Against All Odds

How the River Cats Became
Sacramento's Hometown Team 

by Rick Cabral

ne summer evening in 1960, I sat in the stands at the ballpark with my grandfather and watched the hometown Sacramento Solons play at Edmonds Field at Broadway and Riverside.  

A ragtag bunch that once again would finish under .500, it hardly mattered to an eight-year-old boy who was just beginning his love affair with America’s pastime. This was Pacific Coast League baseball, my grandfather reminded me; it was once considered “the third major league” and claimed players just as talented as those we watched on television on Saturday afternoon. 

Later that fall, we read that our team had been sold and was moving to Hawaii. You mean those tiny islands out in the Pacific Ocean, I wondered? Seemed unfathomable.  

My parents shrugged and reminded me we still had the San Francisco Giants, which had moved from New York two years earlier. Yeah, they were the big leagues, but also a 90-minute car ride away. More importantly, they weren’t the “hometown team.” 

The following spring, I began playing Little League and focused on my own baseball career. The sting from the loss of the Solons began to dissipate. In short order, the memory of our hometown team remained tucked away in a scrapbook that slipped under my bed, gathering dust next to my Davy Crockett lunchbox. 

I waited forty years for the “hometown team” to return (not including the temporary arrangement we experienced with the Solons in the mid-70s). And when they did, they appeared in the form of the Sacramento River Cats, the Triple-A affiliate of the Oakland Athletics, and their ballpark was located across the river in West Sacramento. 

And it was good. 

How the River Cats ownership group overcame incredible odds, false hopes and decades of dashed dreams is the focus of this story. Prospective ownership groups from the past debated whether to build a ballpark or acquire a team first while pursuing a similar dream; the proverbial “chicken or the egg” issue faced by sports owners for decades. Over the years there were rumors they were talking with the San Francisco Giants, the Oakland Athletics, Modesto A’s, Portland Beavers, Fresno Grizzlies, among others.  

The rumors were all true. 

The River Cats managed to catch the chicken and swipe the egg simultaneously. And while several long-time local interests had wrestled with this conundrum, it was Art Savage, Bob Hemond and Warren Smith who assembled one of the model minor league franchises in baseball history. 

The Solons Aftermath
 

or 50 years, Sacramento baseball fans gathered at the corner of Broadway and Riverside Blvd. to watch the hometown team. In 1910, the Sacramento Senators moved into their new digs at Buffalo Park, named for its major sponsor, the Buffalo Brewing Company. While this could have been the first naming-rights sponsorship in professional sports, it is believed that property owner Ed Kripp honored the brewing company in return for cut-rate liquor rates at his tavern up the street. Nonetheless, this remained the location for Pacific Coast League baseball until the original Solons pulled up stakes in 1960 and shipped out for Hawaii. 

After the Solons were sold, Edmonds Field (the ballpark’s final name) remained dark with the exception of a few high school, American Legion and major league exhibition games featuring the San Francisco Giants. But the Sacramento Baseball Association retained title to the property along with hope of finding another team.  

In 1963 Sacramento Baseball Association president Fred David announced his board of directors had decided to sell the 9-acre parcel. According to documents obtained by Sacramento historian Alan O’Connor, David first offered Edmonds Field to the city and county of Sacramento before putting the property up for sale. In a letter dated February 9, 1963, David indicated his group had an “opportunity to get a Pacific Coast League team in 1963” but lost it when the American Association—the third Triple-A league—disbanded after the 1962 season. He also cited overdue county taxes of $11,129.44 as another reason. 

Both the city and county of Sacramento passed on the offer. “As of now, there is no professional baseball team ready to lease the property back,” said county executive M.D. Tarshes in a Sacramento Bee article in the classic “chicken and the egg” conundrum that plagued entrepreneurs here for decades. 

In May, 1964, Sacramento Baseball Association sold the property to the grocery chain Lucky Stores for $850,000, which later built and operated a Gemco discount grocery-department store on the site. Today, a Target store occupies the property at Broadway and Riverside. A bronze plaque mounted on a wall in the parking lot commemorates the location as the last true home of pro baseball in this city. 

The Solons Redux

rofessional baseball returned to Sacramento in 1974 when the Eugene Emeralds, then a member of the PCL, were purchased by Save Mart CEO Bob Piccinini of Modesto and renamed Sacramento Solons. Included with the franchise was team executive John Carbray, who served as the Solons’ general manager for the team’s first two years in the Capital City. 

The Solons of the mid-70s quickly became the laughingstock of the baseball world, not for lack of talent, but because they played at Hughes Stadium, a football and track facility. In baseball circles it was reminiscent of when the Dodgers moved west in 1958 and played in a converted football stadium, the Los Angeles Coliseum.  

Due to a concrete abutment rimming the perimeter of the football field at Hughes Stadium, the location of home plate was fixed. This resulted in left field being positioned 251 feet away (later revealed to be closer to 232’). Just as the Dodgers jiggered their “short porch” in left, the Solons strung a 40-foot net to prevent easy home runs. Even that remedy didn’t prevent the “home run derby” atmosphere, according to O’Connor in his book, Gold on the Diamond.

Carbray and company were unable to overcome the perception that the ballpark was little more than a joke. PCL President Bill Cutler threatened to yank the Solons if they didn’t find another facility. 

Greg Van Dusen, the team’s public relations director, doesn’t deny the black eye was well earned. “But the players who played there weren’t a joke,” he counters. “We had some good talent that later played in the major leagues.” Sixto Lescano and Gorman Thomas of the Milwaukee Brewers being the most memorable. 

Van Dusen noted that in 1974 Solons’ management sponsored a local ballot measure to build a new ballpark at the Cal Expo fairgrounds, home to the California State Fair. But voters rejected the public funding measure.  

It wouldn’t be the last time. 

After twice leading the PCL in attendance (1974-1975), following the 1976 season the Solons were sold and moved to San Jose. Despite this, Van Dusen believes Sacramento benefited in the long run. “It showed that we were a good sports town,” he said. 

Something that Sacramentans would strive to prove over the next three decades. 

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