Arizona Diamondbacks Spring Training Facility - Salt River Fields

Last weekend was a non-golf weekend. On Saturday, the Fennemore Craig Foundation sponsored a volunteer activity for the firm's employees, families and friends at the new Arizona Diamondbacks Spring Training facility at Salt River Fields to benefit the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Scottsdale. Employees, friends and family members, including me and SO, volunteered as ushers, ticket takers and customer service representatives at a spring training game.

We arrived at 10 a.m. for our team meeting and to don our black Diamondback shirts and straw hats (actually they were out of straw hats so we wore baseball caps instead) and then it was out to our stations. The information provided was a little thin and we were kind of on our own winging it. I worked the entry to the party decks putting on different color wristbands depending on each attendees' particular party group. Luckily for me, I worked with a very nice lady who volunteered frequently and was a pro at manning the party deck entrance. She was volunteering for the Boys and Girls Club because the organization was a major supporter of her event, "step N out" for pancreatic cancer research at TGen. The gates opened at 10:30 and there was a trickle of people until the hour before game time. I hate to admit it, but of the 5 questions I was asked by fans at the game (where are the bathrooms?; where is the ATM machine?; who hit that home run?, etc.), I got 4 of them wrong! I also fumbled putting on the wristbands and probably angered a lot of men with hairy arms.

SO was placed as an usher. Clearly, the volunteer coordinator did not know that litigators do not play well with others. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when an octogenarian fan asked SO for the fourth time, "Honey, where is my seat?". The game started at 1 p.m. and did not end until after 4 p.m. SO and I met for our 15minute lunch break at about 2 p.m. to get our free hot dog and drink. We waited in line for well over 30 minutes and gobbled our food in about 5 minutes.

Although we were not supposed to be watching the game, the Diamondbacks fell behind the Cincinnati Redstockings 10-0 after 4 innings, but stormed back to win the game 13-10 with 8 runs in the bottom of the 8th inning. Hopefully, that is a good omen for the baseball season.