Chapter Eight: Opening Day
March 20, 2010 by Editor
Filed under Dress Blues and Tennis Shoes
April 10
Potter County Memorial Stadium, home of the Amarillo Gold Sox, is a huge iron-beamed dinosaur of a park. Set in an industrial neighborhood of factories and vacant lots, this relic can hold 6,500 fans, but never does.
Lugging equipment bags and hangered uniforms, Charlie and I trudge through the turnstile and into the bowels of [...]
Chapter Two: Gene Autry’s Corral
December 30, 2009 by Editor
Filed under Dress Blues and Tennis Shoes
March 11
The minor-league Angels training camp in Holtville is an arrow-straight ten-mile drive under a huge sky, past serried lettuce rows and concrete irrigation ditches. At the Holtville complex, four baseball diamonds splay out like blades of a giant fan. The hub is a thirty-foot-high rotunda upon which farm directors control workouts and make evaluations [...]
Chapter One: Two for Texas
December 28, 2009 by Editor
Filed under Dress Blues and Tennis Shoes
El Centro, California, March 1977
Spring is a dicey season in the Imperial Valley. As I drive south toward the Mexican border, desert winds torture the powdery landscape. A fast-flowing river of sand obscures the highway; a gritty gray haze hangs in the air, and I periodically dab my nose with a wet handkerchief. My VW [...]