Southwest Flavor Ep. 154 - Mike Feder

**Ron Arenas** (0:00)
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Southwest Flavor. Happy Thursday to all of you. We have a fantastic show lined up for you today. I've got my buddy, Will Peña, here, and he's co-hosting with me. Good morning.

**Will Peña** (0:12)
Good morning, young man, how are you?

**Ron Arenas** (0:14)
Good, good, how are you doing?

**Will Peña** (0:15)
Awesome, man, it's great to be back.

**Ron Arenas** (0:16)
Yeah, thank you for coming back.

**Will Peña** (0:18)
Thanks for letting me back.

**Ron Arenas** (0:19)
Well, yeah, it's in the contract.

**Will Peña** (0:21)
It is, whether you like it or not. Right. As long as you keep catching those tricks.

**Ron Arenas** (0:28)
And today we have a great guest. He's a Tucson legend and and Cubs fan and a Cubs fan. Yeah, he knows a little bit about baseball.

**Mike Feder** (0:36)
Does qualify legend in my own mind.

**Ron Arenas** (0:38)
Yeah, there you go. We all are.

**Mike Feder** (0:40)
Right.

**Ron Arenas** (0:41)
Mike Feder, welcome.

**Mike Feder** (0:42)
No, thank you for having me.

**Ron Arenas** (0:44)
Yeah. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

**Mike Feder** (0:47)
What's 74 years old. Does that count?

**Ron Arenas** (0:50)
That counts for a lot.

**Mike Feder** (0:50)
That means I'm old.
No, I just mostly a sports career, obviously. Ran minor league teams for 30 years. Ran the Tucson team, Sidewinder's, Tucson Padres, Tucson Toros. Right. The one everybody talks about. Yeah.

**Ron Arenas** (1:06)
Well, that's what I grew up going and watching.

**Mike Feder** (1:09)
Right.

**Ron Arenas** (1:09)
Yeah.

**Mike Feder** (1:10)
So it's Toros for 15
You know, it was minor league GM for 30 Worked with the New Orleans Saints.

**Ron Arenas** (1:18)
Oh, wow.

**Mike Feder** (1:19)
For five years. Okay.

**Ron Arenas** (1:20)
I didn't know that part.

**Mike Feder** (1:21)
Between the time I left Tucson and then returned to Tucson, but something called Katrina came along.

**Ron Arenas** (1:28)
Yes.

**Mike Feder** (1:28)
And that was the end of the Saints days.
Just a lot of things, you know, the Arizona Bowl, the Tucson Sugar Skulls. I was the first executive director of the Sugar Skulls, got everything started there.
So I guess when you're old, you've done a lot of things. But no, I love my career. I mean, it's just, and then now do a lot of non-profit. Right. Which I think is one of the reasons I'm here today. I mean, I'm the board chair of the Southern Arizona Law Enforcement Foundation. SAILF used to be the Tucson Police Foundation.

**Ron Arenas** (2:04)
Ah, okay.

**Mike Feder** (2:06)
Now I'm also the Father's Day Council, if you've ever seen the Father of the Year Dinner.

**Ron Arenas** (2:11)
Oh, yeah.

**Mike Feder** (2:12)
I'm on that board. Okay. So, I do a number of things. I have the Lewd Olsen Fantasy Basketball Camp. Yeah. As you heard walking in, I've had the Mexican Baseball Fiesta for 14 years. Right. So, maybe I have too many things.
People say, you know, no longer a full-time job, and people say, oh, you're retired? No, I don't think so.

**Ron Arenas** (2:32)
Right.

**Mike Feder** (2:33)
I have no full-time job, but if the word retired means I'm not doing anything anymore, let's cross that one off the list.

**Ron Arenas** (2:40)
Right, right. What do you have, Will?

**Will Peña** (2:43)
Well, Mexican Baseball League, that's something that's still going on, right? The fiesta, I'm sorry, the fiesta.

**Mike Feder** (2:49)
Yeah, we started in 2011
I was the general manager of the Tucson Padres at the time, and Francisco Gámez cold called me, I never met him, and just said, I have an interesting concept for you. Okay, what is it? He said, the Mexican Winter League is Major League Baseball in Mexico. He said, I think it could really work out to have them come to Tucson for their spring training. And now, the word spring training is not spring. Their season is in October, but September, early October, and we play some games here. We bring in other teams here, do it that way. I, quite honestly, I knew nothing about the Mexican Winter League.
Went on the internet, went on Google, and started watching it, and I'm going, highlights of the game, it's just a, I don't know if you guys have ever been to the Fiesta.

**Will Peña** (3:48)
I have.

**Mike Feder** (3:49)
It's just a gigantic party. And it's nice. So when I saw that, I came back to them and said, I'll do this under one condition. I had a staff for the Tucson Patres at the time. And we had the Tucson Patres for three years.