Professional baseball in Long Beach has a history littered with failure.
Three teams – the Long Beach Barracuda, Breakers and Armada – have previously come and gone in short order.
The people behind the Long Beach Baseball Club, a new team coming to Blair Field this spring, are confident their story will be different.
“The organization behind this has more experience than other organizations who have tried to bring baseball to Long Beach before,” LBBC owner Paul Freedman said. “The league is better than any other league that’s brought baseball here and Long Beach is in a different moment.”
Jerome Williams (left), a former Major League Baseball pitcher and assistant coach for the Long Beach Baseball Club, works with players at the team’s local tryouts on Dec. 4. Dante Estrada | Long Beach Current
Freedman and the rest of the ownership group were well aware of Long Beach’s checkered history with professional baseball teams when they committed to making their own run at it. Blair Field has seen three previous franchises come through; they all folded in five years or less.
The first franchise was created in 1995, competing in the Western Baseball League under three names in its two-year lifespan. The Barracuda, the Franchise and the Riptide – however you choose to refer to them – were so tight on funds that they had to play games in LBSU Dirtbags practice jerseys at one point.
They were replaced by the Long Beach Breakers in 2001, who attempted to compete in the same league and experienced a similarly quick demise. After only two seasons, the Western Baseball League was struggling, and the Breakers were no more.
The Long Beach Armada was the most recent and most successful of the three Long Beach professional baseball ventures. Established in 2005, they lasted through 2009, but still did not reach the level of popularity required to continue.
“As has been the case with minor league baseball around here, it’s hard to draw,” former Long Beach Press-Telegram writer Henry Saltzgaver said. “The Armada had pretty good teams a couple times, and yet, if they had 300 or 400 people at a regular season game, that was not a bad crowd for them.”
Saltzgaver added that he doubts the ability of a team to stay afloat in close proximity with the Los Angeles Dodgers and L.A. Angels.
“It’s really hard here in Southern California trying to say that you’re relevant when 30 miles away you’ve got two major league baseball teams,” Saltzgaver said. “As opposed to Rancho Cucamonga, for example, if you have to drive 90 miles to go to a major league game, you might consider a minor league game as a good alternative.”
Freedman is undaunted. He is the founder and CEO of the Oakland Ballers, who have stepped into the professional baseball void in Oakland after the Athletics moved temporarily to Sacramento.
The Ballers won the Pioneer League Championship Series earlier this year and have drawn enough fans for success, despite the larger presence of the San Francisco Giants in the Bay Area.
Freedman is now using his experience in Oakland to try to succeed where other Long Beach professional baseball teams failed. He said Long Beach has already engaged with the new club more than Oakland did before the launch of the Ballers.
“The reason these teams work is because you have the opportunity to break down walls between players and fans and make the community much more part of the experience than you could ever do in Major League Baseball,” Freedman said. “We have to live by those values and we’ve demonstrated that so far.”
The LBBC’s first promotional campaign in September opened up fan submissions and a vote to decide what name the team would compete under. They have not announced the winner yet, but over 4,000 votes narrowed down the field to three finalists: the Coast, the Parrots and the Regulators.
Additionally, the LBBC hired a manager who is familiar to many Southern California baseball fans: Troy Percival, the former Anaheim Angels pitcher who closed out their 2002 World Series title on the mound.
Troy Percival, a World Series champion pitcher with the Anaheim Angels in 2002, will lead the Long Beach Baseball Club into its first season as the team’s manager. Dante Estrada | Long Beach Current
Percival managed the Idaho Falls Chukars, another Pioneer League team, to the Pioneer League Championship Series this year before they fell to Oakland. Freedman views Percival’s notoriety as a statement that this is the best level of baseball Long Beach has ever had.
“The Pioneer League had really quality baseball last year,” Percival said. “Once MLB cut their rosters down, the majority of those players came to us. I would say this level is closer to Double-A than Single-A.”
The Pioneer League has improved in its level of play and popularity in recent years. Since becoming an MLB Partner League in 2021, it has brought new rules onto the field to test them for MLB and create a unique product for fans to enjoy.
Home run derbies to decide tie games after nine innings and a fully-automated strike zone are among the rule changes the Pioneer League has recently tested.
“I was totally against [the home run derby rule] to start with, and then I was like, ‘my God,’ I love it when you win, you hate it when you lose, but your whole team is out on the field engaged and the fans are engaged,” Percival said. “It’s kind of cool to be on the bottom floor of the [rule changes].”
The LBBC has also built a ground-level relationship with Long Beach State to set up its presence at Blair Field.
Alongside a lack of attendance, the Armada was forced to shut down partially due to a dispute with the city over its rights to Blair Field. Saltzgaver described the city pulling the Armada’s permit to give LBSU full control over Blair Field’s operations as an effort to cut costs coming out of the Great Recession.
“The university wants more resources to be able to improve Blair, and our relationship provides that,” Freedman said. “The city wants this ballpark that has such a great history to be able to get more investment, and everybody wants more baseball.”
It remains to be seen whether the LBBC will become the professional baseball team to finally last in Long Beach, but they have a strong plan and are committed to put it into action.
“What’s most important for us is that fans leave with a smile on their face,” Freedman said. “It won’t be perfect, but we’re going to set a very high bar on the experience that fans have when they come to a game.”
A senior at CSULB, Timothy Hessen serves as the Sports Editor of the Long Beach Current. First joining the Current as a copy assistant editor as a junior, Timothy has written about sports in several different publications, including the Long Beach Current, the Coast Report and the Laguna Beach Independent. After graduation, Timothy hopes to pursue a career in journalism or public relations, with the long-term goal of either covering or working for an NFL or NBA team.
