CHANGE UP: MY KIND OF CLUB HOPPING

Notes from not-so-sunnny Scottsdale on a rare rainy and wind-swept Monday at spring training:

Checking in after a long weekend of club hopping (the baseball version) with three days down and five to go.

My apologies for the drop off in Twitter chatter and columnizing. It’s not often I get a chance to get away from the routine of six columns a week and website updating.

Longtime Denver pal David McReynolds was gracious enough to invite me back and there is no finer host.

It’s been a non-stop schedule of spring training games since I landed on Friday. We started, naturally, with the Colorado Rockies and Milwaukee Brewers at the Rox’s new ballpark.

I wasn’t prepared for temperatures in the mid-80s and by the fourth inning I was wilting before shade, thankfully, reached our front dugout seats on the Colorado side.

Most of you probably recall that before moving to Las Vegas in 1999, I had spent 15 years in Denver at the Rocky Mountain News, the first 12 as a sportwriter. Nine of those 12 years were spent chasing Denver’s hot pursuit of a Major League franchise.

June 5 will be the 20th anniversary of day I broke the national exclusive that Denver was getting a National League expansion franchise. Not many stories in my career meant more to me, especially given the ferocity of a heated newspaper war.

To be part of a city’s long courtship of a major sports franchise and to chronicle its arrival, well, you can imagine how that Rockies logo means to me.

Spring training was part of my life for many years, going back to the mid-1970s when I was The Associated Press’ main sports guy in Cincinnati and covering the great Reds teams.

I took it for granted each spring that I’d be in Florida, having my fill of fresh seafood and Key Lime pie, or in Arizona, when I was covering the San Diego Padres while with The AP in the early 1980s and later the newborn Rockies in Tucson and Phoenix.

I can’t walk past the Pink Pony in Scottsdale without thinking about my introduction to Harry Caray, who brought up our chat during the Cubs broadcast the next day, much to the surprise and joy of my mother who never missed a Cubs telecast in those days.

There was another Hall of Fame night at the Pony when I found myself hanging out at the bar with Billy Martin. When he heard I was from Montana, he told the story about the time (months earlier in the mid-80s) he went to the Custer Battleground in Montana and smoked an Indian peace pipe as he surveyed the historic valley.

I got the impression that it wasn’t tobacco in that pipe.

Our tour of spring training continued on Saturday at the Giants ballpark in Scottsdale, where a record crowd of 12,000-plus had gathered on a postcard-perfect day.

Before the Giants-Royals game I walked past a row of oldtime players, including the spitball master, Gaylord Perry, who now sports a bushy gray mustache.

Later, when I ran into some Las Vegans, Bryan and Lisa Buckley, who were making their 18th spring training trek.

We were standing a few feet away from Gaylord when I told them about the time I walked into one of my favorite beach bar haunts in San Diego in the early 80s. The bartender said Perry had just left after buying pitchers of beer for several dozen tables in the divey saloon.

Lisa Buckley trumped that story with a photo of “The Machine,” the bondage guy who had just been evicted from the centerfield stands. He was wearing a black leather hood and one of those crotch slings made famous by Borat.

“The Machine” is a famous, umm, personality in San Francisco, the Buckleys told me.

Thanks to Barry Zito, who turned in one of his strongest performances as a Giant, the game about two hours and five minutes.

From there our party headed back to Casa McReynolds to watch the March Madness games and UNLV’s misfiring on all cylinders.

I finished my Sunday column and we headed to dinner at the Arizona Country Club to join longtime Denver TV-radio sports personality Les Shapiro.

Sunday started with a stop at an In N’ Out burger, which had lines out the door for the hour we were there.

As we walked through the parking lot at the Rockies game, we heard a big roar. Troy Tulowitzki had just hit the first of his two homers.

I took a ribbing all day from our gang because the 10 minutes it took me to buy a new shirt put us behind schedule and we missed the Rockies’ three-run first inning. We had second row seats this time, behind the Rockies on-deck circle.

We had a great view of the ejection of Angels’ manager Mike Scoscia over a blown call at home during a slide.

The Rockies struck for a quick six runs but had to settle for a 6-6 tie in 10 innings.

Off we dashed to Casa McReynolds to watch the last three NCAA games of the day before sitting down for an impressive homemade Mexican buffet next to the pool.

Let me back up a minute.

We made a quick run down the Italian Grotto about 6 p.m. because David’s longtime baseball buddy, Bob Schaefer, former bench coach of the Dodgers, in town.

He’s now the special assistant to the general manager of the Washington Nationals, and, as such, I wanted to talk to him about Bryce Harper, the teen phenom from Las Vegas.

They had a recent conversation during spring training, Schaefer said.

“The way you run to first base, keep doing it,” Schaefer told Harper.

“I had read that he was a fan of George Brett. I told him, ‘George never jogged once to first base,' ” said Schaefer, who was a coach with the Kansas City Royals from 1988 to 1991.

“George told me once, ‘They should put a speed gun on everyone going to first to base.' ”

Back at Casa McReynolds, the party had grown to more than a dozen of David’s friends, among them Joseph Dillon of St. George, Utah. He was a popular guy after bringing several quarts of the legendary Blue Bunny ice cream to the party. We loved his stories about his involvement in making the ice cream at the St. George plant and we loved the mint chocolate and peach flavors.

I got the chance to reconnect with old friend John Nicholson, who relocated to Phoenix last fall to join The AP’s regional bureau here after 22 years on The AP’s New York Sports. John spent last week covering the LPGA tournament. I’ve known him since he was a pre-teen in Bozeman, Mont., where his father, Ken Nicholson, was a legendary sports information director and all-around great guy.

Over the years, I had forgotten that I helped John land his job with The AP and we had many mutual friends to discuss into the wee hours.

So much for now. We’re arriving at the Cubs-Angels game in hopes the light rain doesn't get worse.

--NORM CLARKE, Vegas Confidential