The man most responsible for bringing baseball to Arizona is, appropriately enough, the game's greatest innovator, Bill Veeck. His immediate problem with the property was finding more time to spend there, at least in the winter and spring. And so it was that he hit upon the idea of transporting his team to Arizona for preseason workouts. But he couldn't leave his players isolated there without proper competition, so he suggested to his pal, Horace Stoneham, then owner of the New York Giants, that he too make the spring move west. The Giants were a logical choice since they and the Indians had enjoyed a spring training barnstorming rivalry that dated to 1934.
Fat contracts keep most players in shape over the winter.
So in 1947, Stoneham and Veeck agreed to divide the Arizona territory north and south, the Giants to Phoenix, the Indians to Tucson. Soon, other big league clubs, envious of desert serenity and the mild weather, hit the Arizona trail. Charlie Briley opened his Pink Pony in 1949, and, largely because it was just about the only joint in town back then, it became Arizona baseball's watering hole. Its streets are alive with shops of every description, art galleries, theaters, lavish hotels with pools, and chic restaurants so cosmopolitan they make the venerable Pony look like a place where one might expect to see the Brothers Earp knocking back a load of red-eye. So there's nothing desolate about Arizona anymore.