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Cal Ripken Jr. strikes out in Globe

GLOBE — Forget Cooperstown. For residents of this central Arizona mining town, Cal Ripken’s longest streak lasted only two years.

And depending on whom you ask, it never should have started.

The local youth baseball league endorsed by the Hall of Famer is defunct, its pristine playing field abandoned after its construction just five seasons ago. Infighting, flagging parent interest and a dearth of incoming families needed to spark a revival have scuttled its chances.

Unless you’re a Schnauzer named Drifter or a Rottweiler mix named Bubblicious, that is.

“This park isn’t abandoned,” says Lisa Brazil, owner of The Drift Inn Saloon in Globe. “I know at least 20 people who take their dogs here.”

Brazil is asking city officials to consider turning the field Ripken’s charitable foundation built into a publicly funded dog park.

“I’ve got to tell you what,” Brazil adds, “the city worker who works on it, he does a good job of keeping it up.”

RIPKEN BALL TAKES OFF, CRASHES

Mickey Nye grew up in Scottsdale and played baseball at Camelback High School. In 1989, he came to Globe and bought the local Dairy Queen. When Nye first took over his new business, housing in Globe was so scarce that he commuted from nearby Safford.

Last year, he ran for mayor. He’s long been involved in community activities, ranging from youth sports to serving on the executive board of the Globe-Miami Chamber of Commerce.

Nye, 53, says he brought Ripken Baseball to Globe because of politics. He and other local coaches vehemently disagreed with a set of rules laid down by then-incoming Little League District Administrator Eugene Porto, another devoted community activist who served on the Miami City Council for six years.

“The coaches were upset because, in the past, the Globe-Miami community played under one program,” Nye says. “There wasn’t a split boundary where if you lived on this side of the line, you had to play over there. There was one organization. The new district commissioner said, ‘Well, we’re going to draw a line in the sand.’ And that didn’t sit well.”

Porto, 68, said he was just enforcing existing Little League rules that had been ignored for far too long.

“I’m an ex-military man, and you go by the rules whether you like ’em or not,” Porto says. “Years ago, Globe was one league and Miami was one league. Mr. Mickey Nye and his people wanted Globe and Miami to play together, and the people weren’t too happy with that because the association they were associated with didn’t want that.”

All politics aside, the response to the new league was immediate.

“There was an opportunity for this community to host a regional Cal Ripken tournament, and we did,” Nye says. “It was a 10-year-old[-player] tournament, with kids from Hawaii, Guam, California, Colorado, Nevada. They all came to Globe to play baseball. It was wall-to-wall people here for the tournament.”

Porto says the league failed because parents gave up when their kids grew up. The league also was too competitive for many of the town’s families.

“In Cal Ripken, you weren’t guaranteed playing time,” Porto says. “In Little League, until the senior leagues, it’s mandatory during their season that [children] go out for two innings and two times at bat. And in tournaments, they get one at-bat and three defensive outs. Sometimes [in Ripken ball] they’d go two, three, four games without playing.”

But Ripken ball helped the town make its mark. A Ripken team from Globe won the state tournament when the league was in its last year of existence. That same team also went to the regional tournament twice.

“Part of the problem with Cal Ripken, and even Babe Ruth, is that there’s a perception that it’s too competitive,” Nye says. “It doesn’t have to be.”

After the children were too old for the Ripken league, some played in the Babe Ruth league, some played in other leagues and some played other sports altogether.

“Ten years ago, we had a lot of kids, we had a lot of parent involvement, we had a lot of coaches who did this just for the fun of it,” says Nye, who still owns and operates his Dairy Queen. “As time has passed, parents have tended to take kids up to the ball field, drop them off, then come back in a few hours — not watch the games, not really participate.”

And some kids, Nye says, found more unsavory ways to spend their time.

“Meth,” he says, without hesitating. “The kids don’t have a lot of choices. Statistically, half the people in town probably would not pass a drug test. As an example, the Wal-Mart in Safford just tested 1,000 people. Only 300 of them passed the drug test for Wal-Mart. Our results wouldn’t be much different in this community.”

Globe, whose population hovers around 8,000, has about 33 percent fewer children today versus five years ago, Nye says.

“This community hasn’t grown,” he adds. “If you look to the statistics, the only reason Globe has grown is because of (land) annexation.”

LEAGUE TROUBLES SHOW TOWN STRUGGLES

But Globe’s problems transcend land use and Little League issues. Some residents say local families are increasingly lazy when it comes to carrying town life forward. They’re also becoming increasingly reliant on town officials for services – even daycare.

But Manoj Vyas is not a babysitter. He’s the city manager of Globe.

“There are a lot of good people, like Lisa [Brazil], like Mickey [Nye], yet at the same time there are a lot of people who are looking for us to baby-sit their kids day in and day out,” says Vyas, who came to Globe in 1998. Mimicking a parent, Vyas continued on, “‘Oh my god! Your program is only for five days a week? What about weekends?’”

Vyas, who previously worked in the Tucson area for Pima County, has more than 30 years of recreational management experience. He now manages Globe’s $26 million budget, $11.5 million of which is for the town’s operating expenses.

He spends about $600,000 per year on maintaining the town’s parks and recreation programs. That includes significant funding for an anti-drug and anti-alcohol youth leadership program.

“It’s something I enjoy tremendously,” Vyas says. “But I’m supposed to provide the police and the fire and the library and the senior center, the transportation and the flood control. Parks is one small part. There’s garbage pickup, water and sewers. We have a large umbrella of services.”

But the city can only do so much. The Ripken league failure is just a cycle, says one longtime resident and former local journalist. The league’s abandoned field is just a poster child for Globe’s deeper woes.

“It’s a mindset we’re seeing in just almost everything,” says Ellen Kretsch, who is now Globe-Miami’s tourism director. “The schools see it. They don’t have the parents coming in and working with their kid’s room. Used to be you’d go to your kid’s homeroom and help with stuff.

“Almost every group — Rotary, Friends of the Library — they’re all seeing the same people. Our Chamber board is serving on the Rotary board and they’re serving on this board. You’re just not seeing people come forward to volunteer like you used to. ‘Somebody else will do it, I’m too busy. I’ve got my own life and somebody else can take care of it.’

[“]If you send your kid to Little League,” she adds, “you’d better be willing to sell burros or coach or do whatever it is they need. I’m not saying there’s not involved parents, but there are a lot more who see it as a babysitting opportunity.”

Still, Nye remains optimistic for Globe’s chances. With copper prices rebounding and the local mining community again thriving, Globe soon could see an influx of people. Some may have children interested in youth baseball.

Nye says the Ripken league could be restarted and the league could again blossom, as it did after he first applied for the league charter.

But depending on future conversations between Vyas and Brazil, the most important rule enforced at the former Ripken field could involve Pooper Scoopers.

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.

An Arizona mining town trudges toward growth

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SAN MANUEL – Just off the southeastern bend of Arizona’s Highway 77, where it curves up to follow the San Pedro River, the streets of San Manuel huddle together much as they have since the 1950’s. The main drag curves through Bonnie’s Café and the grocery, hardware, and convenience stores before ending abruptly at the town’s edge.

San Manuel was a mining town built on company land with company dollars. For almost four generations, the community kept to itself alongside the mine, mill and smelter plant that was its lifeblood.

Workers and their families lived side by side, covering the shifts that kept ore flowing out of one of the world’s richest copper mines. At the town’s edge, two 500 foot smoke stacks once stood as landmarks for miners to find their way home.

But after the smelters were removed last year to make way for growth, few plans have surfaced. Now the hype and heartbreak is over, the people of San Manuel are picking up the pieces and trying to fend for themselves while mine officials searching for financial suitors to develop 20,000 acres.

Townsfolk split on growth

Talk of the mine’s closure and the town’s uncertain future hushes the room in Keith Rae’s barbershop. Many assume San Manuel will become the next “bedroom community” for Tucson 75 miles away or a national retirement community if investors become keen enough on the area.

When business slows, Rae explains that most people are moving on.

“Some people are excited about growth,” he says, “but a lot of people don’t want it. They’re pretty content. There’s no stoplights in this town. People like that.”

Regardless, the town is changing. Many people aged 55 and up have stayed after the mine’s closure while new retirees have trickled in from all over. People who are still of working age head out of town for jobs, forcing San Manuel to lose its longstanding isolation. These new commuters spread news of San Manuel as a lifestyle option for middle-class families, then return craving the convenient, modern amenities of other communities.

This could create serious hardships for the town. The mining companies have historically handled everything from utilities to schools to lawn care. Now, as those companies cut ties with the town, the community is trying to pick up the labor and expense.

Residents once talked of incorporating – a move that where residents agree to tax themselves in order to raise money and run a town. But those talks quickly died over high initial taxes and the lack of new money coming in.

“It pretty much divided the town,” Rae says.

Big Copper pulls out

For most miners, working a mine is a lifelong career with seniority measured in the decades, and in San Manuel, business was good.

Magma Copper Co. began developing the land in the wake of the WWII copper boom, using $94 million in government subsidies. By the 1980’s, Magma operated the “largest underground copper mine in the world in terms of production capacity, size of ore body, and ‘installed facilities,’” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The facility stretched over 12,000 acres, employed 3,600 people, and produced up to half a billion pounds of copper per year.

In 1997, Magma sold the mine for $2.4 billion to Australia-based BHP Billiton Ltd., which sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into the mine for top-shelf upgrades the following year.

But work was suspended in 1999 after copper prices plummeted. By 2002, about 3,300 miners had been laid off.

The mine was eventually shut down, leaving many bewildered.

“It was a business decision,” says Jeff Parker, BHP’s head of community relations for San Manuel.

“It was unfortunate,” he admits in earnest.

While amends are hard following such a decision, few deny BHP’s support.

BHP has since been working to clean up the mine sites at a cost of $175 million to date. The company has continued to provide money to schools, negotiated to bring a plastics factory to town, and worked with state and Pinal County officials to plot San Manuel’s future course. At one time, it even hosted job fairs and offered scholarships to help displaced workers.

Never has BHP shut down such a large-scale operation.

“We had no roadmap,” Parker says. “This is our legacy.”

Residents ‘stuck with the bill’

None of the residents thought the operation would close. Mine officials had just upgraded the world-class smelter plant, which was already processing ore from nearby mines along with newly discovered copper deposits at the San Manuel site.

A former supervisor at the San Manuel plant remembers the closing of the mine well.

“They sent me to the front gate to turn people away,” he recalls. “To walk up to someone that had 36 years of seniority and say, ‘Sorry, it’s shut down. Go home,’ that’s hard. People I grew up with – people that were like my dad – I told them they don’t have a job.”

The former supervisor, who prefers that his name is not used, stayed in town with his wife and two kids after a 38-year run in San Manuel. He counts himself as one of the lucky ones: He found a job with a good salary and a 75-mile commute for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

He says he watched a lot of people take jobs that paid less than half their mining wages.

“There’s still hostility towards BHP and Magma,” he says. The former supervisor, who was privy to the mine’s administrative meetings, says he blames impossible expectations of return on capital as one reason for its closing.

He also points to BHP’s interest in consolidating the world market. It is the world’s third largest copper producer with mines in Peru, Chile, and Australia and a wide investor base. So reducing the copper flow and focusing on foreign labor that works cheaper and under fewer regulations would benefit BHP more than keeping profitable yet more expensive operations like San Manuel going, he says.

The town has a long way to go toward independence from the mine.

“There’s a lot of things that need to be fixed before we’ll be stuck with the bill,” the former supervisor says. “These houses were built in the late 50’s.”

All the same, the longtime resident says he’s in it for the long haul.

“As long as I have a job that pays well,” he says, “this is home.”

Small-town feel brings youth back

The virtues of small-town communities are visible during an afternoon visit to the office of John Ryan, the principle of San Manuel’s high school. Passing through, some for business and others to pass the time, students address Ryan with the candid smile and inside jokes that speak of long semesters together.

“You really get to know your students out here,” Ryan says.

When school gets out, most students head to sports practices and club meetings with the peers they grew up with. From the gas station in the center of town, one can see some of the school’s athletes running in tight line down the main drag and through the neighborhoods.

Many students confess to boredom and say that they are anxious to get out of town. The University of Arizona is a favorite for those heading to college because many of them have already spent a good amount of time in the city.

Like their parents, the youths of San Manuel take jobs in Tucson or other neighboring communities for money. Another favorite is a resort in nearby Catalina.

But for all the talk of escape, many of them return to the town for family and a community they know they can trust.

Evolution hinges on apathectic public

Amy Whatton, a local Realtor, vows that new people moving in will be the future of San Manuel.

“This is Arizona, and it’s a gorgeous valley,” she says. Whatton, who has lived in the area since 1972, says the town’s cool weather and low prices continues to draw people.

As Tucson expands, she also believes San Manuel will be one of the last small town communities. Most houses are selling for under $120,000, she says.

But the deal-breaker for San Manuel’s future will be the sale of BHP land. There simply is not room to develop until that happens.

She is confident that the company is working in the town’s best interests.

“The things BHP did, I never would have thought of,” she says. “BHP doesn’t want to leave knowing the town died because they pulled the plug.”

Whatton says the company needs to collaborate more with public officials to spread word and gather ideas for the town’s development.

“We don’t know a whole lot,” she says. “We’ve been trying to get something going. But with the young people so busy raising kids and working two jobs, they don’t have time.”

“But the town is going to make changes,” she adds, “and I think most people are accepting of them. People do care. It’s not that they’re disinterested, but it takes time and energy.”

As the day wraps up, its restaurants fill with families, neighbors chat in the streets, and people amble out of the IGA with another day’s groceries. And an entire Arizona town puts worries of reinventing itself off for another day.

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com .