The following season, he broke big league camp on the Mariners' roster.Īs for the Spirit, when the city of Rancho Cucamonga told Stickney its intention of building a brand-new state-of-the-art ballpark to be ready for play in 1993, it was an offer he couldn't pass up. In 1988, at the tender age of 18, Ken Griffey Jr. Stickney and his group of investors moved the team to San Bernardino in 1987 and stayed there, at 3,500 seat Fiscalini Field, through the 1992 season, during which time they were known as the San Bernardino Spirit. Former Quakes' majority owner Hank Stickney also became involved and purchased a large portion of the team. After one season at the college, McMullen could not find a suitable, nearby site to locate the team, and thus sold the franchise to a group of investors headed by Roy Englebrecht and actor Mark Harmon. Having left Lodi, the Ventura County Gulls affiliated with the Toronto Blue Jays, and played at Ventura College, which was supposed to be a temporary site. Lodi would never regain professional baseball, although today baseball fans in Lodi only have a short drive to Banner Island Ballpark in Stockton, where they can see the Stockton Ports compete in the California League. The owner of the franchise, Lodi resident Michelle Sprague, was unable to find an MLB partner for the 1985 season, so she deactivated the team for the year and eventually sold the team to a group headed by former major leaguer Ken McMullen, who took the team to Southern California. For example, the teams now operating in San Bernardino and High Desert can each trace their roots at one times through Salinas, California.However, during the 19 years that Lodi had a California League entry, it was always the same franchise.Īfter the 1984 season, the Chicago Cubs decided to move all of their Minor League teams east of the Mississippi River and pulled out of Lodi. Throughout California League history, and especially prior to the mid-1990s, franchises have frequently moved from city to city. Lodi was the only team in the Quakes' franchise lineage (besides the 1994 Rancho Cucamonga squad) to win a California League Championship, with victories coming in 1973, 19. Through 1984, the franchise had five different affiliations Chicago Cubs (1966-68), Oakland A's (1969), San Diego Padres (1970-71), Baltimore Orioles (1972-75), Los Angeles Dodgers (1976-83), and the Cubs again, in 1984.ĭuring the span of 19 seasons in Lodi, the team was known by six different nicknames Crushers (1966-69), Padres (1970-71), Orions (1972), Lions (1973), Orioles (1974-75), Dodgers (1976-83), and again Crushers in 1984. In the case of Valenzuela, the first professional game he was involved in with a United States-based team was with the Lodi Dodgers in 1979, going 1-2 with a 1.13 ERA in 3 starts. Maldonado had 25 HR and 102 RBI for the 1980 Lodi Dodgers. Over 60 alums of the Lodi California League franchise made it to the Major Leagues, including former Angels' General Manager Bill Stoneman (pitched in four games during the inaugural 1966 season), as well as Candy Maldonado, Jeffrey "Hack Man" Leonard, Mike Caldwell, and Fernando Valenzuela. There were several ownership changes during the teams' existence in Lodi, usually coming about from the town residents collaborating to purchase the team, only to sell it a few years later to another group. The Quakes' franchise had by far the longest stint of its four city existence thus far in Lodi, where from 1966 through 1984 the team called 2,000 seat Lawrence Park (now known as Tony Zupo Field) its home. They were known as the Lodi Crushers, and this essentially became the first team in the Quakes' lineage. It was then that a group of investors from Lodi cobbled up $2,500- a small sum by today's standards, and decided to start a new franchise in Lodi to be ready to play in 1966. Another team in Reno, Nevada was also reactivated, but this still left one opening. The franchise in Modesto, which hadn't operated in the 1965 season, was reactivated and run by now-former California League President Joe Gagliardi. The league had operated with eight teams in the past and was therefore determined to get three more teams into the fold for the 1966 season. ![]() Lodi came into the California League after the 1965 California League season, when the team operating in Salinas folded, leaving only five teams remaining in the league. Few people realize that although the Quakes go back to the start of the 1993 season here in Rancho Cucamonga, the franchise traces its roots back to 1966 and Lodi, California, and had made successive stops in Ventura and San Bernardino before landing in Rancho Cucamonga.
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