Post from the Coast

by Bruce Baskin
October 19, 2014 - West Coast League (WCL)

TWO WCL CHARTER TEAMS BEING SOLD

With the 2014 season over for two months, one of the West Coast League's original seven franchises has been sold while a second charter team is in the process of changing hands.

One team, the Bend Elks, actually predated the WCL by spending five years in the Pacific International League before becoming one of five PIL teams who broke away and added two new clubs to form the WCL in 2005. The other, the Kitsap BlueJackets, joined the now-defunct Spokane RiverHawks as expansion teams that year. Both are being sold by their original owners.

The Elks are being sold by owner-GM Jim Richards to a group called Let's Play Ball, LLC headed by Portland resident John Marick and his wife, Tami. According to the Bend Bulletin, Marick is the co-founder and CEO of Consumer Cellular, a nationwide provider of mobile phones and services. Shortly after agreeing on a price, the Maricks hired longtime Elks coach Casey Powell as the team's new general manager and were negotiating with the Bend Parks & Recreation District on lease details for Vince Genna Stadium. The Elks sale was unanimously approved by the WCL Board of Directors.

The BlueJackets sale is still being ironed out and has yet to come up before the WCL directors for a vote. The three-man group led by attorney Rick Smith has agreed to transfer the Bremerton clob to the team's original head coach, Matt Acker. The nearby Port Orchard Independent newspaper quotes Acker as saying he had signed a "buyer's agreement" to purchase the foundering franchise. Acker was head coach of the BlueJackets their first seven seasons before forming the developmental Puget Sound Collegiate Baseball League in 2011. He returned to help run the Kitsap team this summer before deciding to make an offer.

Terms have not been announced for either franchise. One interesting twist was the appearance on the craigslist website late in the summer advertising an existing WCL franchise for $895,000. While neither the ad nor the league verified which franchise was up for sale, one well-placed source from within the circuit said it was Bend. WCL president Dennis Koho did say that in recent years, new franchises have gone for $200,000 to $300,000, depending on location, adding that some current teams would sell for less while others could fetch an amount closer to the craigslist ad, which added that a team in the Class A Northwest League would cost six to ten million dollars.

While Bend and Bremerton were quite evenly matched in record and attendance during their first two seasons in the WCL, the Elks have grown greatly since 2006 while the BlueJackets have stagnated at best. Bend led the loop in announced attendance for nine years in a row before falling to fifth overall this summer as 420,139 fans have clicked the turnstiles at Genna Stadium over eleven years, topping the 40,000 mark the past seven years. Conversely, Kitsap has drawn just 144,518 to the Fairgrounds in the same period, never drawing as many as 19,000 in a single year. Neither team has won a WCL title. Bend reached the playoffs for the second time this year while the BlueJackets have never reached the postseason.

GEMS EXTEND LEASE AT KIGER FIVE YEARS

The Klamath Falls Gems could be excused if they'd been shell-shocked after a 2014 season in which they fell out of contention early, suffered a 24 percent drop in attendance and had the All-Star Game they were hosting washed out for the first time ever (the only rain cancellation in their four years of existence). Questions also abounded about the long-term viability of Kiger Stadium, the 67-year-old wooden ballpark that has maintenance and improvement issues that won't be cheap to address. In other words, it was a disquieting summer for Gems owners Jerry and Lisa Walker, who have the added disadvantage of residing over 200 miles away in Salem, where they also operate a Northwest League franchise.

Instead of assuming matching fetal positions in a darkened room, the Walkers began their offseason by extending the Gems' lease at Kiger Stadium for five years. Originally set to expire after next season, the lease is expected to keep the WCL franchise in Klamath Falls through 2020. Although Kiger is popular among many fans as a "classic" ballpark, the facility reportedly has electrical work that'll need to be done sooner rather than later along with other issues any wooden ballpark in its seventh decade typically faces.

Shortly after the lease extension was signed, Justin Barchus was hired as the Gems manager for 2015. Barchus has coached a Salem-area college prep traveling squad the past seven years along with a three-year stint as pitching coach for a local high school program. He becomes the fifth Klamath Falls skipper since the Gems first took the field in 2011.

EX-WENATCHEE HURLER BEATS DODGERS, KERSHAW TWICE IN NLCS

It's been quite a summer for former Wenatchee AppleSox pitcher Marco Gonzalez. Four years after pitching in the WCL and two years after being drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals from Gonzaga, Gonzales started the season in Class A Palm Beach, was promoted to AA Springfield, was picked for the All-Star Futures Game but had to skip the trip because he was called up to St. Louis in June one day before making his MLB debut against the Rockies (doubling his first trip to the plate but coming out with a no-decision). Gonzalez made one more start before being optioned to AAA Memphis for eight weeks before a late-season call-up to the Cards, where the 22-year-old lefty finished the year at 4-2 with a 4.15 ERA in 10 appearances.

Now we get to the good part.

Gonzalez was kept on the Cardinals' 25-man roster for the postseason after winning their fourth straight National League Central title. In the first round, the Colorado native pitched three times in relief against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL Divisional Series, earning the win against reigning Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw TWICE while allowing no earned runs over three innings.

Things went a little rockier in the League Championship Series against San Francisco. Gonzalez took a loss and was touched for three runs in three innings over three relief appearances.

CAUGHT ON THE HOP

The Bellingham Bells have promoted Stephanie Morrell to Assistant General Manager, where she'll be second in command under WCL Executive of the Year Nick Caples. Morrell, a Western Washington U graduate, joined the Bells one year ago as Marketing Director...Bellingham also announced the entire coaching staff for this year's pennant-winners will return in 2015, including WCL Manager of the Year Jeff James...The honors keep coming for Yakima Valley OF Vince Fernanzez (UC Riverside). The 2014 WCL MVP was named the league's top prospect by Perfect Game USA after hitting .359 while breaking league records with 10 homers and 51 RBIs. Walla Walla 3B Sean Bouchard (UCLA) was named the WCL's second-best prospect while Meford P David Peterson (Oregon) was third...Medford has hired a woman to be their lead play-by-play radio voice for 2015. Emma Tiedemann, currently a senior at Missouri, entered broadcasting at age 15 and called last season's Cottom Bowl football game in Dallas. The 22-year-old Tiedemann announced Mat-Su Miners Alaska Baseball League games this summer...While ballparks are obviously best known for baseball, such venues will also typically be booked for concerts and other athletic events to help pay the bills. One such evening occurred when an MMA promotion hosted an event in Medford's Harry & David Field on a September Saturday night. A brawl among fans erupted near the end of the bouts and spilled into the parking lot after the action inside the facility ended, with two security guards injured in the melee. Twenty police officers responded and seven people were arrested. The promoter, Rogue Fights, claimed on Facebook that they do not support fighting OUTSIDE the cage (ostensibly in place to protect spectators from fighters, not the other way around)...Spitball Magazine will be publishing a story by Post editor Bruce Baskin in their winter issue, an 8,000-word autobiography of former MLB pitcher Bobo Newsom in a first-person narrative form similar to the piece Mark Kram did in Sports Illustrated on Hack Wilson nearly 40 years ago.

2014 WCL ATTENDANCE

TEAM GM* TOTAL AVG.

Bellingham 32 47,307 1,478

Victoria 30 45,571 1,519

Bend 31 42,030 1,356

Corvallis 34 43,938 1,292

Yakima Valley 34 42,898 1,262

Medford 32 41,490 1,297

Wenatchee 32 39,182 1,224

Walla Walla 31 36,823 1,188

Cowlitz 32 36,795 1,187

Klamath Falls 29 27,354 943

Kelowna 26 22,448 863

Kitsap 25 12,962 518

TOTALS 368 438,294 1,191

* - Includes all regular season, playoff and nonleague games

WCL ROAD TRIP: Longview, Washington

The city of Longview, Washington is not the easiest place to navigate through. Getting to Longview itself isn't a problem. From our last road trip stop in Bremerton, we head south on State Highway 3 through the Kitsap Peninsula for 32 miles until reaching US Highway 101 near Shelton, which we travel for 12 miles east until reaching the state capital of Olympia and Interstate 5, which we then travel another 63 miles to the south before reaching Longview. The drive takes about 90 minutes, a little more time than driving through Tacoma but not so long that it isn't worth the toll you save going eastbound over the famous Narrows Bridge.

Once you actually get to Longview, however, even a map and a GPS won't leave you without some on-the-spot decisions to make while traveling through town to David Story Field, home of the Cowlitz Black Bears of the WCL. For reasons why, you have to step back almost 100 years in time. Although what is now the Longview-Kelso area (a half-hour drive north of Portland, Oregon) was first inhabited in the 1850's by white settlers who named it Monticello in honor of Thomas Jefferson's Virginia home, it remained sparsely populated until Missouri timber baron R.A. Long decided to move his operation to the area in 1918. Long helped hire planner George Kessler to design a city that would eventually be home to 50,000 people. The result was a road grid similar to Washington, DC, with streets projecting out from the city center like spokes on a wheel with other streets encircling the center and plenty of roundabouts to bring it together. It looks great from above or on a map, but if you don't know where you're going it's possible to pass the same landmark two or three times before realizing you're missing a turn in there somewhere. Be patient and leave bread crumbs.

The city itself is mostly quite nice and generally aging with a degree of grace with tree-lined streets and older architecture mingling with more modern building styles. There are nascent problems due to gang activity coming north from Portland but for the most part, Longview is a reasonable facsimile of the proverbial "Middle America" and was listed by Forbes as one of the United States' prettiest cities in 2012. Longview currently has about 36,000 residents. Timber is still the straw that stirs the drink here.

In terms of climate, Longview is among the moderates on the WCL circuit. It's generally a few degrees cooler than Portland and overcast skies aren't unusual. Because it sits on a small gorge of the Columbia River, the wind can come through town pretty briskly, with summer marine air pushing gusts up to the 30-40 MPH range. Summers are generally quite pleasant, mostly dry with temperatures reaching into the 80's, but fall through winter can be cold and damp. It doesn't snow much in Longview, but it sure can rain.

Once you find your way to the campus of Lower Columbia College, one of Washington's oldest two-year colleges, you'll find David Story Field on its campus. Story Field is an uncovered ballpark that seats 1,200 fans with a main grandstand behind home plate (featuring seating from Sicks' Seattle Stadium), a bleacher section along the third base line, a so-called "Party Deck" behind the left field fence and picnic tables running down the first base side. It's one of the smaller venues in the WCL, but it's also one of the more modern ones following 2010 renovations in preparation for the arrival of summer college ball.

The Black Bears completed their fifth WCL season in 2014 with a 24-30 record, good enough for third place one game behind Victoria and a half-game ahead of Kitsap. The team finished ninth in the WCL season attendance derby with 36,795 fans attending 31 league and exhibition games, the fourth straight year Cowlitz has averaged over 1,000 per opening.

NEXT ROAD TRIP STOP: Corvallis, Oregon, USA

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West Coast League Stories from October 19, 2014

• Post from the Coast - OSC Original by Bruce Baskin
• Post from the Coast - OSC Original by Bruce Baskin
• Post from the Coast - OSC Original by Bruce Baskin

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