Tag: lancaster jethawks

They come from Anaheim, Azusa, and Cucamonga, too, for the sewing circle and book review

If it’s Saturday, it must be minor league baseball. Sorry, Golden Baseball League, but Jason and I drove to Rancho Cucamonga for a California League game: the Quakes versus the Lancaster Jethawks.

The Quakes’ ballpark is called The Epicenter, and it’s the home of the happy aisles…

No, seriously, here’s the view from my seat…

The Epicenter is new enough to have a fancy-schmancy scoreboard…

And another scoreboard with the team name in lights…

There’s a mall nearby — featuring JCPenney, Robinsons-May, and an Apple store — that Jason swears was not even under construction yet the last time he was here for a game…

Before the game, these folks threw junk to the crowd…

No, seriously, they hopped off the truck onto the dugout roofs and started dancing. Then there were some cheerleader types who also danced…

Later, Jason asked if I noticed that the cheerleaders seemed unusually voluptuous, albeit not with those exact words. Anyway, Tremor the mascot bothered the umpires for a while…

Then he was joined by the other mascot, Aftershock, and if I recall correctly, they did some dancing…

And then some Cub Scouts danced — no, I mean they tried to keep the flag off the ground during a solo saxophone performance of the National Anthem…

Jason alertly pointed out that you don’t often see minor-league players with their names on the backs of their uniforms. Since the Quakes are affiliated with the Angels, it’s entirely possible that they’re doing this solely to embarrass the Dodgers (“Ha ha, even our Class A team uniforms have names on the back”).

A conference on the mound about the mound…

Which led to the landscapers performing emergency mound surgery…

The final line…

And after the game it was time for fireworks…

Yes, everyone loves fireworks…

For Levi, we’ve saved the best two pictures for last. Waukegan isn’t the only place where there’s a statue of Jack Benny (although unlike in Waukegan, here in Rancho Cucamonga, the statue is not located in the public way; instead, it’s just inside the main stadium entrance gate)…

And, in fact, Rancho Cucamonga has done Waukegan one better. This is the street the stadium is located on…

So now that I’ve been to baseball games in both Anaheim and Cucamonga, Jason, does Azusa Pacific University have a baseball team?

Back to the minors

For Memorial Day today, Jason and I made a trip up to Lancaster to see the Lancaster Jethawks play the High Desert Mavericks. Because Jason was unsuccessfully trying to round up more people to go, we got a late start and didn’t get there until the middle of the 4th inning. We didn’t miss any runs, however; the Jethawks scored their first two runs in the bottom of the 4th, two more in the 6th, and three more in the 7th. So it was 7-0 going into the top of the 9th, and the Mavericks managed to mount a rally, getting three runs with 2 outs, then having the bases loaded — but it was not to be, and the final score was 7-3.

The former Lancaster Municipal Stadium, popularly known as “The Hangar,” has succumbed to the naming rights game, and it’s now Clear Channel Stadium. It’s obvious that Clear Channel needs to associate itself with something good and pure like minor league baseball more than minor league baseball needs to associate itself with Clear Channel.

The baseball-related coda

I’m home in North Hollywood.

On the flight from Dallas to Burbank, I was sitting in front of Lancaster Jethawks manager Wally Backman. I only knew this because he had a conversation with the 10-year-old unaccompanied minor sitting next to him, which included this exchange.

Wally: I had to go to Florida because I got in trouble.
Boy: What did you do?
Wally: I bumped an umpire.

The lesson here is that when you’re the manager of a Class A team, you have to fly coach to your disciplinary hearings.

More about the trip to come.

Original comments…

Dan: No. 6! Nice! Best drag bunter of the ’80s.

Jim: I didn’t realize he was a former Met at the time, because I didn’t recognize the name, and he didn’t go into his whole playing career with the kid (but he did say he had played with Barry Bonds in Pittsburgh in 1990). They talked more about the current state of the Diamondbacks — since the Jethawks are the D-Backs’ Class A team — and the kid’s Little League team.

Now, if he had been sitting next to me, I probably would never have known who he was, because he probably wouldn’t have tried to strike up a conversation with a 29-year-old who was listening to an iPod and reading the in-flight magazine article where Bernie Mac names a bunch of expensive restaurants in Chicago.

Down on the farm

Honorary hanger-on Jason Kaifesh called me Sunday afternoon and asked if I wanted to go to a minor-league game. Of course I said yes. The California League-leading Lancaster Jethawks were playing the Inland Empire 66ers (San Bernardino) in a game with a strange 6:00 start time, perhaps because the temperature can get quite high up in the Antelope Valley. First, the best of my attempts at an action shot. Note the ball seemingly frozen…

Since Lancaster is near Edwards Air Force Base, they have two space shuttles on either side of the message board, albeit space shuttles that look more like NASCAR vehicles, with the advertising. Hmm, didn’t the idea of having NASA raise money by selling advertising space come up at some point during the Reagan administration?…

Speaking of which, note the flags, and the fact that the wind was blowing very strong towards right field throughout the game, although there was only one home run hit in that direction (quite a few fly balls to the warning track, though). Is there some kind of mailing list you can subscribe to, if you have a flagpole, to let you know when you’re supposed to have your flags at half-mast?…

This being the minor leagues, they let a kid race the mascot around the bases while the game is in progress (I mean, between innings, but still…). I can provide witnesses to corroborate the fact that Kaboom the Jethawk took a dive, by the way, in case any federal prosecutors interested in a RICO case are reading this…

Lancaster Municipal Stadium, a.k.a. The Hangar, is fairly new, which means they have a manual scoreboard. Yes, that is a ridiculous contradiction, but we live in ridiculous times. At least the manual scoreboard’s numbers are readable (when they remember to put them up), unlike certain electrically-operated numbers that are hard to read when the sun is shining directly on them and a third of the light bulbs are burned out…

Final score: 66ers 7, Jethawks 3. One of the best things about the game, by the way, was the noise the crowd made when the P.A. announcer announced that the Lakers had lost Game 1 of the finals to the Detroit Pistons. It was the noise of several thousand people simultaneously making a noise that meant, “But the local media has been leading us to believe that the Lakers are the team of destiny for months now!” I know, I know, that’s not really baseball-related.

Now I’m headed to Vegas for a few days. Unfortunately, the Las Vegas 51’s won’t be in town while I’m there, so I guess I’ll have to find something to do other than watching minor-league baseball.

Original comments…

Levi: I’m surprised, Jim, to see you refer to the flag as being at half-staff.

As this site shows, lowered flags on ships are at half-mast, but lowered flags on land are at half-staff.

There recently was a story in the Tribune about a woman who contacted the head office of McDonald’s to inform them that they were not, by flag codes, allowed to lower the flags at their restaurants in tribute to their CEO, who had died suddenly. According to her, a government directive had to go out. She was backed up by the reporter and by a government official, whose name and position I’ve forgotten.

Anyway, it’s the first I’d heard about it. Anyone know anything more about these rules?

And were the flags down for Reagan, or for the Lakers?