Mapping the path

California Baseball: Day 17

Rancho Cucamonga Quakes

LoanMart Field, home of the High-A Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, is located 15 miles directly west of San Bernardino’s San Manuel Stadium, where I had seen the Quakes take on the Inland Empire 66ers the night before. The teams are related by more than their proximity within southwest San Bernardino County.

That same year, in the tale of House 66ers, a different Salinas team — this time the second incarnation of the Salinas Spurs — purchased the San Bernardino Spirit name and moved the franchise to the Inland Empire. They became the San Bernardino Stampede three years later, and finally the Inland Empire 66ers in 2003.

I swear to you, I had to diagram this.

Not only have the teams shared a name, they have both had the Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Angels (known by oh-so-many different names themselves) as recent affiliates. The two Major League clubs even swapped the two Minor League clubs before the 2011 season. It is how you get banners of MVP contemporaries Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw hanging in the same set of rafters. Other notable alumni include Cody Bellinger, Walker Buehler, Joc Pederson, Yasiel Puig, Francisco Rodríguez, Corey Seager, and Jared Weaver.

In 1993, their first season at The Epicenter, the Quakes shattered the California League attendance record, pulling in 331,005 fans, well above the previous mark (218,444) held by the High Desert Mavericks. Additional seats were added in the outfield after the season, bringing total capacity closer to the 6,588 seats it is today. Rancho Cucamonga won its first California League title the next year, and in 1995, attendance boomed to 446,146 fans, still the league record. The numbers are back to more typical levels in the league, with just over 162,000 seeing games in 2019, fourth-best in the eight-team league.

Renamed LoanMart Field in 2013 (after an Encino-based auto loan company), the Epicenter (as many still call it, because, c’mon!) continues to be a handsome ballpark. It feels tidy, sharp. The outfield dimensions are perfectly even: 330 feet down each line, 373 feet to each alley, and 401 feet to straight-away center. A large area of cocktail-table seating lies beyond the fixed seats down the left-field line, literally as far as possible from the children’s play area down the right-field line.

There is a strong brand presence throughout the ballpark. From the Dodger-blue seats and signs to Dodgers-style uniforms, the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes are clearly a Los Angeles Dodgers affiliate, and this is their ballpark. Although they have been together for just nine years, the connection does not feel transient, as it does for some Minor League franchises (which is fine and fun, too, by the way). It’s feels baked in.

It’s been a fruitful relationship of late. The Quakes won their second league championship in 2015 (led by 19-year-old Cody Bellinger, who hit 30 home runs with 103 RBI in just 128 games) and their third title in 2018 (featuring 20-year-old starter Dustin May, who, like Bellinger, contributed significantly to the Dodgers’ first World Series title in 32 years in 2020).

The whole operation at LoanMart comes off as efficient, business-like, driven by detail to appeal to the fans’ love for both the Quakes and the Dodgers — who, as the sign out front will tell you, are just 47 miles away. The concession stands have clever names (Tremor’s Wheelhouse, Aftershock Alley, Hot Corner Grille), the team store is front-and-center as you enter the ballpark, and even the children’s play area is branded with the Quakes’ color and logo.

I didn’t see anything obvious that I should try at the concession stands — no crazy or unusual food items to put my digestive system to the test — so I doubled back to the front gate to ask a group of 20-something greeters for their recommendations. The consensus was that I should go for the boneless chicken wings and fries, and I went with it. They were pretty tasty.

Rancho Cucamonga looked to end the trend on this Saturday evening by sending to the mound the number one prospect in all of the Dodgers organization, right-handed starter Josiah Gray. A second-round pick of the Cincinnati Reds in 2018, Gray had mostly played the infield in high school and only had a mid-80s fastball when he entered tiny LeMoyne College in Syracuse, New York. But he worked to increase his velocity to 94 mph at LeMoyne, becoming the ace of the staff and leading the team to the 2018 Division II Regionals.

Gray put up a nice 2.58 ERA in 2018 during 12 games in the Rookie-ball Appalachian League before being traded to the Dodgers in a deal involving sluggers Yasiel Puig and Matt Kemp. Beginning 2019 with the Great Lakes Loons of the A-ball Midwest League, he notched an impressive 1.93 ERA in five starts before being promoted to Rancho Cucamonga.

Gray began his night by giving up a single and a stolen base to Lancaster center fielder Matt Hearn, who would finish the game 4-for-4 and hitting .316. But Gray quickly settled down, getting outs from the next three batters, then retiring the side in the second.

Lancaster’s starter was Garrett Schilling, an 18th round pick in 2017 who had struggled in Short Season A-ball with the Boise Hawks before putting up solid numbers with the A-ball Asheville Tourists in 2018. Schilling had been converted from a dominating reliever to a starter at Xavier University, and he still seemed to be searching for his groove in this new role.

Schilling gave up two singles and a walk in the first inning, loading the bases before inducing a groundout to end the threat. He too followed it up with a scoreless second.

The staff at LoanMart Field were busy and on-point between innings, putting on games with fans and doing bits with Tremor the Rallysaurus, the team’s primary mascot. A blindfolded girl was challenged to find home plate; competing teams tossed rings from the stands to partners on the field; costumed men for some reason raced to and from large, plushie orange slices in left field; and kids raced Tremor around the infield, answered Dodgers trivia questions; and dressed as bananas to catch balls of fruit launched via giant slingshot, in a small bucket. As soon as the third out of an inning was recorded, staff members moved briskly onto the field to set things up, efficiently unfolding, placing, then hiding inside sponsor signage as Tremor sauntered into place. A secondary mascot, Tremor’s younger brother, Aftershock, made a brief appearance before the game. Otherwise, this was Tremor’s show.

As Josiah Gray continued to deal, I took a walk down both sides of the field to enjoy the ever-attractive view of the setting sun over a baseball game.

The trouble did not end there for Schilling. In fact, the home runs did not end there. Schilling tallied a couple of outs mixed in with a walk and a double, then surrendered a towering three-run shot to Quakes catcher Jordan Procyshen that carried well over the right-field wall — you could hear the impressed “ooooooh”s from all over the stadium as the ball reached its apex and sailed into the night, putting the Quakes up 5-0.

In the top of the fourth, Gray gave up a rocket of a home run to JetHawks first baseman Luis Castro, who would go on to hit .317 for Lancaster. But that was the extent of the damage the Jethawks could muster against Gray, who cruised through the middle innings and finished his seven-inning start giving up just one earned run on four hits, striking out eight and walking none — a stellar night befitting a top prospect.

The Quakes added runs in the fifth and sixth innings. Lancaster managed just one more run in the top of the eighth, which was quickly answered in the bottom of the frame by a second home run from Kendall, a three-run fly that bounced off the “Family RV” sign fixed just inside the right-field foul pole.

The game ended in a rout, Quakes over the JetHawks, 10-2. The teams split the four-game series. The JetHawks would not make it into the playoffs in 2019. The second spot in the South would go to the Lake Elsinore Storm, which would go on to beat the Quakes in the semi-finals before falling to the champions and clearly the best team in the California League in 2019, the Visalia Rawhide.

I had completed my 10th and final Minor League game of the trip, and 14 California baseball games in 17 days. It had been an incredible experience, up and down the state. Now, there was just one more game left on the schedule, just one more place to go.

Home, to see my Padres.

Highlight Reel

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