SUNDAY SPECIAL: TUBAC'S FIELD OF DREAMS

Labor of love

David Sanders / Arizona Daily Star
Working man: Herb Wisdom looks through the backstop of Howard Wisdom Field, which he says he has put about $40,000 and two years of labor into building.

David Sanders / Arizona Daily Star
Still cooking: Even in his 60s, Herb Wisdom still prepares Mexican food at the family business, Wisdom's Cafe in Tumacacori.

Photos by David Sanders / Arizona Daily Star
Dirty job: Herb Wisdom brought in red clay for the infield at Howard Wisdom Field. There is no outfield grass because money ran out.

At home: Herb Wisdom cleans off home plate at Howard Wisdom Field in Tubac. The field is named after Herb's father, a rancher who built a rodeo behind the family's restaurant.

Cleaning up: In his quest to turn a rock-filled plot of land into a softball field, Herb Wisdom has gone through six wheelbarrows.

By Greg Hansen
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

TUBAC

This story should be about softball. It should be about one of America's five or 10 leading men's fast-pitch teams. It should be the Cinderella of all softball stories: the rise to power of a team located somewhere between tiny Tumacacori and artsy Tubac, the last place on the map you expect to find a good sports story.

But it is not.

Instead, this is a story about Herb Wisdom, a 60-something former Marine, former police chief, former SWAT officer - the son of a genuine American cowboy - who is not tough as much as he is hooked.

"Sometimes I wish they had Softball Anonymous," he says, smiling briefly. "I just can't get this game out of my system."

Softball has been good to Wisdom. Three years ago he was inducted into the International Softball Congress Hall of Fame. That was partially because Wisdom played on five world championship teams for the Long Beach, Calif., Nitehawks in the 1970s. But there are scores of accomplished softball players. Too many to count, too many to rightly or wrongly induct into the Hall of Fame.

Herb Wisdom is in the ISC Hall of Fame because for the last 22 years he has built, coached and maintained, with almost no outside help, one of the world's 10 or 20 leading teams. No help? The team no longer has a nickname because it has not had a sponsor for 20 years.

"We're probably known as 'Si Senor' more than anything because that's the name we used when we started in the early 1980s," he says. "For one year, a watermelon dealer in Nogales of the same name helped us financially. I guess we kept using his name because we were hoping he'd come back."

Over the past six weeks, Wisdom has played host to two of the world's ranking softball powers, the Farm Tavern of Madison, Wis., and HIS Construction of Houston. Both teams have budgets that Wisdom estimates at $200,000 annually, enabling them to travel 10 to 15 weekends a year. Both came to Tubac to play Wisdom's Team With No Name and Less Money.

But where?

There is no softball field in Tubac. Is there?

Tired of paying $900 to rent Tucson's low-brow Santa Rita Field for his weekend homestands, which did not include umpire fees or insurance, Wisdom two years ago decided to build his own softball field. He reached agreement with the Santa Cruz County government to use a weed-strewn, rock-filled plot of land adjacent to an old elementary school that is now the Tubac Community Center.

Wisdom's vision was that the field could be used for youth soccer, softball, whatever. There is no such facility of any quality in the Tubac area. Wisdom sought help. No one enlisted.

He bought a wheelbarrow and began to clear the land. The wheelbarrow eventually broke down. He bought another and cleared more land. The wheelbarrow again sagged and ultimately broke down. So he bought another, and another and another.

"That wheelbarrow you see over there," his son, Cliff says, "is No. 6. That's how hard it has been for him to build this field."

Herb Wisdom's Field of Dreams doesn't involved cornfields or visitors from some baseball heaven. It involves dirt at $30 a ton, two years of labor and, he says, about $40,000 out of his own pocket.

The infield dirt is not inexpensive: It is red clay, the same kind of infield dirt you might see in a big-league ballpark. Alas, there is no outfield grass. That's when Wisdom's money ran out. After building an outfield fence, a backstop, dugouts and even buying four light towers - "just to make it look more like a ballpark," he says - Wisdom tapped out.

He erected a sign and dedicated the field in the honor of his late father, Howard Wisdom, and somewhere up there Howard Wisdom, a rancher/cowboy who grew up in Texas and settled in Tumacacori, is smiling down at his son.

"My dad was into rodeo the way I'm into softball," Herb says. "He built a rodeo arena next to our restaurant. I guess I got his genes for stuff like this."

Howard Wisdom's real legacy was the family eating establishment - Wisdom's Cafe - on the Old Nogales Highway. It survived the implementation of Interstate 19 and is a profitable (and highly reputable) Mexican food restaurant from September to early May.

Herb cooks but the day-to-day operation of the restaurant now falls on Cliff, the starting second baseman on the 1995 USA Softball Pan American Games team. Cliff was a football/baseball standout at Nogales High School in the 1980s and clings to his father's dream that the softball team will someday get the financial backing to return to the World Championships.

"We've got a great team," he says. "I played for Broken Bow (Neb.) for the last two seasons, and everybody knows how close we are to the top. When they came down here (a few weeks ago) the nationally ranked teams from Wisconsin and Houston both said that we could win the world championship this year."

The Broken Bow Travelers played on the all-dirt field in Tubac a year ago. They not only paid for Wisdom's travel expenses to play for them part-time, they are sponsored by a computer firm, a bank, two radio stations, a Nebraska dental firm, an eye care center and a Grand Island, Neb., mortuary.

They had to wonder how Herb Wisdom has kept his team from getting buried.

"Over the past 20 years, I've spent $250,000, easily $250,000, of my money on this team," he says. "Until last year, we had gone to the World Championships every year. But last year I just couldn't cut it financially. It's to the point now that unless we get sponsorship, we're in big trouble unless we hit the lottery, I guess."

He does not smile. His field, complete sans outfield grass, is so close to being a gem of a facility. He knows the odds of finishing the project and maintaining his team's national profile are getting worse.

Herb grew up in Nogales, joined the Navy, went to spring training with the California Angels in the 1960s - "I joined the Long Beach police force instead," he says, "because it was a better-paying job than what (Angels owner) Gene Autry was going to pay me." - and started playing softball on the Nitehawks, a 10-time world champion.

After 20 years on the Long Beach police force he returned to Tumacacori to run the family restaurant and start his own softball team.

He has filled his roster with a core of former Tucson-area high school baseball players. Nick and David Frank are two of the nation's leading performers. Tucson High teacher Sam Rosthenhausler is a star-level player, as is Frank Basurto of Pima College. Infielders Anthony Farinacci and Albert Mendibles, as with Cliff Wisdom, are recognized leaders on the world level.

"If my dad quit today," says Cliff Wisdom, "there would be no more team. That'd be it. Done."

Early last month, while playing a weekend series in Tubac against HIS Construction of Houston, Herb Wisdom had his team outfitted in "Tubac Golf Resort" jerseys. He was hopeful that the new owners of the Tubac resort area, a group that is planning to build 275 homes and add nine holes to the Tubac Golf Course, would notice.

"We'd be a good public relations tool for them," he says. "You can't find better softball anywhere, especially way down here in Tubac."

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