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West Coast League

"WCL on OSC": Embarking on a New Sports Trip Closer to Home

by Bruce Baskin
December 19, 2013 - West Coast League (WCL)


It's been a long, strange trip even Jerry Garcia would've had trouble conjuring up, but it's nice to be back "home" on OurSports Central (and covering a sports league in my native Pacific Northwest, no less). I began writing for Paul Reeths and OSC back in 2001 when I created a weekly report for the Pacific Coast League baseball season. Since then, I've produced similar columns for OSC about the West Coast Hockey League (R.I.P.), Canadian Football League and AAA baseball's Mexican League.

It was that latter effort starting in 2005 that branched out into a column that was picked up by several websites on both sides of the border, including the Mexican Pacific League's own website, before evolving into two different sites (Viva Beisbol and Baseball Mexico), a weekly program on shortwave radio, season guides for two leagues and even a few stories for Baseball America. I've also done shortwave programs on international baseball, domestic and world cricket and even Irish pro soccer. I've been a little eclectic.

I've spent 2013 as sports director for WRMI, a 100,000-watt shortwave radio station in Miami. While focusing on radio this year, however, I've missed writing sports stories that last longer than my twenty-word target for the WRMI Scoreboard and that's what brings me back to OSC. Rather than doing my usual esoteric thing, this time I wanted to write about something a bit more mainstream and closer to home while still covering a subject I believe deserves better media exposure than it's generally received. I eventually settled upon summer college baseball and the West Coast League.

Many readers at OurSports Central are already familiar with "summerball" (as I call it) and circuits like the Cape Cod, Coastal Plains, Northwoods and West Coast Leagues. This particular brand of the game has blossomed over the past decade and appears to be replacing independent minor league baseball as a rising star in baseball's sky. Indy ball has struggled of late, with many teams and entire leagues coming and going in recent years, but summer college leagues have been steadily growing in popularity with players and fans alike.

Some summerball leagues share many parallels with the professional minor leagues: teams stocked by college players (many who are selected in MLB's June draft) playing games daily in front of fans who find they're getting similar entertainment values that they can find at many minor league ballparks. The players get the minor league experience when they take road trips by riding a bus for three-game series at destinations that may be hundreds of miles away AND they're swinging wood bats instead of the metal bats used in college (where they also might fly for road games). The bottom line is that the quality of summer college baseball is quite good, players gain exposure to the kind of lives they'll lead in the minors while fans have an affordable option for attending a well-played game in a fun atmosphere.

Once I decided to write about summerball, picking the West Coast League was easy. I live 40 miles north of the WCL team in Longview, WA and with all 12 franchises located in Oregon, Washington and southern British Columbia, I can drive to most ballparks within a few hours. After years of writing about teams and leagues I could never see in person, this is a plus.

Another plus is the WCL itself. It began with seven teams in 2005 and that first summer, a total of 66,526 people attended 117 games for a 568 per opening average. The WCL has since grown to 12 teams with over a million attending games the past three seasons combined. Although not all franchises are on solid ground, the league overall is well-funded, well-run, stable (only two teams have folded in nine seasons) and now arguably one of the top five summerball circuits in the country. And they want to get better.

So here we are. I plan to produce monthly WCL on OSC updates in the off-season before going weekly from June through August (and have already begun working on January's report). One thing I'll resurrect from the past is the "Road Trip" series of WCL city profiles that were very popular among Baseball Mexico readers. My challenge is to bring OSC readers fair-minded coverage of the WCL that doesn't read like a press release. As a fan, I want the WCL to succeed but as a writer, I need to tell the truth about what I see. Although I'll probably raise the ire of some league and team execs along the way, I have to expect it if I'm being honest. In the end, if the worst that can be said about WCL on OSC is that it plays it straight, I've done my job and that's all I want. Well, that and a maybe a burger and an ice cold root beer on a hot summer night in Medford or Wenatchee...sometimes the simple pleasures are the best.

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West Coast League Stories from December 19, 2013


The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer(s), and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts or opinions of OurSports Central or its staff.


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