Hughes mistake
If you think the A's playing this season in Sutter Health Park is problematic, you should have been at homer-happy Hughes Stadium for Sacramento's return to the Pacific Coast League in 1974
TOP OF THE FIRST
This old man shouts at clouds: I don’t like opening day being played in Japan, Korea or Australia
Baseball is America's pastime, deeply woven into the fabric of our national identity.
The ritual of opening day represents renewal, hope, and the familiar rhythm of spring giving way to summer . . . all that poetic stuff.
When Major League Baseball chooses to start its season in Japan, as it is doing for the sixth time since 2000, I feel cheated.
The practice of sending two teams halfway around the world to play meaningful games at times completely disconnected from American fans' daily lives is a misguided strategy that should be reconsidered.
Yes, I understand MLB wants to grow the game. If it’s that important, try some creative thinking.
Going across the International Date Line in mid-season would be difficult but not impossible.
Carve out time near the All-Star break. Play some doubleheaders to create open dates.
Previous MLB opening days across the International Date Line
Japan: :
2000: New York Mets vs. Chicago Cubs
2004: New York Yankees vs. Tampa Bay Devil Rays
2008: Boston Red Sox vs. Oakland Athletics
2012: Oakland Athletics vs. Seattle Mariners
2019: Seattle Mariners vs. Oakland Athletics
Korea:
2024: Los Angeles Dodgers vs. San Diego Padres
Australia:
2014: Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Arizona Diamondbacks
HEART OF THE ORDER
A ballpark like no other
At Hughes Stadium in 1974, teams hit almost 7 homers a game
When Sacramento returned to pro baseball in 1974, the Solons of the Pacific Coast League couldn’t find a suitable place to play.
So they chose Hughes Stadium.
What followed was one bizarre season and two less bizarre seasons in a junior college football stadium where a baseball field couldn’t fit. The Solons set a PCL record for home runs by a team in a season that was so out of whack the league refused to recognize it.
As the Athletics get ready to play their first of at least three major league seasons in Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, there’s been a lot of sniping about how inadequate the ballpark will be. People of a certain age in the Sacramento area have seen inadequate — and Sutter Health Park isn’t it.
Some of the thinking was sound
The team had been the Eugene Emeralds. Bob Piccinini bought them, and he wanted to move the team to Sacramento.
Now let me make this clear. Piccinini was not a fool. He was a grocery store executive who would go on to build his family’s SaveMart grocery business into a multibillion-dollar enterprise
And he was no stranger to minor league baseball. He already owned the Class A Modesto franchise in the Cal League.
The population numbers made sense. And Piccinini had history on this side.
Eugene Oregon had been a Triple-A baseball town since 1969. The city’s population was about 80,000, the metro area’s was about 120,000.
Sacramento’s metro area population was nearing 1 million.
Professional baseball in Sacramento dates back to 1869 when the Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first team of all professional players, decided to use the new-fangled Transcontinental Railroad and take their national tour to California. They played some games in San Francisco and an exhibition game in California’s capital city before heading back East.
Sacramento was a charter member of the Pacific Coast League in 1903. The city left and re-entered the PCL three times before an extended run from 1918 to 1960 when the franchise moved to Hawaii.
The demise of Edmonds Field
In the 14 years since 1960, Sacramento had more people but one fewer ballpark.
In 1964, a Gemco discount store wanted the location where the Solon’s former home, Edmonds Field, stood. With no prospects for pro baseball in sight, the old park was given a sendoff — the San Francisco Giants beat the Cleveland Indians in an exhibition game with the Giants’ Willie Mays and Willie McCovey hitting homers — and demolished.
Piccinini wanted the city to build his team a park, eventually. The best short-term solution was Hughes Stadium, a concrete, horseshoe-shaped football and track facility on the campus of Sacramento City College. Built in 1928, it hosted motorcycle and sprint-car races, football games, and track meets but never baseball.
Piccinini and general manager John Carbray convinced the local school board to lease the PCL team the stadium.
Odd shape
The dimensions for a baseball field were one problem. Carbray promised a left-field fence 261 feet from home with a 40-foot high screen. (The 261 feet turned out to be false More on that later.)
In an interview with Sacramento Bee sports editor Marco Smolich, Carbray said : “That 261 feet incidentally is nine feet deeper than the Los Angeles Coliseum had for the Dodgers before they moved to Dodger Stadium.”
Other oddities included the running track cut through a swath of the proposed field. Carbray said that would form a warning track in left field and part of center field, though a running track is a lot wider than the average warning track.
The lights were lousy, there was limited parking and most of the seats were lousy for baseball. Well, Carbray said, usually only 3,000-4,000 seats would be needed — they would all be choice seats, “close to the action,” he emphasized — and the available parking would fine for crowds of that size.
Carbary sidestepped the lights issue.
Other locales
Eugene had problems with its field as well. The Emeralds played in Civic Stadium, which was also built primarily for football, and was primarily made of wood. It could fit a baseball field easily enough.
But the Phillies had canceled their affiliation with the Emeralds because they felt the field was sub-standard for a Triple-A team.
Piccinini and Carbray, who had been the GM at Eugene, had the Brewers tentatively lined up to provide players. But they might pull out if Civic Stadium was still the team’s home.
On the surface, it would seem that two other cities would be good fits for a PCL team.
Portland and Seattle had long, successful histories in the Coast League and much larger populations. The cities were fielding teams in the short-season Class A Northwest League.
Portland lost its PCL team after the 1972 season when the franchise moved to Spokane. Seattle had a one-year foray in the American League as the home of the Pilots. No PCL team had replaced the old Rainiers
While the ballparks those cities could have offered were not exactly showplaces, they were better than Hughes.
There were obstacles in both cities. Portland’s team, the Mavericks, had a lease at Civic Stadium (originally Multnomah Stadium) for two more years. Carbary had been a part owner of the Mavericks and sold his share shortly after Piccinini bought the Emeralds.
Seattle’s Sick’s Stadium had proven inadequate for Major League Baseball but was fine for the PCL. However, local officials were suing the American League to get MLB back in the city. Any relocation there was likely to be temporary.
Hughes Stadium didn’t measure up
Once the fences were up at Hughes, a group of skeptical reporters grabbed tape measures and snuck onto the field.
They discovered the left-field fence was just 232 feet, 7 inches from home plate — well below organized baseball's 250-foot minimum and almost 29 feet short of what Carbary promised. The PCL had granted a one-year waiver, but the consequences would be historic.
The 40-foot screen above the left-field fence was nicknamed "Mount Sacramento" by locals. Beyond that screen was a grandstand dubbed "Piccinini's Porch" and, beyond that, railroad tracks that would soon be collecting souvenir baseballs.
Bob Lemon, a future Hall of Famer who had given up his share of home runs during his pitching career with the Cleveland Indians, was hired to manage the club. Nothing in his experience could have prepared him for what was about to unfold at Hughes Stadium.
Bombardment begins
Through the first six home games of the 1974 season, batters hit a combined 51 home runs – an average of 8.5 per game. That number grew to 93 homers after just 13 games. By season's end, a staggering 491 home runs were hit at Hughes Stadium, with the Solons slugging 250. Those 491 home runs were the most in one park in one season in minor league baseball history.
The Solons' hitters feasted on the short dimensions. Bill McNulty, a Sacramento native, led minor league baseball with 55 home runs – 44 at home and 11 on the road. Gorman Thomas, a future major league home run champion with the Milwaukee Brewers, finished second with 51 round-trippers. Sixto Lezcano's 34 homers ranked third. Stephen McCartney and Tommy Reynolds tied for fourth with 32 each.
Rk Homers
1 Bill McNulty 55
2 Gorman Thomas 51
3 Sixto Lezcano 34
4 Stephen McCartney 32
5 Tommie Reynolds 32
6 Tommy Bianco 28
7 Jack Lind 18
8 Art Kusnyer 17
9 Bob Sheldon 11
10 Rob Ellis 9
11 Juan Lopez 7
12 Dan Adams 5
13 Bob Hansen 5
14 Chico Vaughns 1
15 Jose Salado 0
15 players 305
That 305 homers total would have been a record, except that because the distance of the left-field fence was under 250 feet minimum, the PCL refused to recognize it.
No team in Organized Baseball topped that mark until the Twins hit 307 in 2019. The Braves tied that mark in 2023.
But those totals came in 162-game seasons. The Solons played 144 games in 1974
Negative reviews
As Sacramento Bee sports editor Marco Smolich repeatedly told the team's PR director, "You can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit." But what the Solons lacked in baseball legitimacy, they made up for in entertainment value.
The bizarre dimensions created equally bizarre strategies. Teams sometimes skipped using a left fielder altogether, instead deploying an extra infielder. Base hits to left field often resulted in force outs at second base, as even the weakest-armed outfielders could make the throw after collecting a ball off the screen.
Visiting managers and players were both horrified and amused. "At this park, it shouldn't be called baseball," Tacoma manager Cal Ermer fumed. "It should be called home run ball."
Phoenix manager Rocky Bridges joked about having a pitcher he thought was an atheist: "Then I told him he was starting in Sacramento, and the next time I saw him he was carrying a Bible and (rosary_ beads."
After the Brewers played an exhibition game at Hughes Stadium, Milwaukee pitcher Jim Colborn summed it up: "This park is a freak — it's like playing whiffleball in your backyard."
Unhappy pitchers
Sacramento's pitchers suffered through a nightmare season. The team finished last in the PCL with a 6.70 ERA, far worse than the next-worst pitching staff (Salt Lake City at 5.12). Tom Hausman allowed a league-high 50 home runs in 180 innings, while Gary Cavallo surrendered 40 in just 116 innings.
Brewers prospect Bill Parsons, who had won 13 games in the majors in 1971 and in 1972, was so frustrated by his inability to prevent home runs that he requested a trade.
"It's ridiculous," Parsons said. "There's no way to describe it. There's no way you can tell how you're pitching in this park."
For Lemon, the challenge wasn't just managing pitchers' ERAs, but their psyches. "There's no way to evaluate players when we're playing at home," he lamented. "A guy who hits four homers in a game here might have had four flyouts in a normal stadium."
One of the most heartbreaking examples came when Tom Hausman took a 9-3 lead into the ninth inning against Tacoma with two outs and nobody on base. Tacoma then hit four consecutive home runs off Hausman and another against his reliever to win 10-9.
"I'll try to forget," Hausman said, "but I'll never get that game out of my mind as long as I live."
Success amid the absurdity
Despite the absurdity (or perhaps because of it), the 1974 Solons led the minor leagues with an attendance, drawing 295,831 over 66 home dates. As Carbray noted, "You don't see anybody leaving early. Here you can be down 6-0 in the sixth and still expect to come back. Win or lose, it's exciting."
The strangest moment of the season might have been when Spokane's Steve Dunning somehow managed to throw a no-hitter at Hughes Stadium on August 16, striking out 14 in a 10-0 victory.
"I'll tell you one thing," Lemon said. "I would have liked to have had a dollar down against those odds."
The end of the Solons
For the 1975 season, the Solons reoriented the field and created a 251-foot left-field fence to meet baseball's minimums. Home runs dropped by 40 percent — and so did attendance.
Solons attendance
1974 295,831
1975 252,201
1976 82,324
Hughes Stadium ultimately spelled the end for the Solons of the 1970s. Fittingly, for an odd reason.
The facility needed earthquake-proofing, making it unavailable for much of the PCL season. There was, obviously, no viable option. So Piccinini came up with a creative solution. He agreed to lease the team to Bob Gagliardi, owner of the San Jose Missions of the Cal League for up to three seasons.
In the meantime, Piccinini would work on getting Sacramento to build a ballpark for his team. If Piccinini could get a facility, the Solon would return to Sacramento. He failed.
Aftermath
Piccinini not only found success in the grocery business, but he later was part owner of the NBA Golden State Warriors and the Triple-A Fresno Grizzlies. The Grizzlies ownership was put together in 2003 by Carbary.
Sacramento would remain without professional baseball until 2000, when Art Savage brought the Triple-A Vancouver Canadians to a new ballpark in West Sacramento, what is now known as Sutter Health Park. Renamed the River Cats, the team has won multiple PCL championships.
As Bob Lemon reflected after that bizarre 1974 campaign: "Nobody's happy finishing last, but if it helped baseball get started in this town again, it was worth it."
POSTSCRIPT
Tom, what the heck is a Solon?
Solon was an ancient Greek who reformed the Athenian legal system. He is known as the law-giver. Solon became a synonym for legislator or lawmaker and was popular with headline writers of yesteryear because . . . if you ever tried to legislator into one column, 30-point headline you’d understand.
Because Sacramento is California’s capital city, Solon was used as the team nickname.
Hey, Tom, I didn't know about the Hughes fiasco. Very interesting! Great post.