Fans of the Pink Pony, Don and Charlie's and the Italian Grotto in Scottsdale need to start new traditions

    My good friend and former colleague John Shea went on a doleful nostalgia tour after he arrived in Scottsdale for spring training the other day. He texted a string of photos that showed the Pink Pony, Don and Charlie's, and the Italian Grotto in various stages of afterlife.

    

    The shuttered Pony still had the outline of its name on the building, faded though legible, with the ground-to-roof painting of a baseball on its north side. 
    

    The Grotto still had its signage affixed to the signature red-painted, clapboard facade, one noting that it was established in 1977, plus a banner promising a new Italian bistro COMING SOON.
    
    Don and Charlie's...well, if you loved the place, steer clear of the corner of 75th Ave. and Indian School Road, where a half-built boutique hotel rises where the restaurant was demolished.
    

    The Pony, Don and Charlie's and the Grotto were the holy trinity of hangouts for generations of Cactus League visitors. All three are history.

    

    And you know what? That's OK.
    

    You probably figured this blog was headed in a different direction, a lament of the loss of younger days, special memories and friendships. 
    

    But I won't go there. 
    

    I am as nostalgic as anyone (mostly for my hair) and I will miss all three restaurants. But mostly I'll miss seeing their proprietors, and this is where a tour of memories crashes headlong into the realities of age and mortality -- for people, places and things.
    
    What made these eateries and drinkeries special was not the caricatures of patrons, mostly long-tone, that adorned the walls of the Pony, nor the millions of dollars of sports memorabilia that filled every empty space of Don and Charlie's -- even the ceilings. Nor was it the incredible Italian food at the Grotto, which disproved the adage that a tourist attraction and mouth-watering cooking somehow are mutually exclusive.

    

    These restaurants were an extension of the people who largely created them and held onto them until they could hold on no longer.

    The Pink Pony was Charlie and Gwen

Briley. Charlie did not actually open the restaurant. He tended bar there before buying it around 1950. There, the likes of Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle and other baseball greats sat in booths with other baseball folk telling tall tales (and a few truthful ones) as they bit into some of the best steak and chops in the Valley.

     

    One of the best moments of my baseball life happened there, when I was invited to dine with Joan Ryan, Stephanie Salter and others in a booth with Bill Rigney, the baseball lifer who managed the Giants when they moved west, and again for a forgettable 1976 season.
    

    "Rig" was one of the game's best storytellers. I was not a pup at the time but was still mesmerized. I couldn't tell you one of those stories now. My mental hard drives aren't what they used to be.
    

    Gwen ran the Pony for six years after Charlie's death in 2002 before selling. Others tried to keep it going. One restaurant group inadvisably attempted to turn it upscale, with gourmet food and modern furnishings alongside some of the old memorabilia, which were displayed as an afterthought.
   

    How did that go? 

    You saw the photo.
   

    By then, Don and Charlie's long had supplanted the Pony as the IT place in Scottsdale. 

The hotel being built where Don and Charlie's once stood.

    Don Carson, a Chicagoan whose family still runs and old-school, wood-paneled steakhouse in the Second City called Carson's, moved to Arizona and opened "D&C" in 1981 with a partner not named Charlie. In fact, there was no Charlie. As Don tells it, the name was a joke to annoy an associate named Charles who hated being addressed with the nickname.

    

    D&C was a great spot for baseball people because Don ensured they could eat without being bothered. Scouts, players, GMs, broadcasters.... More nights than not  Bud Selig and Bob Uecker dined there. They are among Don's best friends.

    

    Fans might think it a sacrilege that Don sold the building to a hotel developer, but he earned the rest after 38 years and wanted to provide for his family. He was in his mid-70s when the restaurant closed in 2019 after he enduring a list of orthopedic maladies that no single human should experience.
    

    Don and Charlies without Don Carson seems unfathomable to me. Maybe I view it differently because we are friends. It's more personal, and I did have the luxury of eating 8 million D&C ribs.
    

    The Grotto's closure surprised a lot of us. We arrived in Arizona last spring to see it shuttered. It, too, had a single, legendary owner, a New Yorker named Garry Horowitz, who talked in the raspy voice of a longtime smoker and was -- how shall we say it? -- colorful.

     With his temper he had no compunction against ejecting diners for sins such as sending a dish back to the kitchen. Some of the Grotto's crowd-sourced reviews online were hilarious, noting that the food was great but the owner nutty. 

    

    But Garry was loyal to his friends and employees, many of whom worked there for decades and returned multiple times after they quit or were fired.
    

   Garry came to Giants practices and games religiously. Near the end of each spring he would call me over to say, in his unmistakable New York accent, "I think they're gonna be OK, but they need one more playuh."
    

    The Grotto was a favorite of my late friend Pedro Gomez, who died unexpectedly on Super Bowl Sunday, and any nostalgia that drips from this piece comes from my heartsickness that Pedro is gone.
    

    Again, though, imagining the Grotto without Garry is a stretch.
    

    Times change. Memories endure. But the day comes for the next generation to create its own memories in its own places. Dining has changed since the Pony, D&C and the Grotto came to be. Steaks, chops and big Italian meals, though wonderful, are not what most younger folk have in mind. 

    My friend Alex Pavlovic, a millennial, loves a particular salad place. Kerry Crowley, who was born three months ago, indulged me in a few trips to D&C but enjoys his healthy food as well. 

    For decades, Giants beat writers christened spring training with a group dinner at D&C. That disappeared long before the structure did.
    

    I do feel for those who for years promised themselves they would go to Scottsdale one day and have the ribs at Don and Charlie's. I get it. That they cannot do.
    

    They need to start new traditions. The rest of us are not too old to follow them.  Traditions are about people as much as institutions, especially at these three joints.
    

    I'll miss them, but won't mourn them.