Las Vegas Club full of Great Moments — PHOTOS

The last time I saw my pal Jim the sun was coming up on Fremont Street.

Jim was the play-by-play broadcaster for the Albuquerque Dukes, which is what they called the baseball team from New Mexico before Homer Simpson became so popular and the Dukes changed their name to the Isotopes.

Hours before the sun came up on Fremont, the Dukes and Stars — which is what they called the baseball team from Las Vegas before flying saucers and little green men became so popular and the Stars changed their name to the 51s — had played a ballgame at Cashman Field.

"Meet me at the Las Vegas Club," Jim said.

The Las Vegas Club downtown was where all the visiting Pacific Coast League ballclubs stayed. A utility infielder could walk to the ballpark from there and usually not get stabbed. The guys who batted in the middle of the lineup and the starting pitchers usually would take the courtesy shuttle, though.

A few hours before the sun came up today, they officially closed the doors at the Las Vegas Club. That made me think of my old pal Jim, and what a great place the Las Vegas Club was for old sports pals to meet and have a beer, even if it started to smell like an old cigar there toward the end.

The Las Vegas Club even looked like a ballpark.

The facade was inspired by Ebbets Field because the Brooklyn Dodgers were Mel Exber's favorite team. Exber and Jackie Gaughan were colorful Las Vegas action figures who owned the Las Vegas Club during its halcyon days. Mel's son, Brady, the excellent amateur golfer, would become president.

Sometimes Maury Wills would stop by.

A lot of the old Dodgers would stop by, and guys from other teams, too, Brady Exber said Wednesday as they were getting ready to turn out the lights.

"They would come by to say hi to the old man, and they would leave stuff behind," said Exber, last year's winner of the British Senior Amateur Open and minority owner of the Houston Astros (he's in for a percentage point).

Wills, for instance, left behind the spikes he used to steal 104 bases in 1962. They were bronzed, a cherished part of Mel Exber's sports memorabilia collection that became the de facto Las Vegas Sports Hall of Fame.

When Mel Exber died in 2002, Wills attended the service. Brady Exber gave Wills back his bronzed base-stealing cleats.

All kinds of cool sports stuff was displayed on walls and in glass cases back by the Dugout Restaurant and the Great Moments Room, where one could get Alaskan King Crab and veal and steak scampi in an intimate setting when one tired of playing "the most liberal 21 in the world."

Whenever we were down on Fremont and Mrs K. would duck in to use the restroom — Brady Exber said his old man took pride in the cleanliness of those restrooms — I'd invariably be checking out Jackie Robinson's Louisville Slugger with the fat handle or Connie Hawkins' Plaster of Paris palm prints when she emerged.

The Hawk's palm print was so large it would have required its own reservation in the Great Moments Room.

Bob Feller left his palm print with Mel Exber, and so Joe DiMaggio was approached. The Yankee Clipper said he'd gladly do it — for $900,000 per palm. Which might explain his nickname. Brady Exber said they settled for Fergie Jenkins, who got plastered for free. Or something like that.

He said his dad was proud to host the Stars' opponents and provide a place for the Pacific Coast League umpires to lay their heads, even the ones who blew easy calls. That led to the Exber family investing in the Stars as minority owners, until baseball changed the rules about colorful Las Vegas action figures owning small parts of baseball teams.

But the hits just kept on coming.

How many future Hall of Famers over the years spent per diem money at the blackjack tables or on steak and eggs at the Dugout Restuarant when they were learning to hit a curveball?

Brady Exber mentioned Mark McGwire when we were ruminating. Could Big Mac have stayed at the Las Vegas Club on the way up, when he still was Slender Mac? He sure could have: McGwire played 78 games for the PCL's Tacoma Tigers in 1986, batting .318 with 13 homers.

He might have even signed an autograph then for free.

I told Mel Exber's son how my pal Jim and I would stand on the curb in front of his old man's betting parlor and sports shrine, put our empty beer bottles on the newspaper racks and tell baseball stories about Sid Bream and other former Albuquerque Dukes we had known.

And how as the sun was coming up on Fremont Street, the cocktail waitresses would come out to the curb to ask if we wanted another Miller Lite.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.