Desert Diamonds: The Arizona Fall League

Making the journey from towns and cities like Chattanooga and Dunedin, hordes of athletic and energetic twenty-somethings have been working non-stop since hope-filled, pre-spring workouts in February. They’re destined not just for diminuitive crowds of the most faithful followers as is often the case in the minor leagues, but also a cornucopia of potential employers. Although most names are unfamiliar and unanticipated, some will soon be mass-marketed as prospects to America’s pastime. For many it is here, on the desert diamonds of the Valley of the Sun, that the realization of the dream to be a big league baseball player is finally realized. It is enough to make one wonder if Branch Rickey himself did not have a hand in it.

From Labor Day to Thanksgiving, baseball, America’s perfect gem of a sport, presents an answer to who will carry the torch of the corning generations. Since 1992, the Arizona Fall League, a brilliant research-and-development leg of Major League Baseball’s owners and clubs, has produced more than half of the professional players who are featured in their newly-revived venues as if inspired by the pioneer of player development and the open-tryout. In a region known for its propensity for being a staging arena for transition, the talent blooms bright like the saguaro cactus during June in the open and very wild desert between Tucson and Flagstaff.

Valley-dictorian

Do not get this gathering of wide-eyed students of the game confused with some future Nike-peddlers. There is work to be done. And plenty of homework. In every season since that 1992 start-up, the league has graduated at least one player who has gone on to climb to the top of the list of newcomers as one of the two most lauded freshmen in the major leagues, including Mike Piazza—the most prized alumnus yet.

Piazza, the 61st selection in the 62nd round and l,390th overall pick by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the June 1988 Free Agent Draft, is the epitome of the program. Although a tremendous specimen for the game, the Pennsylvania native was not given much hope to be the marquee product he has now become. But maybe his graduation from Phoenixville (PA) High School the previous year was an omen of things to come.

Coming up through one of the grand game’s most respected organizations, his development was slow and precise. The Fall League was a scheduled stop only when he began to show uncommon promise. Most players who make an appearance in Arizona are top draftees and up-and-coming developers with a lot to lose for their teams. Piazza was obviously not. His take was to build on what his work ethic had uncovered—a-homer-happy bat and discipline at the plate. With that kind of enthusiasm, he captivated scouts and fans alike by batting .291 with three homers and 23 RBI to help lead the Sun Cities Solar Sox to the AFL championship.

In the seasons following his trip to Phoenix, Piazza exploded onto the big league baseball stage, immediately earning the National League’s Rookie of the Year award in 1993, when he received all 28 first place votes and the ninth-ever unanimous selection in what was the 44th year of the coveted trophy. Only Johnny Bench, Thurman Munson, Earl Williams, Carlton Fisk, Benito Santiago, and Sandy Alomar Jr. had won the award in either league as catchers. In every season since, he has challenged for NL MVP honors, and is the only player in the history of AFL to have his jersey retired. He’s also the only known former player to ever be a winner on television’s gameshow “Jeopardy.”

Of course, his recent baseball lottery jackpot was something of a story as well—to the tune of $91 million.

In Fall League seasons since, Piazza has been joined by then-unheralded prospects like Nomar Garciaparra, Derek Jeter, Todd Hollandsworth, Marty Cordova, Ben Grieve, and Bob Hamelin, all who cut their teeth with help from the league, and would later be named ROY winners.

In the course of discussions about the relatively young experiment, arguments can be made that virtually all of the players in the big leagues also played in Double-A leagues or appeared in Rookie League camps.

That, for the most part, is true. However, the rate of attrition from the game at other levels is dramatic in context. As if to answer those critics, year after year the Fall League seems to hedge that rhetoric by being represented by the best of those fertile harvests. The cream rises in the Southwest. And more often than not it is manifested later in awesome surroundings.

Fall League meets Fall Classic

Game Four of the 1997 World Series was not the first time Cleveland Indians bulldog starting pitcher Jaret Wright had faced Tony Saunders of the Florida Marlins. Ten months earlier, in one of the last games of the 1996 Arizona Fall League season, the starting pitchers had battled under slightly different circumstances. Saunders, a first-round pick for the Marlins in their expansion draft a few years before, and who had never pitched above Double-A ball, was in the Valley to learn how to handle his control struggles. Wright, son of former major league pitcher Clyde Wright, was on the fast track to Jacobs Field. While the crowd that day was sparse (215 total paid), Saunders shunned away eight hits and three earned runs to outduel Wright, who lasted just three innings. Typical for any given Fall League season, it was a bright, sunshiny, 80-degree December day.

October 22, 1997, was a world away. 45,000 celebrants crammed the yard in Cleveland amid winter conditions and 15-degree wind chill temperatures to witness the fourth of what would be a seven-game Series. Bundled up in the heaviest garments available and thawed with hot coffee, Saunders and Wright would now lead their upstart clubs into competition of the highest caliber.

Wright was masterful. He surrendered just three runs on five hits, striking out five to lead the Tribe to a 10-3 win over Saunders, who had struggled through only a pair of unsuccessful innings to suffer the defeat.

Unlike the Fall League, which saw Jaret Wright’s Scottsdale Scorpions claim the AFL title, Tony Saunders had the last say when his Marlins charged to a four games-to-three world championship. This million-to-one had come in and in exactly the fashion the design was supposed to bring about.

Proving Grounds

Back in 1997, a five-year checkup found the league a remarkable success. The 1997 All-Star Game in Cleveland had five AFL alumni: Shawn Estes, Justin Thompson, Jeff Cirillo, Garciaparra and, of course, Piazza. Some other former players who were in the throes of brilliant seasons that year are now common names: Troy Percival of the Anaheim Angels, Tony Clark of the Detroit Tigers, Jeromy Burnitz of the Milwaukee Brewers, Rusty Greer of the Texas Rangers, and San Diego Padres starting pitcher Joey Hamilton.

Throughout the growing years there were unique stories. NBA superstar Michael Jordan received a surprising invitation to the league in his unlikely pursuit of a Major League dream in 1994. His attempts were thwarted by the awesome talent that he faced and he struggled with lackluster numbers, although quadrupling the crowd totals in every park he played in, much to the delight of the enterprising league office. The Arizona Diamondbacks’ $10 million gamble on Travis Lee began in 1997 as he made his professional debut with the Scottsdale Scorpions. In 1996, St. Louis manager Tony La Russa and two busloads of Cardinals’ brass watched as Olympian Braden Looper donned the Scorpions uniform in his first professional start.

There is definitely a global flair, too. Seattle’s Makato Suzuki, the Yankees’ Katsuhiro Maeda, and LA’s Chan Ho Park have each represented their Pacific Rim countries during stints in the league—complete with the usual media onslaught. Throw in Aussie Shayne Bennett and Latin players like Roland Arrojo, a defector from Cuba, then marvel at the international pertinence the game maintains.

Realtime reality

Sampling any given game from the late-1998 National League season schedule defines the impact the development in the AFL has had on the Major Leagues. On August 16, 1998 the Philadelphia Phillies, whose current lineups sometimes include seven or eight former Fall Leaguers, downed the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field. The expected swollen scoreboard is not important. What is impressive is the offensive contributions former AFL players made in the game: 11 hits, a pair of doubles, a couple of home runs, including a grand slam, and nine RBI. As someone once said, “something is definitely right here!”

Reading old Fall League rosters is like reciting a rotisserie lineup. Ryan Klesko of the Atlanta Braves, Darin Erstad of the Anaheim Angels, Chan Ho Park of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Todd Helton of the Colorado Rockies, Chris Carpenter of the Toronto Blue Jays, Bill Mueller of the San Francisco Giants. The list of players who have advanced through this new-found brainchild of baseball’s synergists continues to grow. But how did it begin?

Genius Understood

The roots of the Fall League go back several years, when the Major Leagues wanted to create some kind of off-season league that met their increasing expectations. A concern was that with some of the very best ball players going to play winter ball out of the country, such as in the Caribbean, evaluation of the process was essentially non-existent. If the major leagues created a league that it could govern and monitor, it would be better organized. Another factor was sending the best prospects to a regulation system, so that if a player was injured or hurt, proper care and treatment would be on hand. With the Arizona Fall League, managers, coaches, scouts and league officials could actively participate, and could be held accountable.

Aside from the superior level of play and objective for invited players to accelerate a classification, prospective managers and umpires spend their “winters” in Arizona to better develop their skills just as eagerly. For former major league players and minor league managers who aspire to be big league managers, this is a place for them to gain critical experience. Dusty Baker is a great example of a field manager who had not had managerial experience until he managed in the league in ’92 to gain the necessary seasoning. After impressing Giants owner Peter McGowan of his abilities, he promptly became field manager where he remains a fixture and a thorn in the side of opponents. The following year, Baker was named the National League Manager of the Year—the first representative from the league to hold that honor—after just its second year! Terry Francona, manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, and Jerry Manuel from the Chicago White Sox are among others who recently graduated to eventually lead clubs in the big leagues after spending time in this league.

The Infrastructure

Each August, the major league clubs hold a position draft to determine the players that best represent their objectives and development needs and who will get the most out of the Fall League. As the farm-to-market super-highway continues to change, Double-A and Triple-A minor league players make up the majority of the rosters, although each club can opt to send one player considered a Class-A player in their organization. From this perspective, there’s a draft for each team. and then each of the participating clubs have a position draft.

The eligibility rules to play in the AFL are simple. The roster size is 30 players per team. Each major league organization is required to provide six players subject to certain requirements: All Triple-A and Double-A players are eligible, provided the players are on at least a Double-A roster no later than July 28; one player below the Double-A level is allowed per Major League team: one foreign player is allowed, as long as the player does not reside in a country which participates in winter ball, as part of the Caribbean Confederation or the Australian winter league; no players with more than one year of credited Major League service as of August 31 are eligible, except a team may select one player picked in the most recently concluded Major League Rule 5 draft and to be eligible, players on minor league disabled lists must be activated at least 45 days before the conclusion of their respective seasons.

From these parameters, clubs are free to name whatever prospects they choose. And, for the most part, the league has become a showcase for organizations to match their best talent with one another.

The Fall League is primarily a forum for professional growth and improvement for the best the ol’ game has to offer. It is now a bona fide forging point from raw athletic ability to skilled baseball talent, and it is producing in impressive numbers. The league is run by the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball for a reason: it is a vital resource for the game’s immediate future. The players who have come through the league are convinced of its importance. It remains a desired assignment not only for its exposure, but because it is an indication that the players’ aspirations are being taken se1iously. At any given game, a fan can bump into Kevin Towers talking with Davey Johnson or encounter Gerry Hunsicker conferring with Frank Robinson. As a result, Scottsdale has become a virtual hotbed for trade talk, meetings, luncheons, dinners, and other important gatherings.

In recent years, the promotions surrounding the games have gotten better and have included appearances by virtually every living legend of the game: Hank Aaron, Stan Musial, Willie Mays, George Brett, etc., all of whom have had their say about what is now available to modern players that was never an option to them—to their disadvantage in some cases.

The appearances have been made largely in part by the presence of Robinson, of the Hall of Fame Robinsons, who serves the league as director of baseball operations—a collateral duty from his year-long responsibilities as special assistant to the Commissioner.

Baseball has obviously embraced what the fickle and unaware Phoenix fans have not, although even they make a presence at times. Truly, there may have never been a finer representation of what is to come in America’s game than there is every year in the Fall League. Making the trip to the spacious, and for the most part brand new, ballparks in the league has become a pilgrimage for many fans from the Northeast and Midwest during the chilling late-fall months. A lot of business is tended to and new names are taken back home to be brought out in hot stove trade speculation and rumors. It will take years for the latest stories to play out, as others have in the past. But the game will continue to grow with vitality thanks to plenty of that nourishing Southwest sunshine.

Now if we could just get the game back in our nation’s capital, we might have something.

George King was the director of media relations for the Arizona Fall League in 1997. Last season, George worked as an administrative assistant in the Pacific Coast League office.