Baseball Teams

Michael Westbrook, a fresh-faced 22-year-old with dreams as big as his native Texas, is standing in a chilly corridor at the Las Vegas Hilton, his future, as well as an empty ballroom, spilling out before him. He has spent nearly a quarter of his life in radio -- long enough to know he doesn't want to spend the rest of it doing traffic and weather. "I'm trying to get a minor league play-by-play job," Westbrook says earnestly.

The Oakland Athletics could use a big bat, and the San Francisco Bay Area is the only place in America where Barry Bonds is not roundly booed. So, when the A's put together a long list of players worth exploring this winter, they put Bonds' name on the list. "I can't say there was great interest," A's owner Lew Wolff said. That slim chance might have been Bonds' best chance to secure a contract next season.

Sometimes life doesn't allow you to stop completely, not even for death, so as the students walked onstage to honor the fallen classmate, they wore their dark baseball jerseys, their gray baseball pants, their high blue socks and black cleats. The Santa Monica High baseball team still had a practice that afternoon. Shockingly, unbelievably, tragically, Eddie Lopez would not be with them.

The headline is a stopper: "Angels Clout Nine Homers, Win 22-5." It was June 22, 1957, and Roger Osenbaugh still remembers every pitch. He should. He was the opposing pitcher. "It's the best memory I have," he said of the game between the Sacramento Solons and the Los Angeles Angels at Wrigley Field, which stood at 42nd Street and Avalon Boulevard and was the West Coast copy of the Chicago Cubs' home. "Twenty-two runs, 18 earned runs, nine home runs, five home runs in one inning," he recalled.

On a Sunday morning washed bright and blue near the start of baseball season, only ghosts ramble around an empty diamond at Fourth and Evergreen streets. There is a puddle out by second base and kids playing soccer down the foul line. Hard to imagine how it used to be. You have to squint your eyes against the sunlight, look back a ways. Back to the late 1940s, when baseball at Evergreen Park was a genuine social event in Boyle Heights.

Amad Andrews wanted his Little League baseball players to don more than a uniform when they took the field at Robinson Park in Pasadena this season. The coach wanted the 8-, 9- and 10-year-olds to wear a piece of history. So, rather than opting for the Dodgers, Angels or another common nickname, Andrews turned back the clock and chose the Kansas City Monarchs.

Baseball's-best discussions don't all involve Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds, or "Murderers' Row" versus "The Big Red Machine." In fact, one of the longest-running debates in the game's history stems from the old Negro leagues: Which team was the most powerful, the Pittsburgh Crawfords, Kansas City Monarchs or Homestead Grays? Old-timers from that era aren't much help in providing answers.

Weary from the trip to Kansas City, where his Schaumburg Flyers just lost their 12th straight game, Manager Andy McCauley drops by his boss' office to learn which players the Internet masses have chosen for him to start. "This is the strangest one yet," warns Rich Ehrenreich, the minor league team's president and managing partner. Nothing unusual about the field positions.

Money can't buy you love. But how about a World Series ring? It's a timely question for sports fans given that the New York Yankees, Major League Baseball's highest-paid team with a $194.6-million payroll, are poised for a run at their 27th World Series title. Not to mention the cross-town New York Mets, who are building a new ballpark and have the National League's top franchise payroll of $101.1 million.

The Los Angeles Dodgers may be leaving behind 60 years of history in Vero Beach, Fla., but the Arizona Cactus League they're joining has a rich history too. The New York Giants and the Cleveland Indians, for instance, set up their spring operations in Phoenix and Tucson, in 1947, well before major league baseball moved west. With the arrival of the Dodgers and the White Sox in Glendale, Ariz., and the return of the Indians, 12 of the 14 teams are now playing their home games in the Phoenix area.