It’s another latercap, brought to you by my charming inability to plan ahead and impetuous decision-making, which has led to me sitting in the parking lot of this Peoria Lowe’s using their free wi-fi to push out a recap of a 3-1 Mariners loss to the Diamondbacks that will be as stale as old coffee tomorrow, but the completist in me insists. Plus, I worry we are already reaching the stage of spring training where the games are boring, and we haven’t even seen all the WBC guys leave yet; that will happen tomorrow or the next day, and the minor leaguers will flood into camp tomorrow, and then we’ll really see from boring.
There was a point today where I was driving through Utah for the eighth or eight hundredth hour and I found myself utterly sick of being overcome by appreciation for the natural world (I believe I said, out loud, in the direction of one particularly comely rock formation, “okay, enough with the striations already, I get it!”). Look, anyone who’s looked at B-roll of Arizona spring training can tell you, it’s beautiful. But you can only look at so many breath-stealing dramatic vistas and sandcastle rock formations carved by an ancient and unintelligible force and marvel at it so many times. That’s a little what it feels like, being sick of spring training games already.
I had good intentions with the cap, I promise. I started from Twin Falls today with the intent of reaching Flagstaff, a hefty chunk of driving but one that would leave me a manageable piece for the final push to Peoria the next morning. I planned to listen to the game, type out the recap post-dinner, sleep in Flagstaff and awake very very early the next morning (Show-up time for the media in Peoria is around 7:30 or 8, always an unpleasant shock to the national writers when they drop in). I assume the Mariners also had good intentions with the game, ones that went quickly awry as Luis Castillo surrendered a three-run home run in his spring debut, and they failed to get anything going against Diamondbacks starter Ryne Nelson, also making his spring debut. A boring, bad game, but that’s what spring training is for us, too, as fans, right? Get the calibration early for the particular irritation in Rizzs’s voice when he says “the Mariners LEAVE a man.”
Castillo had a good first inning, opening with a strikeout of Jordan Lawler on a four-seamer that lit up the gun at 96.3. He sat pretty consistently in that first inning at 95-96 mph, which is a significant shift from what we’ve seen with the slower-building Castillo in previous years. Unfortunately, that clean first didn’t transfer into the second inning; James McCann got a fastball in he turned on for a single, and then Ildemaro Vargas pounced on a first-pitch fastball that came in at 94.3 and too much on the plate for a hard-hit single. Castillo did rebound by undressing top DBacks prospect Ryan Waldschmidt on three pitches, steadily climbing the ladder with 95 mph heaters, and then looked to have A.J. Vukovich – who I would have sworn up and down was an Athletics prospect – on the ropes in a 1-2 count, but Vukovich battled for seven pitches and eventually was able to get under a sinker above the zone and send it over the fence for a three-run shot.
Meanwhile, Nelson didn’t allow a hit and struck out three in just two innings: he got Rob Refsnyder looking at a perfectly spotted 97 mph pitch at the bottom of the zone that catcher James McCann challenged and won, which, okay, and he also bowled over two of the young guys, striking out Brennan Davis on a cutter and picking apart Cole Young in a three-pitch sequence that ended with him whiffing at a 97 mph fastball right on the plate. Ouch.
Davis and Young would get their revenge later off reliever Taylor Rashi; Davis opened the inning with yet another hard-hit single, punishing a poorly located slider at 108.8 mph. I’m sad to miss all the guys who will be leaving for the WBC literally right as I’m coming in to camp, but I’m very intrigued by what Davis has been doing this spring and look forward to seeing more. He was followed by another post-hype prospect who’s been having a good camp, Will Wilson—on in place of Miles Mastrobuoni, who got the start at third—with another single to put runners at the corners with no outs. Young did put the ball in play, getting the Mariners’ lone run of the day on an RBI groundout, but having also gotten a slider that looked to be well in the zone you’d like to see more than a okay-ish-hit ground ball.
And that was pretty much it for the offense in this game, as the Mariners bullpen did their jobs and hung zeroes, racking up nine strikeouts among them (although two were Castillo’s, two belonged to Gabe Speier making his final appearance before the WBC, and two to Casey Lawrence in a two-inning outing; Vargas, Ferrer, and Zulueta had the other three). But the offense didn’t hold up their part of D-ing the Z, striking out a combined 10 times. One costly mistake from Castillo, and the Mariners found themselves on the short side of the contest, a boring, unsatisfying affair that will certainly be lost to the annals of spring training history.
My own costly decision was made on the heels of a soggy, tissue-paper-crusted pizza and too much time at the table with my atlas (yes I still use a paper atlas, yes I am a dinosaur, leave me alone I like to see a map all at once in a large format). Phoenix wasn’t that far. What if I just did the drive tonight? I could do that. What was another couple hours in the car after I’d already done twelve or so. It’d be fun! Spontaneous! And most importantly, done at night so I didn’t have to see another single stupid red rock with my fully-smacked gob. We are full up on natural wonders here! All good on Earth’s majesty, thank you.
Ah, perhaps you have already spotted the flaw in my plan of not arranging lodging before driving to Phoenix, where it is a) spring training and b) the weekend and c) apparently a gathering of all the world’s bartenders and every single hotel, motel, Holiday Inn within 300 miles is sold out?
Which brings me to the Shell travel plaza in Black Canyon City, which I landed on after being out of options, driving around aimlessly and bored. Maybe I am not the first person to do a five-step Korean skincare routine at 2 AM in the bathroom/parking lot of said travel plaza; not if you judge off the demeanor of the overnight clerk, an affable older woman whose nametag read Nancy and whose wrists jingled with silver bangle bracelets and who I would follow into war. As I walked back to my vehicle, a little woe-is-me-and-my-bad-planning about the prospect of curling up in the backseat for a nap, I heard a rustling in the bushes next to the car and assumed it was a straggler from the road wandering up towards me; city instincts took over, triggering a wariness and watchfulness.
Instead, a gray donkey appeared between the scrub oaks and gazed at me with big, brown unblinking eyes. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a donkey, a real one, not as part of a manger scene. In a petting zoo somewhere? “That is a donkey,” I said out loud and to no one.
I went inside to tell Nancy. “There is a donkey outside,” I announced, because it was important for it to be said again.
Nancy was not as surprised as I was by this information. “Oh yeah, there are packs of them around. There used to be a petting zoo on the other side of the mountain but a bad storm knocked it all over and they escaped and bred and now they kind of live all over here.” She pointed at the token bowl of fruit every gas station keeps by the front door like a totem to ward against the gastrointestinal crimes perpetuated throughout the rest of the store. “Sometimes I get to feed them,” she said, not a little smug.
What a privilege it is, to be bored, when there are donkeys everywhere for those with eyes to see them.
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