Ems the Breaks

I attended the home opener of the Eugnne Emeralds' 70th anniversary season, sitting in the front row looking down the third base line. Eugene, Oregon, is about 45 minutes from where my stepmother and late father live/d and so it is not hard to figure how I have seen the High-A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants four times; once with the 'rents, once with Melvin, and once before on my own. However, the April 9 game was probably my last visit there.

screen capture from the City of Medford website

The Ems are owned by the venerable Elmore Sports Group (Ballpark Digest eulogy for founder Dave Elmore), which may explain in part how the team survived MLB's 2020 purge of 42 minor league franchises. (As part of the 2020 reorganization, the already diminutive Northwest League was reduced from eight teams to six and the future of the Everettt AquaSox remains uncertaain.)

In the four-plus years since the league reorganization, a bid to build a new stadium in the Lane County Fairgrounds failed to gain momentum. The proposal asked for more public dollars than the county was willing to allocate and a $15 million bond referendum put before voters by the Eugense City Council lost by a two-to-one margin. The Emeralds accept that they need to find a new home, with Medford, Oregon, most prominently in the news at this time.

I have only known the Ems as a tenant at PK Park, home to the University of Oregon's Division 1 baseball program. (Hall of Famer Joe Gordon is an alum' but as a Mets fan, my fascination is with David Peterson, Class of 2017.) The Ducks moved to their new facility in 2009 and the Emeralds began play there one year later.

Whose house? Uh, their house.

The handful of fans I spoke with at the game seem to be in denial, both as it regards to the ball club's history and the current talks with the City of Medford. The general opinion that I heard is those conversations are merely a negotiating tactic intended to pressure whomever — the university, Eugene, Lane County — to find a way to circumvent the Emeralds from moving. As a former municipal employee who has won and lost at the negotiating table, that sounds like wishful thinking, hard to believe.

Like me, however, the fans I chatted with seem to only know the Emeralds who have played for 15 years at PK Park. Few are old enough to remember when the team hosted contests at Bethel Park, built for the the short-lived (1950-1951)  Eugene Larks of the almost as short-lived Far West League. The Emeralds played at Bethel Park for 14 years as a charter member of the Northwest League.

home plate at Bethel Park was approximately where now is the intersection of Duke Snider Avenue and Bobby Doerr Way

Lark Park, the etymology for which should be obvious, occupies just a portion of the reportedly capacious outfield where Reggie Jackson, among others, once patrolled

Some fans might remember when the team moved to Civic Stadium in 1969, when it joined the Pacific Coast League. But do they remember that the move, not unlike the current circumstances, occurred because the PCL didn't think Bethel Park was adequate for a Triple-A franchise? Do those select few fans remember that when the Emeralds moved to Civic Stadium, it was only to be for one year, until a new, permanent (I use the word advisedly) home could be built? The Ems played at the WPA-era ballpark for 40 years.

All of which is to say, the Emeralds have had for 70 years a tenuous foothold in Eugene. I am not unsympathetic to any sense of geocultural loss. I have been a Brooklyn resident for most of my life, a place that for decades defined itself by loss. The daily newspaper, in business for 114 years, ceased publication in early-1955 after a 47-day strike by reporters. The Dodgers moved to Los Angeles after the 1957 season and the New York (Brooklyn) Navy Yard closed in 1966. It was all over except for the crying ... until it then wasn't. So it goes.

apartments on the site of the former Dodgers' stadium, Ebbets Field
image credit: Saundi Wilson via Wikimedia

Apart from my long residency in Brooklyn, I was born in Syracuse and went to college there. College sports — football and basketball especially, but also lacrosse and women's soccer — draw avid spectators to the Central New York university. When I noted for the Emeralds fans around me that the University of Oregon Ducks hold a potential similar appeal, they replied, "But we're not going to see future Giants." (This comment probably reflects how many Oregon residents are expatriates of California.)

Only time will tell if they will one day play at Oracle Park, but two highly-ranked Giants' prospects took the field for the Emeralds' home opener. It was fun to compare the two. Right fielder and former FSU Seminole Jason Tibbs III (or JT3 as I would come to think of him) is the organizations' fourth highest prospect and he exhibited a self-assured swagger befitting a first round (13th overall) pick. Batting clean-up on April 9, he went 2-for-5, including a hard hit line drive to right in the third that ultimately ended in a  CS, 2-5.

Bo Davidson, the Giants' ninth highest prospect out of Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute, had a more humble approach to the game, at least when I saw him. When the center fielder fouled off a 3-1 pitch in the fourth, he looked over at hitting coach Jared Walker — I was sitting right next to Walker — and smiled, as if to say, 'Yeah, that was my pitch and I missed it.' He struck out two pitches later. Two innings earlier, however, a liner to left scored the Emeralds' first two runs.

His fielding looked a little green — Rio Foster drove a ball over Davidson's head in the sixth — but there can be any number of explanations for that; bad scouting, bad coaching, a fluke hit, or an effort to pour Davidson into the mold of Andruw Jones. (I'm a Mets fan but I loved Jones — next year, bruh, next year.) Different players, perhaps different approaches to their development, neither of which are wrong, but I love guys like Davidson.

The Tri-City Dust Devils, a California Angels (let's call them) affiliate, have four prospects on their roster, the highest (8) being Chris Cortez, a right-handed starter out of Texas A&M, who didn't appear in last Wednesday's contest. Next most highly touted (11) is 19-year-old catcher Juan Florez, who went 0-for-5 with two strikeouts but caught two runners off base, including Tibbs at third that he just missed nailing at second. Gotcha!

Shortstop Capri Ortiz (21), another youngster, led off, went 2-for-5 with a walk (and a strikeout), stole a base, and tallied two RBI, including a two-out line drive to right in the sixth, which he then followed with a double play in the bottom of the frame. That's a complete game. Randy De Jesus (26), the Devils' young — a pattern emerges — right fielder, also had a nice game. Showing a lot of plate discipline, he went 1-for-3 with two walks. His pass in the seventh ended in a 7-6-2 put-out when he tried to score from first on a double.

Melvin and I have penciled in a 2026 visit to Richmond, the Giants' Double-A franchise, and it will be fun for me to see JT3 and Bo D' again next year and at the next level. However, the player whom I most look forward to seeing again is Charlie Szykowny. Sure, he won the game in the 10th with his sac fly to right, but in his previous at-bat, he fouled off pitch after pitch before striking out for the second time. And he flashed leather in the field. I know that in a data-driven era of baseball, physical appearance means less than it once did, but Szykowny's performance on April 9 and his 6'-4", 225-pound frame reads like a baseball player.

Oh, yeah; this is Baseball Byways. I spent a week-and-a-half in Oregon and this was the only baseball game that I caught. Home opener, 70th anniversary season, all good. On the byways side of the ledger, I saw my stepmother — my first visit since my father died — and my stepbrother and his family, and a first cousin who I haven't seen since her father died. In the on-deck circle, my generation will start to shuffle off this mortal coil.

the 1901 Oregon State Insane Asylum baseball team

I also made numerous stops of interest to me, including the Oregon State Hospital Museum of Mental Health. If you didn't know what the "OSIA" lettering on their jerseys stood for, would they look any different than another squad from the turn of the last century?