Mavericks League
It’s a full day and night of independent pro baseball as we visit Volcanoes Stadium in Keizer, OR, to see all four teams in the Mavericks League: The Salem-Keizer Volcanoes, Salem Senators, Capesinos de Salem-Keizer, and the Portland Mavericks.
Dad and I made the short drive from Corvallis to Salem, Oregon, stopping for a look at the state capitol building — or rather the portion of it that was not obstructed by construction equipment. Opened in 1938, it is an Art Deco building, one of three such state capitols in the United States. The golden statue on top, added in 1953, depicts John McLaughlin, known as the “Father of Oregon.” McLaughlin was Superintendent of the Hudson Bay Company’s fur-trading district and worked to exert American authority over what was known as Oregon Country. His general store in Oregon City was famously known as the end of the Oregon Trail.
The small city of Keizer is just north of Salem. At the outskirts of town, facing open fields and Interstate 5, is Volcanoes Stadium, which hosts the entire four-team independent Mavericks League. Until 2020, the ballpark was home to the Minor League Salem-Keizer Volcanoes, a Class-A Short Season San Francisco Giants affiliate playing in the Northwest League. That year, Major League Baseball reduced the number of affiliated Minor League teams and demanded substantial improvements to facilities for the teams that remained. The Volcanoes and their stadium — with the lowest attendance in the league — did not make the cut.
The team decided to pivot to professional independent baseball, bringing back the Volcanoes and their Copa de la Diversión alter ego, Campesinos de Salem-Keizer; and adding two teams that recall some of the highest points in Northwest baseball history, the Salem Senators and the Portland Mavericks. The four teams play all of their games at Volcanoes Stadium, and we had signed up for a day-night double-header to see each club.
Nicknamed “Oregon’s Field of Dreams,” Volcanoes Stadium opened in 1997 when the Bellingham Giants moved to Keizer to become the Volcanoes. It seats 4,254 fans, and can accommodate about 6,000 with its grass berms. But it’s safe to say that the ballpark has lost significant luster with the departure of Minor League Baseball, and the weathered seats remained largely empty on this Saturday afternoon and evening.
I stepped inside one of the two team stores and was excited to see some iconic brands, particularly the bucking bull and groovy 1970s font of the Portland Mavericks.
Salem Senators vs. Salem-Keizer Volcanoes
Game 1
Professional baseball in Salem goes back to 1904 and the Salem Raglans, a Class D Minor League team in the Oregon State League, which folded later that year.
The Senators first appeared in the Western International League from 1940-42 and 1946-54. The WIL became the Northwest League in 1955, and the Senators played there for 11 more seasons (as the Salem Dodgers for the last five). The following year, the team ceased operations, their ballpark was condemned, and then it burned down, which you would have to classify as a “bad year.”
The Senators returned to the Northwest League as an independent team in 1977, then became the Salem Angels (1982-87) and Salem Dodgers (1988-89). The franchise relocated to Yakima as the Yakima Bears in 1990.
Senators alumni include Major League Baseball Hall of Famers Bobby Cox and Mike Piazza. Other names in the Salem baseball history books include Jim Lefebvre, Joe Maddon (as a manager), Kirk McCaskill, Dante Bichette, Chuck Finley, and Roberto Hernandez.
Senators starting pitcher Sam Wells
The Volcanoes won five Northwest League championships in their time in Minor League baseball, with an incredible crop of talent in the 2000s that eventually led to three World Series titles for the San Francisco Giants. Brandon Crawford, Tim Lincecum, Buster Posey, Pablo Sandoval, Sergio Romo, and many more played for the Volcanoes.
Stretching before running the bases with one of the players
A bit of home-team weirdness can happen when you put all four teams into the same ballpark: You can have the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes — long-time tenants of a stadium named after them — as the visiting team stepping up to the plate in the top of the first.
Salem starting pitcher Sam Wells, a naive of Sebastopol, California, was playing for his sixth independent team in three years, having traveled from Indiana to California, Montana, Texas, and now to Oregon. The 6-foot-6 right-hander took the mound and would have one of the best games of his career.
Salem jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first when first baseman Matt Lokken, who played in the Florida Marlins organization, drove in a run, and an errant throw to third brought home another.
With just two ballparks left on our schedule, I felt the clock ticking on my ability to make misguided eating decisions. So I marched up to the concessions stand and ordered a foot or so of Kielbasa. They had nicknamed this beast “the killer,” which I would soon discover was more than just a cute alliteration. I would not eat another thing all day and night.
The Senators added three more runs in the second to make it 5-0.
In a little bit of between-inning fanfare, the teams’ two mascots — Crater for the Volcanoes, and Phil A. Buster for the Senators — made their entrance at the ballpark.
The Volcanoes managed to score in the top of the fourth, but Salem answered with a run in the bottom half. The Senators added one in the sixth, two in the seventh, and one in the eighth to cruise to a 10-1 victory.
Wells pitched a complete game for the Senators, scattering 10 hits. After seeing so many Minor League and collegiate games in which starters go a maximum of five innings, it was exciting to see a pitcher take a game the whole way.
Our friend Jim came by to see us. We had first met Jim more than two weeks earlier after our game in Tacoma. Hearing about our Northwest baseball odyssey via Twitter, the Oregon State baseball fan decided to put together a trip of his own. He packed up his camper van and made it to the majority of our games, giving us many a-ha moments as we picked him out in the crowds — or more often, with our big floppy hats, he found us first. We said our goodbyes in Keizer.
Campesinos de Salem-Keizer vs. Portland Mavericks
Game 2
The team I had anticipated seeing the most at Volcanoes Stadium was the Portland Mavericks. Their story is relatively brief but glorious, captured wonderfully in the 2014 documentary The Battered Bastards of Baseball. Owned by ex-minor leaguer and actor Bing Russell, the Mavericks were an unaffiliated team in the Northwest League that held open tryouts in 1973 for generally older cast-offs looking for one more shot at baseball. Over the next five seasons, they won four league titles.
The cast of characters included several Major League veterans, led by former 20-game winner Jim Bouton, who pitched for the Mavericks in 1975 and in 1977 before rejoining the big leagues with the Atlanta Braves in 1978. Bing’s son, actor Kurt Russell, played in Portland while recovering from a rotator-cuff injury. The team’s best player was Reggie “That’s Not My Gun” Thomas, who hit between .294 and .354 in four seasons with the Mavericks, stealing 71 bases in 1973 and 72 more the next year, and who once responded to a benching by threatening manager Frank Peters with a gun.
This was of course not the same team as those legendary clubs. But the uniforms were tremendous.
The Mavericks would be facing the Campseinos de Salem-Keizer, a remnant of the Volcanoes’ participation in Minor League Baseball’s Latin outreach problem called Copa de la Diversión. Their uniform recalls local farmworkers, with faux “jeans” that are hard for the brain to reconcile.
After a scoreless first inning, the Campesinos broke out with four runs in the second.
Our second crop of mascots took to the field to liven things up: Campy (for the Campesinos) and Charge. Ballpark staff had a few events for the kids during the game, with a local Little League joining players for the National Anthem as “baseball buddies”; and competitions in which water balloons were either tossed carefully to a teammate or smacked with baseball bats.
The Mavericks battled back with two runs in the fourth. The early-afternoon gloom had given way to slices of sunlight cutting through the darkened clouds, imbuing the proceedings with visual drama.
I walked down the left-field line to see the action in the bullpen and take a closer look at the patio seating area in the far corner. As with everything at the ballpark on this July 4 weekend, the patio was backed by an abundance of American flags snapping sharply in the growing wind.
Roof Man made an appearance. His gimmick is that he’s, well, on the roof. He tossed a few t-shirts to waiting fans below.
The Mavericks roared back with four runs in the sixth inning, capped by a bases-clearing double from former Yankees minor leaguer, outfielder Wilfrie Favelo. Portland players chanted and danced in their raucous dugout. They led it 6-4.
The continuing interplay of sun and shows produced beautiful baseball skies as night began to fall.
The bravado in both dugouts seemed to escalate as the game wore on. A solo home run in the eighth brought the Campesinos to within a run. Later that inning, a Campesinos runner on third base tagged up on a fly to right field, sprinting towards home. He slid into the approximate area of the plate, which had been covered with dirt when he got there. The umpire conducted a brief bit of archaeology, discovering the actual location of home plate, and — as the catcher tagged the runner standing by in disbelief — called him out. The Mavericks went on to win it 6-5.
It was a good thing the game did not go into extra innings, as we had run out of clothing to drape over Dad.
