Baseball fans get to see D’backs, but no ‘Big Unit’

Steve Guiremand

Wednesday, March 28, 2001 | 10:04 a.m.

Big League Weeknight

Those who purchased tickets to Thursday night's exhibition game at Cashman Field between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks hoping to see The Big Unit, Randy Johnson, pitch are in for a big disappointment.

The 6-foot-10 Johnson, the object of numerous ticket sales advertisements by the Las Vegas 51s for Thursday night's game, is slated to pitch on Thursday. However, it will be back in Tucson at the Diamondbacks' spring training facility against minor league competition.

"He isn't scheduled to make the trip (to Las Vegas)," Diamondbacks public relations assistant David Pape said Tuesday. "He'll be staying in Tucson to pitch in a minor league game."

Veteran righthander Bobby Witt, trying to nail down Arizona's No. 5 starting spot, will start for the Diamondbacks at Cashman Field and be opposed by Chan Ho Park.

Not a bad pitching matchup, to be sure. But not what many local fans had been led to believe.

As recently as Monday, the 51s ran ads in local newspapers touting $50 mini five-game season ticket packages. Johnson's picture accompanied the ad which included the following paragraph: "You'll see Randy Johnson throw heat against the Dodgers right here at Cashman Field."

Although Arizona hadn't posted its travel roster for the trip as of Tuesday, Pape said he would "expect most of the regular roster to make the trip." That presumably would include former UNLV star Matt Williams, who has been sidelined much of the spring with a bone spur.

The Dodgers-Diamondbacks contest is the only exhibition game to be played at Cashman Field this spring as the annual Big League Weekend had to be whittled to Big League Weeknight.

Still, 51s President Don Logan, who found his hands tied by a major league schedule that had most of the West Coast teams opening the season against each other next week, was happy to at least pair arguably the two most popular major league teams in Southern Nevada.

"The Dodgers are one of my first calls every year," Logan said. "And now we finally got them here. The phones have been ringing off the hook."

Logan said he has been trying to arrange for the Dodgers to play in Las Vegas since 1983.

"It's always been tough to do because for a long time they'd have the Freeway Series with the Angels back in Southern California the weekend before the season started," he said.

This year, however, the Dodgers agreed to stop by their new triple-A affiliate on the way back from spring training in Vero Beach, Fla., to play a game. Los Angeles opens its season on Monday afternoon against the Milwaukee Brewers at Dodger Stadium.

"Last year we wouldn't have been able to do this," Logan said, "because the Dodgers opened their season in Montreal. They weren't going to fly all the way out here for a game and then fly all the way back to Montreal."

Logan hopes to return Big League Weekend to its two- or three-day format next spring.

"I'd like to get two, three or four teams in here and play games over a weekend," Logan said. "But so much depends on the major league schedule. This year all the West Coast teams open up against each other in both leagues so you can't catch East Coast teams stopping over on the way from Florida. One team that is out here is St. Louis, but they decided to play a game at Oakland in kind of a "Mark McGwire Homecoming" and then they are going to Seattle. And they're being very well compensated for that."

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