Surviving Peoria
Players and staff are deep into the dog days of Spring Training, and it takes more than a hot foot to shake things up.
A friend and loyal WTP reader sent me that picture this week. He took it from his seat at Salt River Fields at Talking Stick, the shared Spring Training home of the Diamondbacks and Rockies. That one image — with Dodgers manager Dave Roberts in the foreground and the building where I went to work for four years in the background — was more than enough to transport me back to the Cactus League.
My first Spring Training was in 2006. I had officially started my job with the Padres on March 31, 2005; the final leg of my first 12 months in the game was a six-week stint in Peoria, Arizona.
I remember packing up the Toyota Corolla with clothes, my guitar, and my Bose iPod SoundDock. At this point, my time as a San Diego resident was still measured in months, and just about everyone I knew was also making the annual pilgrimage east on I-8. My destination came in the form of the address I was provided for my anonymous short-term corporate housing. If that’s your thing, by the way, then Phoenix is your place.
My first season — and first 180 days in San Diego — was a nonstop stretch of baseball from Opening Day until the final out of Game 3 of the NLDS. I knew how to get from my condo to the ballpark, and that was about it. I loved it.
Now it was time to get out of town. The drive to Phoenix is marked with curiosities like the Imperial Sand Dunes in the southeast corner of California, billboards for Date Shakes served in the aptly named Dateland, Ariz., the Space Age Lodge in Gila Bend, Ariz., and stretches of highway where the shoulder of eastbound traffic is almost in Mexico.
I was headed east, eager to understand why Kevin Towers had always been quick to call Spring Training his favorite time of the year.
I don’t know exactly what my professional strategy was for that spring, but I remember very intentionally packing business attire — dress shirts and slacks that were a departure from the polo-and-khaki standard uniform of the office — and throwing in one or two pairs of shorts and a few t-shirts.
I had no idea what the hell I was doing.
I showed up on that first morning in Peoria feeling good that I was relatively early, utterly unaware that for players, coaches, and clubhouse staff, 6:01 a.m. is late. I was wearing a dark blue button down shirt, grey slacks, and dress shoes, and I was ready to get to work.
KT saw me as I entered the office, quickly looked me up and down, and made a face as if he’d just taken a swig from a spittoon: “What are you wearing? You look like a banker.”
Before I had a chance to defend myself, he added: “It’s casual out here — shorts and golf shirts.” Kevin kept walking. I stood still and realized that my first week’s per diem would be redistributed at the nearby mall in the very near future. (One of those Under Armour purchases still lives in my closet, and, yes, the shirt is now old enough to drive.)
By my second Spring Training, I had gotten wise enough to bring my golf clubs and all the moisture-wicking clothing I owned. I began to venture out a bit more, even exploring Scottsdale, which still felt mysterious and dangerous, seductively offering high-end dining and a reality TV-inspiring social scene guarded by a minefield of DUI checkpoints.
Getting arrested might be the second easiest fate to befall you in Peoria.
On a Thursday in early March 2007, there was no reason to expect it would be my day to play outlaw. Greg Maddux had just wrapped up his day of work against the Cubs. It was the middle of the third inning, as benign a time as any in a ballgame.
That’s when someone sitting to my right tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to the police officer at the end of the row.
“Is your name Ryan Isaac?”
I confirmed that it was. He motioned for me to join him. I complied. He read an address from a piece of paper and asked if it was mine. Indeed, it was. (Oh, Pacific Beach, how have you betrayed me?)
“You better come with me,” he ordered before turning around and briskly — purposefully — marching up the aisle. The walk up the stairs, from near field level to the top of the concourse area — where three more cops awaited me — was fueled by pure fear. My legs went numb, my heart was pumping fast enough to power the Valley’s electrical grid.
My career and my transgressions both flashed before me as I attempted to process the moment. KT would probably overlook a run-in with the law, but I was fairly certain Sandy Alderson wouldn’t.
More immediately, though, what had I done? Do they issue warrants for missing a cable bill? What about my friend and colleague who was crashing at my place while I was away? I assumed he was watering the plants — okay, plant — and not cooking PCP in the bath tub.
While these thoughts raced around my head, I tried to get our Assistant GM on the phone. He was the one who could acquit me.
Fred answered the phone and I began to relay details to him.
I can’t remember exactly what he said (not because of the time that’s passed but because of the effect trauma has on memory), though I remember him slowing me down — stopping me — with a “wait, what?”
“Why would they be asking you about your San Diego address?”
I’m still not sure if that’s a logical thing for out-of-state authorities to do, but it was enough to trip the circuit breaker in my head. Everything around me suddenly slowed down, the way it might for any of the players on the field at a particularly lucid and focused moment.
What next came out of my mouth was the sort of thing announcers apologize for when a microphone picks up some choice words between a player and an umpire. I’d love to say I saw all the signs and tells of the prank I had just bit hard on, like when Chazz Palminteri’s character figures out who Keyser Söze is at the end of The Usual Suspects.
I didn’t. For starters, the events of March 8, 2007 are not winning any awards for best original screenplay, nor will they inspire such work. There was nothing subtle about it. I was the right combination of uptight and overconfident to fall victim to a well-orchestrated prank (there were two staff photographers ready to document the shakedown). I was later told that the entire press box was waiting for the final out of the top of the third. Well done, Linda.
It can get pretty quiet around the Peoria facility come April. By mid-March, many players, coaches, and staffers have grown restless, ready for the season — including later starts to most days — to begin. One of my friends, who was new to the Padres in 2007, recently shared with me that there were simply things you had to do to “survive Peoria.”
Let the photos show, at least I wasn’t still dressed like a banker.
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Four of them even! Incredible.