Stories and art celebrate the “Pony”

 ABLE’s program featuring art and stories from Scottsdale’s fabled Pink Pony drew a standing-room-only crowd March 18 at the Old Town Baseball Experience at Frasher’s Tavern.

Guests and speakers included former Pink Pony owner Tim Smith, Camille Briley Hall, former Athletics equipment manager Steve Vucinich, historian Joan Fudala, former Cubs PR executive Charles Shriver, and other impromptu presenters.

They all gathered to celebrate the legacy of Scottsdale’s former Pink Pony once dubbed by Sports Illustrated as “the most popular hangout for baseball people in the civilized world.” Writer Roger Angell called it “the best baseball restaurant in the land.”

The restaurant closed in 2016 but retains its place in baseball lore and Scottsdale history.

Bartender Charlie Briley began working at the Pink Pony in 1949. A year later he purchased the restaurant and through his close friendship with pitcher-turned-sportscaster Dizzy Dean, turned the steakhouse on Scottsdale Road into a hangout for celebrities and the baseball world.

Notable players who frequented the Pony included Ty Cobb, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, Rogers Hornsby, Joe DiMaggio, Ernie Banks, Billy Martin and Will Clark. The Pony was also a de facto office where trades and contracts were made and signed.

The inside of the restaurant was a virtual shrine to baseball with signed memorabilia, photos and caricature drawings of ballplayers, coaches and other spring training regulars gracing the walls. In the 1950s and 1960s Briley commissioned Disney cartoonist Don Barclay to draw the caricatures for $25 each — half paid in cash and half in trade.

The restaurant was also a draw for the who’s who of the social and political scene. Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood came for their wedding dinner. Clark Gable, Senator Hubert Humphrey, and Senator Joseph McCarthy ate there. Cowboy star and former California Angels owner Gene Autry had a favorite booth.

The March 18 featured art and memorabilia that hadn’t been seen publicly in decades, including more than a dozen of the Don Barclay caricatures and original drawings that were part of a 1988 Sports Illustrated feature story about the Pink Pony.