Know Your Foe: The Long Beach Coast!
by Joe Horton
Welcome to Know Your Foe, your friendly fast facts to get to know the Ballers’ opponents at home and away this season. Make sure to check out Kyle Robinson’s Glove of the Series too.
Next up: The Long Beach Coast!
Their Season So Far:
The Coast continue to be the story of the league. In their first season, they’re in second place in the league, one game behind Billings, at 28-8. They are 8-2 in their last ten, which includes their series with recent B’s foes Modesto and Yuba-Sutter (the four-team California carousel is in full swing; this quartet will play each other heavily in the second half of the season). The Coast are a juggernaut on both sides of the diamond. Their lineup is an all-star team of returning players with Pioneer League pedigree and newcomers rising to the moment. OF Eddy Pelc continues to swing an absolutely torrid bat, hitting .415, good for eighth in the league. The Coast have two guys in the top ten in RBI—Jacob Jablonski and Cooper Vest—and one in homers—Emilo Corona. They *had* three pitchers in the top ten for ERA—Brett Wozniak, Julien Hernandez (just signed away, thank goodness for B’s fans), and Zach Voelker, who also is top-ten in saves. Nico Saltaformaggio leads the league in wins with six. In nearly every metric, they are the class of the PBL right now.
They went 4-2 agains the Ballers in their first meeting in May and 3-1 in their second in June. This is Oakland’s first visit to Long Beach this season.
Hometown: Long Beach, CA
It’s original name in 1882 was Willmore City. If residents hadn’t come to their senses, we might be starting a series against the Willmore Wallside Windows or Willmore Willfreds.
It’s one of the country’s most important and busiest ports: number two in the US behind LA and number 21 in the world. It handles almost 10 million containers a year with total cargo valued at more than $300 billion.
The Queen Mary is permanently docked in Queensway Bay, near the former site of the Spruce Goose Dome. The city bought the famed British ocean liner in 1967, and apart from tours and parties, it’s a constant filming location. Just a very, very short list: Pearl Harbor, Godfather II, old Poseidon Adventure, new Parent Trap, Arrested Development, The X-Files, Murder She Wrote. A great deeper dive from SFGate here.
I like the Aquarium of the Pacific better than the Monterey Bay Aquarium. There I said it.
Mascot: Derrick the Parrot!
The loved (and sometimes merely tolerated when squawking early in the morning) parrots of Long Beach are not native. Origin stories abound—freed from a burning pet shop or wealthy estate or by soon-to-be-nabbed smugglers—but the most common variety is the mitred parakeet who decided to call the LBC home instead of returning to generational haunts in South America.
Derrick’s birth announcement reads, in part: “Derrick has an insatiable appetite—not for snack, but for competition. And a thirst to prove that Long Beach is pound-for-pound the best. His squawk calls for excellence, and commands this team to play as hard as this city lives.”
Team History:
In this inaugural season, the Coast play at Blair Field on the campus of Long Beach State. The field has plenty of B’s connections, including and especially that our Head Groundskeeper Anthony Alejandrez used to work there.
Blair Field opened in 1958, the same year the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles. The stadium was used in Moneyball as a stand-in for the Oakland spring training facility in Phoenix.
Our co-founder Paul Freedman has helped the team get up and running, though he makes it clear that his allegiance will always stay with the Town.
The Coast are big on the merch scene, and a certain Dispatches editor had so much time on his hands in April that he decided to troll them on their home turf.
Best Promos:
Another good mix of purposeful— teachers, nurses, military appreciation, Cambodian Heritage Night (Long Beach has the largest Cambodian population outside of southeast Asia) —and playful: Long Beach or Miami? High School Reunion Night. Sidewalk Surfers & Skaters Roll-Out. Sublime Night.
The team’s popular alter ego, the Regulators—of co-owner Warren G “Regulate” fame, of course—play every Friday night at home.
What to Watch For:
The league would love Oakland and Long Beach to be a premier rivalry for years to come. As Freedman also told Dispatches earlier in June, both cities share a common sports culture and civic pride, and they are the major-metropolis experiment for a modern Pioneer League historically found in smaller markets.
Peep fan-favorite former Major Leaguers Troy Percival, Troy Glaus, and Jerome Williams managing and coaching in the dugout or on the bases.
Who *not* to watch for: Julien Hernandez became the first player in the young LBC history to be signed by an MLB organization when the Arizona Diamondbacks picked up his contract just a week ago.
Paul Winland, who has made an immediate impact on the B’s since his signing on June 26 with two homers and six RBI, is a former Coaster. How will he respond against his old team?
While it’s unlikely, the Coast's terrific start got at least Ice Cold Kenny wondering if they might make a run at the Ballers’ PBL modern record of 73-23 set last year.
with photos courtesy Long Beach Coast
Joe Horton is the editor of Dispatches from Raimondi
