and colder climes, to the desert and the national parks. I may have another update or two over the next week, but if not, this will have to stand for the time being.

Won't you take me to ... Dodgertown

Down on the mid-Florida Atlantic coast -- the Treasure Coast -- sits Vero Beach, home to Dodgers Spring Training for 61 years ... until this year. Now that the deadlines have been met in Goodyear, Ariz., the Dodgers will train in the Cactus League beginning next year, ending a six-decade tradition that had come to mean Spring Training. Just those words, "Dodgertown" and "Vero Beach," meant that it was March, that the baseball season was just around the corner.

Coming off I-95, I went a few hundred yards on a local four-lane before turning left into what looked like any other old-growth Florida neighborhood or subdivision. Only when I came to the next traffic light in this area, a sign welcoming me to Dodgertown stood on the corner. I turned into the first parking area, which put me down the hill from the fence behind Holman Stadium's left-field berm, and walked back out to the main road -- such as it was -- and joined the rest of the late-arriving morning stream of fans. We were late for the morning workouts, but early for the game. Holman's gates weren't open yet, but the Dodgers were taking batting practice on a back field and minor leaguers were enduring pitchers fielding practice on another nearby diamond.

Dodgertown was quaint, a visit back to old-school Spring Training. Walking the grounds was like exploring a resort, the streets and paths having theme names and the recognizable figures passing the everyday visitors. The path from Holman and the main complex to the back fields and minor league headquarters -- Vin Scully Way -- was divided by rope, giving the players a clear road between the fields and stadium, yet allowing the fans easy up-close access as they passed. I headed that way to explore the grounds, watching the minor leaguers hustle, then hearing the clip-clop of their cleats on the asphalt as they left the field. Joe Torre sat in a golf cart on one field, the fans up against the backstop to get pictures of LA's new manager. From where we stood, we could hear the conversation clearly.

"We leave for Orlando tonight," Torre said. "And then tomorrow we'll fly to Phoenix before heading to China."

Heading back down the path, I looked over a group of fans lining the fence in the left-field corner, where Jason Schmidt was signing autographs. He signed for a long time, getting to everyone, which isn't too surprising -- it's not like he had any throwing to do this spring. Blake DeWitt also stopped on his return trip down Vin Scully Way. The fans went to get his signature too, perhaps unsure of who he was, but not wanting to take a chance to miss getting a signature from the next Dodgers Rookie of the Year or All-Star.

Holman Stadium's simplicity is striking. A '40s ballyard hosting one of the most valuable and recognizable franchises in the game. It was more than watching a big-league team on a minor league field -- it was watching it on a small-college field, a JUCO diamond in a small corner of the county. The only thing that made the players look out of place was their size -- giants on the diamond in some cases.

After a complete traverse of the concourse, from one foul pole to the other and back to the center, I grabbed some grub and settled into my seat -- five rows off the field at about the third-base coach's box. I was so close, I could just about see the smoke coming out of Larry Bowa's ears as he stood there, forced to wear a batting helmet.

In my lap was the day's giveway, a blue beach towel. I unfolded it to find that it was a Dodger Stadium towel, with a coupon attached. A man to my left noticed me looking at the coupon's fine print.

"You can get a free soda -- if you go to L.A.," he said as I read the details of the Carl's Jr. promotion of a free 32 oz. soda with any meal purchase.

"I can," I replied, "and if I do it before Oct. 31, 2007."

Just before the game began, the occupants of the four seats to my right, between me and the aisle, settled in -- a pair of older couples, the woman in the seat next to me with her cane. So that's when I decided I'd stay seated for the first five frames, then ask them to move so that I could get out and spend the rest of the game perambulating around the park. They were who you'd expect to see watching the Dodgers in Florida in March -- the retirees with time on their hands and savings to spend.

The main drawback to Holman was that smoking was allowed on the concourse beyond certain sections down either line, and I often found myself weaving around cancer clients taking up space. This lax rule allowed them to continue to watch the game, instead of forcing them down the steps to a more open area, near where the main merchandise tent stood and the restrooms were located. The restrooms were unusual for a ballpark, too, free-standing cinder-block-and-cement structures with the faint hint of a county park relief station (but in a good way).

I added to my collection of tiny plastic team helmets by getting soft-serve mint chocolate chip and headed toward the left-field berm. I got there and sat down at field level a few feet from the warning track, only a chain-link fence between me and left field. Shortly after I settled in, Juan Pierre, Andre Ethier and Delwyn Young arrived to run some sprints near the track before calling it a day and crossing the outfield to get back to the Dodgers' clubhouse. The berm had emptied out a bit from earlier in the game, and so I sat alone, with no one invading my space. Those around me were quiet enough so that when Pierre, Ethier and Young ran past, I could hear their grunts. When they walked back to the foul line for another set, I could hear their conversation. In between, it was nothing but the crack of the bat, the slap of the ball in the left fielder's mitt, and the echo of the public-address announcer calling another batter to the plate.

Baseball in the mouse's house

At one time, the acres of land southwest of Orlando, Florida, were undeveloped or consisted mainly of orange groves. But ever since Walt Disney established his World, the area has continued to grow. There are the theme parks -- internationally based, water-based, animal-based and movie-based -- a Downtown, a suburb (Celebration) and a whole Wide World of Sports.

After exiting the highway, you follow the signs -- in a cartoonish Disney font -- to your destination, turning this way and that, circling around it seems, disorienting yourself. Though I took the exit before 1 p.m., it wasn't until 1:05 that I stepped out of my car and made my way across the parking lot to Champion Stadium, named, I realized once inside, for the apparel company, and not any kind of run of success by its spring tennant, the Atlanta Braves.

The ballpark sits among a collection of other attractions situated, in true Disney fashion, as a sort of Main Street microcosm. It's nothing more than a wide concourse, an open-air mall of sorts, but with the paths intersecting outside the gates behind home plate and the nearby stores and restaurants having full-on facades, it still has the feeling of theme-park-as-neighborhood.

By the time I emerged from the tunnel and saw the field, Brian McCann was batting for the Braves in the bottom of the first inning. He singled in the first two runs in what became a 3-1 Atlanta victory. A healthy crowd -- sprinkled liberally with fans in Cardinals red supporting the visiting team -- sat in the sun, and though I walked out to my section of metal bleachers along the right-field line and found my seat in the back row, I never made my way across the legs of the half-dozen people already there. I stood the whole game, exploring the various angles of the ballpark. It's a Disneyfied setup -- the cartoonish font returns to mark the sections, and there are hardly any permanent Braves logos to be seen, because once April comes, this ballpark is home to the Double-A affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays, the Orlando Rays.

The best part of the experience, of this first moment at a Spring Training exhibition game, is watching a Major League game -- even with a healthy dose of prospects and scrubs taking the place of the starts we'll see come the regular season -- in a minor league park. The little details that aren't noticed from any Major League loge or mezzanine section are enhanced here: Adam Wainwright's lanky height, Albert Pujols' chin resting on his front shoulder in his batting stance, Mark Teixeira's distinctive swing, Phil Niekro's chalk-line-white hair.

Among other things, I noticed that the Cardinals are wearing their red caps with their road gray uniforms, a change from recent (regular) seasons, when they'd wear a navy blue cap with red "STL" logo. And in a fun example of lawn art, the outfield grass had a silhouette of Mickey Mouse's head mowed into it.

As it is with players' performance or rookies' emergence, Spring Training can provide a hint of what's to come when the season begins in earnest. Maybe the Cards are doing away with the blue road caps (a shame, if it's true). And maybe Pujols' elbow injury won't take away from his game that much, after all, because he's still hitting the ball this spring the way we'd expect him to.

As I leave the ballpark and make my way across the sea of cars, I'm glad I made the Disney complex my first stop, because it's the most anticeptic, generic, corporatized ballpark of the three I'll see on this trip. I chose it over the Astros' camp in Kissimmee, and I probably would've enjoyed that a little more for the atmosphere (and gotten to see Blue Jays ace Roy Halladay take on the Astros' No. 1, Roy Oswalt), but Orlando proved to be a good choice because of the stars who played in this game -- not just Pujols, McCann and Teixeira, but Troy Glaus, Jeff Francoeur, probable Cards Opening Day pitcher Wainwright and Braves pitching prospect Jair Jurrjens. Plus, I found out his first name is pronounced "J-air," the sound of simply putting a "J" in front of the word "air."

I follow the line of cars snaking its way out of the labyrinth of the Disney complex -- parking here is free, something unique for me on this three-camp tour, but I hear later that the Braves charge fans to watch workouts, so in the end, it's not as great a deal when you're paying for each person individually, rather than by the carfull -- and hit the overpriced toll road east to Titusville. I've got a little space detour before I continue the baseball portion of this trip.

An All-Star Game (or two) in Yankee Stadium's future?

Two weeks ago, the New York Post reported that MLB officials and the Yankees have discussed awarding the 2008 All-Star Game to Yankee Stadium. (Rumor is that one will count.) That's a great idea. Seriously, it's a fine way to cap off the historic site's long and storied history. It's something they should've done in 1991 or 1992 at Comiskey Park, where the first mid-summer exhibition was played.

But then, just a few days later, the New York Times cited a source who said MLB was also considering giving the Bronx the 2010 game at the new Yankee Stadium.

While it seems like an extension of the change in All-Star Game policy, I don't like that possibility. A few years ago, Bud Selig announced that the All-Star Game would no longer alternate between the National and American leagues each year because the Senior Circuit had so many new ballparks worth showcasing. Hence, the 2006 game will be played in Pittsburgh, to be followed by the 2007 game in San Francisco. With so many new NL parks opening up (by next year, that list will include St. Louis in addition to Arizona, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and San Diego), Selig said, they wouldn't be able to bring the game to some of the nicest and newest parks until 2018.

Not alternating leagues is fine, but I think they should at least focus on geographic regions, spreading the game out around the country each summer. From 2004 to 2007, it will have gone from Houston (South) to Detroit (Upper Midwest) to Pittsburgh (East) to San Francisco (West Coast) and then, potentially, to the East Coast in New York. The 2009 game should then go to San Diego, Arizona or St. Louis, but if it comes back to New York in 2010, it should be at the new Queens ballpark before the Bronx gets it again.

Furthermore, to me it just reeks of the rich getting richer. It's another example of how, even with the team in a three-team dogfight for the wild card entering play this weekend, Major League Baseball is comprised of the Yankees first and everybody else second.

Keep it simple, stupid

Today's games should count more than yesterday's, if you ask me. Oh, there are no major-league games today?

My point exactly.

Driving into work this morning, a caller and the host made a point on WFAN about the idiocy known as "This One Counts." (I won't drop this until Major League Baseball does.) No matter how much weight Bud Selig and his minions try to add to the exhibition, the players are never going to treat it like a true game, unless maybe you award the players on each team a cash bonus, paid on the spot, and other incentives -- say, $1,000 handed to them at first base after a single, or $10,000 in crisp hundreds collected while standing on home plate after a home run. Oh, and don't keep secrets like a new Corvette from the players. You'll have more guys trying to be MVPs.

The point made on the radio was that Jim Edmonds, one of the game's most aggressive players, didn't come close to Miguel Tejada in an attempt to break up a double play. Edmonds -- a guy who dives in the outfield at least once every two games, who only takes off a crisp, clean uniform on days when he never left the shade of the dugout -- didn't slide hard into second base. And Edmonds plays for the Cardinals, the NL team most likely to benefit from having home-field advantage in the World Series! No one's ever going to pull a Pete Rose again and run over the catcher in an All-Star Game, for fear of injury to himself and the stigma that would come with ending Jason Varitek's season. Ever.

Managers may run the game a little differently, instituting some signs, attempting steals, starting a hit-and-run, pitching around a player. (The day we see an intentional walk in an All-Star Game -- particularly if it's the only at bat a guy like Miguel Cabrera might get -- will be, on a smaller scale, as horrendous as the Tie of 2002.) But you're never going to get anything more than Torii Hunter leaping to rob Barry Bonds of a home run, because he was there in plenty of time and it wasn't as reckless as crashing into a wall or diving headfirst for a sinking liner in the gap.

There are those who argue that if you're going to have "This One Counts," then you have to have every team represented, but I think it's even more of a reason to abolish that representation rule. If the All-Star Game is for league supremacy and is meant to determine which side gets home-field advantage in the World Series, then each league should have its best players available to help it win. The NL deserved to have Cliff Floyd's relative youth and strong arm over Moises Alou's creaky knees. It deserved to have Marcus Giles available for four or five innings instead of Jeff Kent for one at bat. Keeping the fan voting is more important to me than home-field advantage, and how can you justify the fans' collective whim with making the game matter? Carlos Beltran and Edmonds didn't deserve to start over Miguel Cabrera and Andruw Jones, but the fans wanted to see them.

Clearly, the game doesn't count to guys like Gary Sheffield, who in the past only went to represent the Dodgers if they paid for his family to join him, or to Pedro Martinez. (As a Mets fan, I'm more happy that Pedro rested for the games that really count -- Sunday against the Braves -- than I would have been seeing him throw an inning against Miguel Tejada, Vladimir Guerrero and Mark Teixeira. Which he would've gotten through unscathed, which is more than I can say for John Smoltz.) Besides, I already saw him face Vlad in the lesser idiocy of interleague play.

I still love the All-Star Game. I like seeing all the different uniforms on the same field together. I like watching players from different teams chatting in the dugout. I love seeing Jimmy Rollins pretend to care enough to ask Luis Castillo where the Marlins start the second half of the season ("Are you at home?") only to have Castillo shake his head, smile, and point to the "Phillies" on Rollins' chest. "Oh, you're at our place?!" Rollins realized. But you're never going to get the players to play harder than they do now, and to use "This Time It Counts" as a failsafe to ensure there's never another tie is as ridiculous as the car salesman's suit Selig wore during his ESPN interview during the home run derby. Just tell the managers they have to save some pitchers in case the game is tied, and if one team runs out of hurlers while the score is still even, then that league loses the game. They won't run out then.

If David Stern told NBA players that the winning side of the league's midseason exhibition got home-court advantage in the finals, they still wouldn't play defense -- they'd just try to win 150-140. If the NHL ... oh, who cares? It's just that I don't see a difference in how the game is played. There's a miniscule difference in how it's managed, but nobody goes to a baseball game to see the managers' strategies played out. They want to see pitchers pitch and hitters hit.

That's what counts.

I hate that this one counts

Of all the stupid things Bud Selig has brought to Major League Baseball (shiny toupees and used-car-dealer suits on national TV during the home run derby among them), determining which team gets home-field advantage for the league's championship by using the outcome of an exhibition game has got to be one of the dumbest.

There are a few other things that could use a tweaking or revamping. Like the every team must be represented rule. If the fans won't come out to support the Devil Rays or Pirates when they're at home, why should those watching the All-Star Game be forced to cheer for Danys Baez during the player introductions? Of course, they barely did that tonight. When Baez's name was announced, there was clapping. And nothing else. No elevated cheers -- not even boos. They don't care. The Devil Rays are the girlfriend the fans don't want to admit they dated, like a phase Bud went through in the mid-90s when he reasoned that just because there was a mauseleum available in St. Petersburg, it should have a baseball team playing there.

Also -- and I didn't see any violators this year -- players must only wear their team's home whites or road grays in the All-Star Games. No alternate jerseys. No blue Indians tops, no black on anyone except the t-shirts of the White Sox, Diamondbacks, Pirates, etc.

This is the only time, place, dimension I'd ever say this -- use the DH. In both leagues. There's absolutely no reason to adhere to the NL rules where pitchers bat in the All-Star Game. If there's a rule in spring training where teams can use the DH in an NL park if both teams agree and the commissioner's office approves it (which there is), why the heck isn't there one for this? What's the point of putting Roger Clemens' name in the No. 9 spot when there's no conceivable way he'd actually put on a helmet? This is something they should seriously look into before next year, when the game is in Pittsburgh and then San Francisco the following summer.

It's 8:37. Rumor is the game will be starting in the next 25 minutes. Which is another point: no game of any import -- All-Star or postseason -- should start later than 8:15. I'll give them that late. What's more important to the advertisers? Having the West Coasters at 5:45 or 6 p.m. and losing the East Coasters at 11, or having everyone tuned in for the duration?

I'm sure some more things will come to mind over the next four hours.