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I don't usually go in for a shocking lede to grab your attention, but: I left the house three times recently. (Where "recently" means "in the last month.") Here are the things I like to do when I leave the house: watch baseball; drink beer; … yeah.

Lancaster,1 California is in Los Angeles County, which is also the county in which I reside, but it takes something like 75 minutes to get to Lancaster from my house. There's only one highway, unless you count the Angeles Forest Highway, which runs smack through (ready?) the Angeles National Forest, so I don't. Count it, I mean. In an entire country full of boring drives, the cruise up state highway 14 past Palmdale and into Lancaster is a standout of nothingness. There's this church on the west side of the road not long before you hit Palmdale that I really like. There's also a point where you lose the L.A. radio stations and start picking up a whole lot more music extolling the virtuous life and its heavenly rewards.

What does stand out is that the parts of Lancaster that I have experienced aren't the hellholes frequently associated with California League towns. I don't mean to insult your city if you live in one of these towns, but my wife is fond of noting that a violent death might well be a side effect of our lifetime goal to see a game in the stadium of every affiliated minor-league team in the country.2 What little I've seen of Lancaster makes it one of the exceptions: it has a nice cultural downtown-type area with shops and restaurants of the independent variety and a performing arts center and ample parking without the hell of garages or vast lots and I haven't yet seen anyone selling or making drugs openly. Wikipedia claims, "Lancaster is listed by CNNMoney as one of the best places to live in 2012," but the citation is a broken link and I found nothing independently, though my research skills and CNNMoney's opinion on what city is objectively better to live in than what other city are suspect to the same degree.

(By contrast, Urban Dictionary has an entry for Lake Elsinore that even the most hardcore linguistic libertarian could not call "flattering." Then again, I've seen the term "Methcaster." Honestly, though, if you're from Lancaster, you should be more concerned by the lack of creativity in the insulting nicknames than by the insult itself. It's not immediately obvious that a "Methcaster" isn't a guitar.)

The reason I know about Lancaster's revived strip is because it is home to Kinetic Brewing Company. If you have heard about the amazing San Diego brewery scene, then you might have an impression that the entire SoCal region is awash in craft beer. Metro Los Angeles, though, doesn't reach San Diego's heights. It is growing, and it's far from shabby, and I can find and drink all sorts of cool stuff, but it's not routine the way it is in our neighbor to the south. Good beer is not as well integrated into the culture and ethos and palate of the city. The difference comes down to having to seek it out vs. being able to stumble into it.

Having done my seeking, it was exciting to learn about a brewpub in a town to which I'd trek for minor-league baseball anyway. Kinetic has a very nice beer list, both in bottles and on tap, and the menus rotate. Given that it's not my local joint, I feel obligated to order Kinetic's own brews, but that still leaves some breadth. The Propulsion IPA that I had less than a month ago, for instance, is not as of this writing on the tap menu. The Ignition pale ale, which I had on my first trip, in 2012, is. Both are beers to which, if I rated beers, which I don't, I'd give four stars out of five. I don't know how to taste things and tend to make a lot of subliterate noises when I eat and drink, but I'd sum both up this way: not life-changing, but something I'd gladly imbibe repeatedly.

The food is a skosh more ambitious than you might expect (poutine w/ braised oxtail, kaffir lime cheesecake, a "tangy Thai" taco, aged Vermont cheddar in the cottage pie), but I would similarly say that it is not remarkable. They do have fried pickles, which I'm required by law to mention, and the chips, made in-house, are quite nice, but man cannot live on chips alone. The space at Kinetic is vaguely industrial-cool but mainly impresses with its size. Or at least it impresses someone who's spent most of the past 10 years in L.A. and New York, where restaurant space is at a premium.

In the context of the Cal League, all of the above is also how I'd describe seeing a JetHawks game at The Hangar.3 There's a jet in front of the stadium4 and there's free parking across the street if you're willing to drive on the gravel in what will probably be a gas station four years from now and there's a video board that actually has some information on it and the view of the game itself isn't bad and you can get Kinetic beer at a special stand around the corner from the regular concessions, but it's not a descended-from-heaven place like Hudson Valley or Aberdeen. The former of these is convincingly faux-vintage and was essentially dropped into the middle of a forest. Malcolm MacMillan has some great illustrations of that at The Ballpark Guide—note in particular his forays beyond the outfield fence. The latter is more sterile but was clearly built by someone who doesn't realize that you're not supposed to pour money into facilities in short-season leagues. Praise for Lancaster, by contrast, might focus on phrases like "it's not Bakersfield" and "pretty glad we didn't hit up High Desert this weekend."

Luckily, the game itself on this day (May 11th), was flat-out fantastic.5 Stockton, an A's affiliate, was in town, which meant my first in-person look at Addison Russell and … well, Addison Russell. Unfortunately, we didn't get seats in or around the scouts (we declined to pre-purchase and there was some sort of promotion that day, so there were many more fans in attendance than typical), which also means that I didn't have much of a view—we were out past third base, and probably eight rows from the field. Russell obliged me, though, by making his talents known overtly, knocking a three-run oppo-taco in the fourth inning. Cal League or not, matched up against a 17th-round pick with an ERA near seven (Tyson Perez) or not, wind or not, my personal feeling is that a 19-year-old in High-A bopping one out the other way is impressive. I was impressed.

Russell's bat hasn't been in question, though, and I wasn't able to form any opinions on his glove. I thought his arm looked weak, but Chris Rodriguez has noted that "Russell shows a plus arm" and Jason Parks wrote in April that Russell has "enough arm . . . to handle" shortstop after putting a 6 on the tool and calling it "left-side strong" in the preseason Top 10. The point of piling up all this evidence against what I saw from Russell's throws is to emphasize just how much I'm not a scout and just how much you can't see from the seats I had. (Or, hell, to give myself the tiniest sliver of the possibility of credit, he could well have had an off day throwing, which emphasizes a third point: that you would ideally not evaluate a player based on one game, especially as regards the tools that are less frequently used—how often does a shortstop actually have to uncork one?)

The best thing about minor-league baseball, though, and by way of introduction to where the game really got fun, is the utter lack of rooting interest. My utter lack, anyway. I'm always amazed that 70 percent of the fans in attendance in any given game actually pick a team, boo the "opposing" players, and so forth. I don't understand where this fandom came from or where it's going, but it's there and I don't have it, even when one of the two squads is an affiliate of the major-league team with which I live and die.

What all this means is that when the bottom of the eighth came around and Stockton led 6–3 and Lancaster piled up seven runs via, among other things:

  • error (by Russell)
  • run-scoring wild pitch
  • run-scoring wild pitch
  • wild-pitch strikeout
  • wild-pitch strikeout
  • bases-loaded walk

well, what, I should get sad? Mad? No. That's hilarious. It was hilarious! Especially since the bases-loaded walk tied the game up at six … and was followed by a grand slam to put a bow on the thing for Lancaster. Of course I stood up and cheered! Of course I couldn't stop laughing! You see something new every time you watch a baseball game, but sometimes you see something that's actually identifiably new, and that's what we got this time. I was not about to let some affinity for the parent organization three levels above this team ruin that.

Not being a psychopath, sure, I felt bad for Jonathan Joseph, who threw three of the four wild pitches, and for Ryan Delgado, who was trying to catch them. Of course I did. They're just kids, and they're probably not going anywhere in their chosen profession. Delgado is 25 and spent 2012 in an independent league after two years in the Braves chain. Joseph is also 25 and has been with the A's since 2006, stateside full-time since 2009. This is his eighth season with a Baseball-Reference stat-line and this year he's somehow managed to combine 40 strikeouts in 27 2/3 innings with a 6.83 ERA. And he's not even Googlable—there's some dude in the NFL with his name. Someone like Joseph could always wind up having a random good 40 innings in the majors, but the odds are stacked strongly against both players.

But that's sports, yes? That's baseball. No grand slammers without grand slammees. Addison Russell is arguably the 22nd-best prospect in baseball (caveats about rankings and caveats about how that was three months ago and caveats about his slow start and caveats about how three starting pitchers ahead of him in the rankings have already been promoted all put to the side), but that's only true because he's ahead of 4,478 other guys. You can build competition on top of beer and you can build competition between cities, but zero-sum isn't an inherent factor in brewing and it isn't an inherent factor in municipal design the way it is in sport. I'd be a happier person, we'd all be happier people, if we traveled around places drinking beers and eating food and looking at pretty pictures without putting them in any ranked order, explicit or implicit, rather than delighting in the misfortune of others, which is what rooting for our own guys amounts to.

Then again

  • error
  • run-scoring wild pitch
  • run-scoring wild pitch
  • wild-pitch strikeout
  • wild-pitch strikeout
  • bases-loaded walk
  • grand slam

That's amazing!


  1. May as well hang the lantern right here. I know Sam Miller and Michael Clair just visited Lancaster, but there are good reasons to read this piece anyway:

    1. they did not drink beer; I did
    2. they are apparently blissfully unaware of Lancaster's thriving downtown; I visited
    3. Sam declined to insult anybody; I insult at least two and as many as five entire municipalities
    4. Delino DeShields was in Sam and Michael's game; Addison Russell was in mine
    5. they saw a fire and a choir; my glasses prescription is +7.5/+6.5 and I have 50 percent hearing loss, so I didn't see or hear a goddamn thing

    ↩

  2. The list so far, in no order: Aberdeen, Hudson Valley (Wappingers Falls), Tucson, Fresno, Lancaster, Rancho Cucamonga, Lake Elsinore, Staten Island, Brooklyn, Round Rock, Bakersfield, High Desert (Adelanto), Inland Empire (San Bernardino), Everett, Tacoma, Las Vegas, and Corpus Christi. I've also been to Midland alone, my wife has been to Vermont (Burlington) alone, and we attended a Texas Collegiate League game in Victoria. The one I'm most excited about, in a sense, is Tucson because that team is moving to El Paso next year, leaving us as two of just a few thousand people to have watched this incarnation of the Tucson Padres. I only wish I liked the hat more. (I get a hat at each stadium, though I don't have one from Victoria because they did not sell hats. This made me sad.) ↩

  3. Official City of Lancaster propaganda refers to the thing as the Lancaster Municipal Stadium and Clear Channel Stadium. Wikipedia states without citation that while Clear Channel purchased 10-year naming rights to Lancaster Municipal Stadium in 2005, its name was removed during the 2012 season. Googling for news on the situation turns up recent stories still calling it "Clear Channel Stadium" but does not result in further enlightenment on the mystery of the name change. Then again, I didn't look that hard. ↩

  4. Aviation (a Lockheed plant and Edwards Air Force Base, most notably) played a major role in Lancaster's development, just as it did in many areas in Los Angeles. The discovery of borax nearby (leading to the creation of the largest borax mine in the world) probably helped as well, though The Hangar does not feature a box of laundry detergent in honor of the compound. ↩

  5. A Google reviewer who referred to the JetHawks as a "Semi-pro team" may not have seen a game quite as fun as the one I watched. ↩

Thank you for reading

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zacharylevine
6/07
In covering the Astros for a few years, I was twice able to hook a diversion to see the farm club in Lancaster onto an Astros west coast trip. I found the drive up 14 to be absolutely incredible. Sure, it's nothingness, but as someone who has only lived in Houston and the Northeast, the geography (or topography or whatever) was nothing I had ever seen before. So was the change as you got away from the water. From Los Angeles to Lancaster, I think the temperature went up from 70 to 100 in 40 miles or so.

I agree with you on the town. While the downtown was mostly under construction when I was there, it definitely had a lot of potential, and I hope to find some reason to go back some day. Ultimately, I judged every road city I visited mostly on the availability of post-midnight dining options, so it didn't score perfect grades, but Lancaster was pretty good and I must say surprisingly so.
lyricalkiller
6/07
Someday, make your way to Death Valley. Some day in early spring, that is. It's the LA-to-Lancaster geography times 2 million.
apilgrim
6/21
You have to enter Death Valley from Shoshone on the 178. Its a pretty amazing drive. Actually it is flat out amazing.

doctawojo
6/08
Maybe it's just the familiarity. I *loved* driving around Texas, even straight up the populated roads through Waco and toward Dallas, and in retrospect, it's probably because it was so new. I only went to Dallas once and I only went to Midland once and I only went to San Angelo once but I have vivid memories of those trips, including when, late late at night, out of nowhere loomed what was probably an oil refinery that was lit up like nothing I'd ever seen -- I've never played Bioshock but there was a way in which it reminded me of Bioshock that I can't shake. I don't have these memories for the multiple times I've been to Bakersfield and Lancaster and Rancho and San Berdoo.

The Propulsion is on me if you do find your way back.
Ashitaka1110
6/07
Here I was, an Astros fan, almost giddy that an entire BP article was going to be devoted to one of my team's MiLB clubs...and the only Astros' prospect even mentioned was Perez getting his brains knocked out.

Why am I spending these five bucks every month again...
doctawojo
6/07
I'm sorry to have disappointed. I'd note paragraph 10 as to why you probably don't want to hear from me on the Astros farm.
apilgrim
6/21
Lancaster is actually very well taken care of. Lots of top brass from the Air Force there with Edwards Air Force Base. Edwards is the top secret AF facility. All kinds of stories coming out of there. Why does this town have such good roads and so much funding? All the arts and parks?