SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ. -- I promised to be groggy while writing today's blog, and that's the reality after another long, hot day in the sun yesterday that extended late into the night. I'll be back in Milwaukee in about 14 hours, around 2 a.m. Thursday morning.
I left off yesterday morning shortly before we headed back to Maryvale to catch our final Brewers game. All three games I watched were at the Brewers' facility, which is a bit of a bummer, since some of the other parks are quite nice.
Today's action is 90 minutes to the south in Tucson, but because I need to drop off the rental car and be at the airport by 5 p.m., it just doesn't make sense to make the trip. Instead, I'll likely humor Oscar, the last remaining dude here besides me, and schlep to Surprise to watch his beloved Royals.
We endeavored to get to the ball park nice and early Tuesday, but that's easier said than done. This area is full of traffic all the time, and our hotel, the Westin Kierland, is fairly far away from the Brewers' stadium. It's worth it, though, and if I was a golfer, this hotel would be heaven. Even though I'm not, they've nailed all the little touches, and I can highly recommend it.
Of course, we had to stop at Filiberto's for lunch, an amazing Mexican food chain in Arizona and California. I could eat their carne asada burritos for every meal (and I almost have). By the time we rolled into Maryvale, it was already 12:30 p.m., just a half an hour before the first pitch.
Still, we had enough time to stroll through the minor league facilities behind the stadium and eventually work our way to the right field berm, where we plopped down for two innings in the blazing hot sun. We watched the rest of the game in the shade by first base, and even though the Brewers tied (yes, that happens in Spring Training), the team looked relatively good on Tuesday. We didn't see a whole lot of offense, but Carlos Villeneuva pitched well, cementing his spot in the rotation. Dave Bush looked a little shaky, but apparently, he was good enough to secure a job, too.
Like I do every year at this time, I took one more wistful, melancholy look at the stadium, and we hit the road back to the hotel.
On the ride home, we had enough time to hatch the most ridiculous, sophomoric idea of the trip. As our senses of humor have devolved into only quoting "Caddyshack," "Blazing Saddles" and "The Simpsons," I asked Oscar to use his Blackberry to Google the career of the guy who played the role of Spalding in "Caddyshack."
Turns out the guy is a realtor in Boston, so I sent him a polite e-mail asking if our group could call him later to hear an anecdote or two from the movie. He replied quickly with his phone number, and we called him. Unfortunately, the time difference meant that he was already sleeping when we left him a voice mail, and this morning he e-mailed me back. I don't want to bug the poor guy, but maybe we'll try him again next year. I guess it is us who "will have nothing and like it."
Back to the action. We had enough time to convalesce in the hot tub before we showered and cabbed it down to Tempe for dinner at the Four Peaks brew pub. This is nearly an annual tradition, and the entire group reunited for pizza, embarrassing stories and lots of laughs. From there, we ventured to Mill Avenue, which is on the campus of Arizona State University.
We're all entirely too old to be partaking in their nightlife scene, but we gave it the old college try. Someone, possibly me, suggested one more Filiberto's burrito, which we wolfed down at about 2 a.m. I'm pretty sure that burrito is still sitting in my stomach, weighing me down like Camelback Mountain. I have a feeling I won't be hungry today, and I woke up around 6:30 a.m. feeling a little dicey.
I put "Groundhog Day" in the title of this blog, because by the end of these annual trips, every day starts to feel the same. That's hardly a bad thing, but other than a few side trips, some great new hotels and fantastic meals, I've been doing basically the same stuff for 11 years in a row. We threw in a new wrinkle by sending Bill and Paul to write some golf stories (which will appear in May's OnMilwaukee.com Travel Week). But since I can barely hit a golf ball, I stuck to what I know best.
And though it was a short trip, it turned out to be a good one. I reconnected with old friends and brought along newer ones to see what I blab about for 11 months of the year. We stayed at some beautiful hotels (though Bill and Paul took the cake at the Four Seasons before I got here; they'll blog their experience soon). Meeting up with our local pals here, we had another totally uniquely Arizona experience, jam-packed with baseball, blazing sun and way too many burritos.
But I'm about ready to go home now, back to life as usual. I just needed a little taste of spring, and I got it. This ought to hold me over till the snow finally melts in Milwaukee.
Andy is the president, publisher and founder of OnMilwaukee. He returned to Milwaukee in 1996 after living on the East Coast for nine years, where he wrote for The Dallas Morning News Washington Bureau and worked in the White House Office of Communications. He was also Associate Editor of The GW Hatchet, his college newspaper at The George Washington University.
Before launching OnMilwaukee.com in 1998 at age 23, he worked in public relations for two Milwaukee firms, most of the time daydreaming about starting his own publication.
Hobbies include running when he finds the time, fixing the rust on his '75 MGB, mowing the lawn at his cottage in the Northwoods, and making an annual pilgrimage to Phoenix for Brewers Spring Training.
