There’s No Baseball in Portland, Which Sucks

With apologies (not really) to the barely-in-the-minors Hillsboro Hops, there’s no baseball in Portland. I’m sure one of these days I’ll take in a game at Ron Tonkin Field to see the Hops take on the Tri-City Dust Devils or the Everett AquaSox, and I might even enjoy myself, but it isn’t the real thing. Once you’ve flown first class it’s tough going back to coach.

So how did we get here, with Portland- the 25th-largest metropolitan area in the US- topping out at High-A for professional baseball? Portland is bigger than Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Cleveland and Milwaukee, and they’ve all got their own mostly shitty Major League teams. Portland certainly has plenty of baseball history, going as far back as 1866. That’s a long time ago! The next century or so had teams such as the Spartans, Willamettes, Gladiators, Monograms, Colts, Webfeet, Green Gages, Mavericks (I highly recommend The Battered Bastards of Baseball, which is a documentary about that team and one of approximately four good things on Netflix), Rosebuds (a Negro league team owned by Jesse Owens), Rockies, and Beavers, among others. I didn’t make a single one of those names up.

It’s the Beavers that lasted. They started as the Webfoots (not to be confused with the Webfeet) before calling themselves the Browns, Giants (go Giants!), Buckaroos, and Ducks before landing on Beavers in 1906. I think. I only skimmed the Wiki, and there was a lot. For the first 50 or so years they played at Vaughn Street Park, at the corner of 24th and Vaughn. Then and now:

Apparently Esco makes mining equipment.

They stayed at Vaughn Street Park until 1956, when they moved into Civic Stadium, formerly Multnomah Stadium. This was back in the days when stadiums were named Civic or Municipal rather than Guaranteed Rate or Loan Depot. We know this one now as Providence Park- home of the Portland Timbers and Portland Thorns- which are soccer teams and not baseball teams, and therefore are not germane to this article.

The Beavers came and went and came back over the years and got as high as Triple-A, serving most recently as the top affiliate for the San Diego Padres. All that ended in 2010. They had to move out when the Timbers came to town, couldn’t find a new place to build a stadium, yada yada yada, they’re now the El Paso Chihuahuas.

I would accept a Triple-A team, because that’s almost real baseball. What I would like of course is a Major League franchise. Any franchise, expansion or not. It’s not terribly convenient to go to Seattle to see a game- and then when you get there it’s the Mariners you have to watch- but at least they have a team they can wallow in the misery of. So much misery.

The Portland Diamond Project is the group working on bringing baseball here. As is the case in many of these ventures, it’s got a famous face or two with minor investments (in this case it’s Seattle Seahawk Russell Wilson and his wife, the singer Ciara), and is actually being run by some guy and some other guy, and there’s probably several Monty Burnses with the real money behind the scenes. They’ve got renderings of the ballpark they want to build downtown along the Willamette, which looks like an airport terminal with a serious death ray but whatever, I’d go there:

Step one: build a stadium. Step two: find a team. Not really, that would be irresponsible. The team most commonly linked to Portland has been the Oakland A’s, but they ain’t coming. This is the team I grew up rooting for, and enjoyed many games at the Oakland-Alameda County Network Associates McAfee O.co RingCentral Coliseum. Rickey Henderson, Dave Stewart, Mark McGwire, Jose Freakin’ Canseco, Carney Lansford, Dennis Eckersley…what a bunch of dudes. I was THERE when Roger Clemens got himself tossed from game 4 of the 1990 ALCS, which is a very important thing to not do when you’re the starting pitcher for a team facing elimination in the playoffs. I have spent half an inning waiting in line to piss in a trough. I have lain on my back on the outfield grass to watch fireworks. I have done donuts in the parking lot after a game. But I digress.

Anyway, this place was magical right up until the point when sweaty grifter Al Davis and his weird PF Chang’s-loving failson brought the Raiders back to bankrupt Oakland and ruin the joint. I mean come ON:

First came Mount Davis blocking the sun, then the Giants (go Giants!) built a beauty across the bay to replace their Toilet-By-The-Bay, and Baby Gap came in and bought the A’s from the Haas family, who were the best owners one could ever hope to find and were therefore unsuitable for the modern business of baseball. All downhill from there, and the team now goes to great lengths to alienate whatever fanbase is left by shipping any decent ballplayer they have out for parts while also publicly maligning their stadium (which, truthfully, does suck), in a half-assed effort to get a new stadium in Oakland but really to get someone else to buy them a stadium somewhere else.

Publicly and officially, Portland is in the running for the A’s should they relocate. Realistically, the A’s are either staying in the Bay Area or following the Raider carnival to Las Vegas. If I were a betting man (editor’s note: he is a betting man), I’d put Vegas down as a 3:1 favorite. Vegas will give them whatever they want and soak the tourists to pay for it rather than the billionaire owner. Just ask the Raiders! It’s all gross, but it’s life.

Speaking of gross billionaires, I’ve made my peace with the fact that when or if a team comes to Portland, there could and probably will be some grossness involved. There’s no such thing as a billionaire who isn’t at least somewhat evil, and billions are what it takes to play this game these days (unless you added another 18% room tax at Circus Circus to pay for the stadium). My favorite team (go Giants!) is owned by a colossally shitty human, and it’s not like I don’t buy stuff on Amazon. I won’t buy a Tesla though, have to draw the line somewhere.

I suppose I could start caring about basketball or (shudder) soccer, but I’m a dreamer by nature so I’ll keep dreaming. I don’t even care if the Portland Athletics/Mavericks/New Beavers lose, I’ll buy a $14 beer and spend $20 to park the car. Just don’t make me go when the Dodgers are in town.