FEBRUARY 27, 1998: ROY DRACHMAN THROWS OUT FIRST PITCH IN DIAMONDBACKS’ FIRST-EVER GAME
At a 2002 celebration of Roy Drachman’s life, an old black-and-white photograph of Drachman in his 1922 Tucson High School baseball uniform was on display at the Tucson Country Club ceremony.
Drachman, however, didn’t throw his best pitch until 1998, when he was 92 years old.
The occasion drew a then-record 11,298 fans in the first game ever played at Tucson Electric Park (now Kino Stadium). It was the debut of the Arizona Diamondbacks, the newest team in the National League.
“I thought back to the day the Indians played their first game at old Randolph Park in 1947,” Drachman told me after delivering an off-speed pitch to Diamondbacks catcher Kelly Stinnett. “I’ve been fortunate to be part of both.”
Nobody ever named a Tucson baseball stadium after Drachman they way they did for his long-time baseball partner Hi Corbett. In fact, the UA named its track facility Drachman Stadium, after he gave the school a $400,000 gift 30 years ago.
But Drachman was a baseball man to the soul, from his days as a Tucson Badger to his prominence in bringing MLB spring training to Tucson in 1947. Drachman told me he attended virtually every World Series game from 1946-57; he was close friends and business partner of Yankee owner Del Webb.
Drachman later joined other Tucson leaders such as Dan Schneider, Eddie Leon and Pat Darcy in restoring spring training after the Indians departed in 1992.
“I know how important Roy has been to baseball in Tucson,” Diamondbacks managing partner Jerry Colangelo said on that chilly (it was 41 degrees at first pitch) Opening Night in 1998. “There was no other choice to throw out the first pitch.”
The Diamondbacks were awarded a MLB franchise on March 9, 1995 and on that day Colangelo announced that the D’backs would hold spring training in Tucson.
A lot of issues remained: Where would the ballpark and training facility be located? Who would pay for it and how much would it be?
And would Colangelo be able to deliver on a further promise: to bring a second team to Tucson to share what would be TEP and the Kino Sports Complex.
But there was some political intrigue. Drachman and Colangelo talked. They knew that the Tucson v. Phoenix rivalry had been an ongoing feud for almost 100 years.
“I’m very, very aware of the history of the relationship, or lack of relationship, between the communities,” Colangelo said in a Tucson meeting. “But we can bridge that gap.”
At the time there was an unwritten code that every Tucsonan held dear: The only good Phoenician was a Phoenician named Mike Bibby.
Tucson’s glacier-cold, keep-your-distance, second-city, isolationist attitude faced a crucible like never before. But for the next 12 years, first with the D’backs in spring training and later with the Tucson Sidewinders in the Pacific Coast League, Tucson was able to make Phoenix part of the sports fabric.
The Diamondbacks made all the right moves.
They asked Tucson to build them a ballpark (for $37 million) and we did.
“We are going to have as fine a facility as there is in major-league baseball for spring training, without question,” Colangelo said.
They said they would bring the Chicago White Sox into partnership with Tucson, and they did.
They asked us to be their Class AAA affiliate, and we were.
They said they would make us a 10-month-of-the-year operation, the site of winter, spring and summer baseball of all levels. And they did.
They opened a Tucson office strictly for public relations a year before the first pitch was thrown.
Until it all fell apart long after Drachman’s first pitch, after new D’backs ownership pursued a greater bottom line and moved to a new facility near Scottsdale, the Diamondbacks were Tucson’s Team.
Now? No.
After Colangelo’s departure the Diamondbacks all but fell off the face of the baseball earth, here and in most baseball precincts.
Now the Diamondbacks don’t employ a single person in Tucson; they even eliminated a bus ferrying Tucsonans to Chase Field.
Where are they now: Colangelo, 76, left the Diamondbacks after an ownership change in 2004. He is now director of USA Basketball, responsible for the U.S. Olympic basketball team. Drachman died in 2002 at 95. Mayor Lew Murphy was the emcee at his celebration of life. The past president of Ford Motor Company spoke at the service.
How they did it: The first game in D’backs history was sold out three days in advance. Albert Belle of Chicago hit the first home run at TEP. Tickets cost $14.
When the D’Backs rallied in the ninth to beat the White Sox 6-5, Arizona manager Buck Showalter said: “Everybody was excited. I didn’t think there was any coolness on the part of the veterans. It was a good day.”
