Baseball officially announced its new minor league structure on Friday, with the Baby Giants moving to Low-A, the Eugene Emeralds joining the organization in place of the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes, and all the other changes that were reported months ago. But they’re official now! How delightful it is when powerful organizations tell us things we already knew.
The one change that was not already explicitly reported, though, is that the names of the leagues are gone. The Baby Giants aren’t in the California League anymore; now they’re in Low-A West. Eugene is in High-A West instead of the Northwest League, and the Sacramento River Cats don’t play in the Pacific Coast League anymore. Instead, they’re in (say it with me!) Triple-A West.
(I could have also mentioned the Richmond Flying Squirrels, but I think you got the gist)
It’s worth taking a moment to consider the history of the PCL, which had existed since 1903. For the first half of the 20th century, it was the peak of professional baseball on the West Coast, with Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams famously playing there before their major league careers. It lost its independence in 1958, when the Giants and Dodgers moved west, and since then had been the stop just before the majors for approximately half the teams in baseball.
And now it’s gone. Or, well, the name is gone. The teams that were around in 2019 all still exist; sure, the San Antonio Missions are now a AA team, but they’re still a team. The franchise hasn’t disbanded. Reno, Las Vegas, Tacoma, Salt Lake, they all still have teams who will play each other in baseball contests which will present one winner and one loser. Those basics haven’t changed. The day-to-day of going to River Cats games (assuming there are any this year) won’t change.
So is it really that different to lose the PCL name? The days of its independence were long gone, and when it joined affiliated ball in 1958, the old PCL had already died. The league played out its schedule for more than 60 years as a minor league, and now a bunch of the teams from that league (plus the formerly independent Sugar Land Skeeters!) will play out their schedules as a differently named minor league. It’s entirely fair to ask how much will really change.
If there are any other big changes coming, we don’t know. Because of COVID, we don’t even have a schedule for this year yet. Minor league teams do not make a lot of money off of television (this is an understatement), and so their revenue is dependent on fan attendance; it is an open question when stadiums will be full this year (this is an understatement) and so the short-term financial viability of the league is in flux.
It does seem like the minors have lost something without the PCL name, though. As weak of a tie as it was to baseball history, it was a tie to baseball history. Just the words “Pacific Coast League” were a reminder of when baseball wasn’t the megalith that it is today, when you could have a bunch of leagues playing by their own rules and you’d get a different product if you went to a game in San Diego than you would if you went to one in Minneapolis.
It was a time before modern day homogenization and corporatization, in other words. Major League Baseball crushed Minor League Baseball beneath its heel because it could, and because it wanted more control to do things its own way. The result is that any semblance of a unique identity for the minors is gone and it is absolutely impossible that it will return. Minor league teams organized because they had demands they wanted MLB to meet, and then COVID destroyed any leverage they had and they had to settle for doing exactly what Rob Manfred wanted.
That might well be better for the players — MLB’s press release touts perks like pay increases for players, better facilities, and less awful travel schedules — but there’s a cost. Because the name “Pacific Coast League” (and also “California League” and “Northwest League,” to stick with the examples you read a couple minutes ago) was property of the organization Minor League Baseball, and Minor League Baseball does not play baseball or intend to license them to the entity that destroyed it, those names are basically gone.
That’s a connection to something that has been severed. Threadbare as that connection was, it still meant something. The River Cats have an area of their park called the Solon Club, in honor of the Sacramento Solons, a former PCL team. They’re still honoring the Solons, but it means a little less now. “They were part of something and we’re part of it too” is simple a more powerful statement than “They were part of something and now we’re here.”
But, considering all the years and changes since the Solons were around, maybe closely parsing that statement doesn’t make that much of a difference anyway. We’ll be lucky to have a team in Sacramento at all this year. MLB’s counting on that to be enough, and honestly, it probably will be.