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Dedication

For Dad

FIRST

Welcome to Salt River Fields, the newest spring training facility in Scottsdale, Arizona. Turn east off of Pima, drive down the fresh boulevard, Lions Way. You’re flanked by parking lots so new they still smell like tar, their white hatching wet: ample parking for the anticipated crowds, already sold out for opening day. Note the median’s plantings: environmentally sustainable xeriscape. Of course, this is 2011, and the club cares about our natural resources, is mindful of the perpetual drought in Phoenix metro. A few Christmas cacti bloom, despite it being February.

And here, at the terminus of the boulevard, the centerpiece of the multi-field complex: the twelve-thousand-seat stadium that will be the new springtime home of your Los Angeles Lions. Take it all in—the crisp-chalked diamond, the ruddy arc of infield, the bright checkerboard of the outfield. It’s not easy to grow grass like that in the desert—I offer a hat tip to the grounds crew. And see out past the warning track and fence? There’s the shock-green tilt of a well-watered general-admission lawn. Farther still, on the horizon: a ridge of mountains, jutting into the blue like the teeth of some mile-high rusted saw.

Take note of the architecture, too: the exposed steel beams and brick, a slate-gray cantilevered canopy over a sunken seating bowl, the polished concrete rotunda and concourse. A classic-looking stadium. Timeless in design, some might say, even if it’s anything but. Nothing is static, not the bluegrass-ryegrass blend growing out there, not the architecture, not the angle of the sun hitting the seats. And not a man’s career, especially not a ballplayer the first weeks of spring. His batting average, his ambition, his hopes: all is in flux. I’m looking toward Lions left fielder Jason Goodyear as I write this, coming off a Gold Glove and a close second place in American League MVP voting, coming off a possible divorce and a lonely drive across the desert in his busted old Jeep. (Doesn’t Cadillac give you a car if you do that many ads?) But that feeling of uncertainty isn’t reserved for All-Stars and the freshly dumped; it could apply to any player on the squad, any coach on the bench, any man in the executive suite, any fan in the stands. I’m looking at his entourage: his agent, Herb Allison, his maybe-wife, Liana, his favorite minor league batting coach, and the devotees who would give an eye tooth just to be near him. It’s all up in the air.