Pereira back at the ballpark

TRIPLE PLAY: Baseball fans wearing Shohei Ohtani jerseys enter Tempe Diablo Stadium for a 2024 spring training game at the Cactus League home of the Los Angeles Angels. (Getty Images)

Unifying voice for AZ spring training

Tony Pereira has come full circle in his career through his love of baseball and spring training.

Pereira, a veteran stadium manager who spent 37 years with the Seattle Mariners, recently took the job of manager of operations and events for the Cactus League Baseball Association, a nonprofit committed to strengthening the spring training industry in Arizona, pegged as a $700 million economic driver annually for state tourism.

Pereira’s position is a new role within the association, which dates to 1947, the year MLB teams first staged spring training in Arizona, according to Bridget Binsbacher, the group’s executive director in Glendale, where the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago White Sox share Camelback Ranch, among the Cactus League’s 10 facilities spread among 15 teams. He was hired after hundreds of people applied for the job, Binsbacher said.

Pereira will manage the operations layer of the organization, which consists of a six-member executive board made up of officials representing the municipalities and MLB teams that run spring training parks.

In addition, he will oversee the Cactus League’s annual Hall of Fame ceremonies, Sponsor Appreciation Days and Legislative Day, a networking event with local and state politicians to lobby for public funding and overall support of spring training complexes.

“They were looking for someone with (my) type of background to help the group when it comes to improving relationships with MLB and the teams that train here,” Pereira said. “It’s a chance to be a unifying voice, discuss best practices and share ideas to make sure people coming here are having a great spring training experience, no matter which parks they go to.”

After leaving the Mariners in 2017, Pereira spent four years with the Arizona Cardinals in venue operations at State Farm Stadium. Over the past three years, he worked with the old XFL in operations at Cashman Field in Las Vegas.

For Pereira, it helped his cause that he’s known Binsbacher for more than 15 years, dating to her tenure as executive director of the Peoria Sports Complex, shared by the Mariners and San Diego Padres since 1994 at MLB’s first two-team spring training facility. For nine years, she was employed by the Peoria Diamond Club, one of five nonprofit partners tied to Cactus League spring training complexes.

Binsbacher and Pereira connected further after she attended the Mariners’ fan fest at Safeco Field, now T-Mobile Park, to learn more about ballpark operations.

“These are specialized disciplines within our facilities and critical roles to the success of spring training,” Binsbacher said. “Tony’s an expert at that. Nobody understood the structure and inner workings of the Cactus League and the spring training industry like Tony does. The fact that we were able to get somebody like him with his knowledge and experience is unbelievable.”

Things have changed a lot since Pereira visited spring training for the first time at age 17, when he took his first airplane ride on a trip to Phoenix from his hometown in suburban Seattle. He fell in love with the experience and became an advocate for it over the years, encouraging friends and colleagues to attend Cactus League games, an annual ritual for many diehard baseball fans.

“I’ve always been a big fan of spring training, and now it’s so much fun to be paid to be part of it,” Pereira said.

Decades later, the Cactus League has evolved into a global brand that mirrors the makeup of MLB’s international flavor, where Hispanic and Asian players make up one-third of team rosters.

Last spring, the Cactus League drew 1.63 million fans as the spring training industry builds on its recovery four years after the pandemic. Sixty percent of those total visitors came from out of state, as reported by the Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business.

In 2019, attendance was 1.74 million, the last time spring training was not disrupted due to COVID restrictions and the owner’s lockout.

For many years, the Cactus League Baseball Association was an all-volunteer effort until 2019, the year Binsbacher was hired as the association’s first paid employee. Over the past few months, the Cactus League board decided to invest in creating additional full-time positions. Apart from Pereira, Jacob Benabou was hired in October as operations coordinator after working for two years with multiple MLB teams in spring training and the Arizona Fall League.

The association generates revenue through annual membership dues that run from $3,500 for officials in the sports, tourism, lodging and entertainment industry in Arizona; $2,500 for business professionals; $1,500 for those employed by a Cactus League facility or government entity; and $1,000 for employees among the 15 teams that spend the spring in Arizona.

There are currently 27 members and their fees help pay for the salaries of Binsbacher, Pereira and Benabou.

In turn, members receive benefits such as website listings, spring training promotions, legislative representation, board of directors eligibility and access to economic impact studies conducted by ASU.

“A lot of folks don’t realize our mission or that we’re a nonprofit,” Binsbacher said. “We still have a small team when you consider the magnitude of what we represent. The industry generates about 6,000 jobs with tourism from all over the country, and on a global stage with foreign press. We need to do everything we can to support the best interests of the industry for Arizona, to remain competitive and secure future funding.”