Why he matters
Some restaurant owners feed a town. Charlie Briley helped build one. He bought the Pink Pony on Scottsdale Road in 1948, a year after Claudia Ogden opened it, and ran it for five decades as a steakhouse of prime rib, martinis and pink booths. But his most important deal happened outside the kitchen. In 1955 he and fellow businessmen put up $56,000 to build Scottsdale Stadium, betting a town of a few thousand people could attract big-league baseball.
The bet paid off the next spring, and it kept paying off for Briley. With the ballpark a short walk away, the Pony became the unofficial clubhouse of the Cactus League. Players, managers, scouts and sportswriters filled it every March.
Where to find his mark today
Scottsdale Stadium. Rebuilt since, it still hosts the Giants every spring, and the Cactus League guide covers how to go. On non-event days the Left Field Day Park opens the outfield berm to anyone with a lunch.
The Pink Pony. Closed since 2016, but the building went on Scottsdale’s Historic Register in 2004, and locals in Old Town still give directions by it.
The town he bet on
In 1955 Scottsdale was four years incorporated, selling itself as “The West’s Most Western Town” and competing for anything that would bring visitors in winter. A wooden ballpark was a big gamble for a town that size. The 1955 year page records it, and the payoff came in March 1956, when the Baltimore Orioles became the first big-league club to train in town. The rest of the decade’s boom, from Motorola to the Valley Ho, is in the 1950s chapter.
The full story
The Pink Pony opened on Scottsdale Road in 1947, founded by Claudia Ogden when downtown was a dusty main street with western pretensions. In 1948 she sold it to Charlie Briley, and he made it an institution. Eleven months a year it was an old-line steakhouse where Scottsdale’s civic class did business over prime rib. In March it was the busiest room in baseball.
That March crowd was Briley’s own doing. The $56,000 that he and fellow businessmen put up in 1955 built the first Scottsdale Stadium, and the Orioles arrived the next spring. Other clubs followed over the decades, and the Pony became the default address for all of them: deals and gossip over dinner, memorabilia gathering on the walls one signed gift at a time.
The site’s records give no birth or death year for Briley, and this page won’t supply one. They say he ran the Pony for five decades and that it closed in 2009 after his death. Two revivals followed, from 2011 to 2013 and from 2014 to 2016, and neither could reissue fifty years of belonging on Old Town’s most valuable corner. The Pony closed for good in July 2016. The stadium he helped seed is still there, and it fills up every March.