According to all the travel guides, the charms of Albuquerque pale next to those of Santa Fe and the many little mountain towns of northern New Mexico. Though Albuquerque has views of the mountains and pockets of quaint pink adobe architecture, the town itself exists for the people who live there, not for tourists, and it looks that way. Still, I maintain there is something incredibly endearing about a city that has named its minor-league baseball team after an episode of The Simpsons—the one where Homer threatens a hunger strike when the Springfield Isotopes prepare to move to Albuquerque—and has statues of Homer, Marge, Bart, and Lisa inside its ballpark. (It’s also endearing that there’s a personal injury lawyer who has turned his ad campaign into a tribute to Better Call Saul. His slogan is “Hurt? Call Bert.”)
Garcia, 65, is a former firefighter who has also worked as a meth-lab cleaner for the DEA, a very Breaking Bad detail that I appreciated. (“It was good while it lasted,” he said. “The money was good. As long as we wore our protective equipment, it was good. We had to peel our suits off like a banana so we wouldn’t contaminate ourselves.”) Now he has a business printing materials for firefighters called Pablo’s Fireman’s Corner.
As a kid, Garcia would listen to Cubs games with his father, who was a devoted Cardinals fan who admired Stan Musial. In the 40s and 50s, the Albuquerque minor-league team was the Cardinals, and the older Garcia played for a neighborhood semipro team called the Martinez Town Cardinals.
