By JAMIE JOBB<\/strong> \u201cBush League\u201d \u2013 Also see \u201cBush-leaguers\u201d. Adj. <\/p>\n 1) being of an inferior class or group of its kind : marked by a lack of sophistication or professionalism<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Some folks toss out the term \u201csemi-professional baseball\u201d to describe teams like the neophyte Martinez Clippers \u2013 hoping to distinguish top-salaried Big League pros from gig ballplayers who play the game for grins and stipends. <\/p>\n But the Clippers don\u2019t care to be known as a \u201csemi-pro\u201d team, and who could blame them? The new local nine consider themselves part of \u201can independent league\u201d ranked at a \u201chigh single-A minor league level\u201d \u2013 although the six-team Pacific Association is not connected in any way with Major League Baseball and its full multitude of contract players, impartial umpires, licensed brands and dedicated minions decorated in team swag.<\/p>\n Paraprofessional baseball is nothing new to Contra Costa. Many so-called \u201csemi-pro\u201d teams existed throughout the county, particularly around the turn of the Twentieth Century and well into the World War years. Like Vaudeville, these ball clubs began to fade away with the advent of television and stay-at-home families diverted by other \u201cpost-war\u201d pastimes. Some of them downgraded into adult recreational softball leagues open to anyone who could regularly show up for games.<\/p>\n Urban sophisticates called these underpaid players \u201cbush-leaguers\u201d \u2013 implying they were lost in The Sporting Outback somewhere south of Down Under. The term also applied to any minor league team not within the \u201cBig Leagues\u201d.<\/p>\n But on these underfunded local teams, a self-certain attitude always persisted \u2013 \u201cIf-you-build-it-they-will-come\u201d. Indeed three of these 20th Century \u201cField-of-Dreams\u201d ballparks have survived to this very day \u2013 and that\u2019s half of the Pacific Association\u2019s venues. The Vallejo Admirals still use that town\u2019s charming old wooden ballyard in Wilson Park, the San Rafael Pacifics call venerable Albert Park home and the Sonoma Stompers use Arnold Field just a short walk north of the town square. <\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n In the old days, if your team couldn\u2019t afford the luxury of a neighborhood ballyard, it used a convenient farmer\u2019s field. Curious, isn\u2019t it, that ballyards are often called \u201cfields\u201d to acknowledge the sport\u2019s grass-roots? \u201cOnce in a while,\u201d wrote Nilda Rego, \u201cthe farmer would want his field back and the team would have to move.\u201d <\/p>\n Port Costa (current population 228) once was a major West Coast deep-water port that supported teams known as the Tigers, the Wild Cats and the Bull Valleys. In the 1920s, the growing towns of Concord, Pittsburg, Antioch, Richmond joined with Martinez to field semi-pro teams in the Three C League. A hundred years ago, Pacheco (current population 3,685) cheered for its All-Stars.<\/p>\n Rego in her 1988 Contra Costa Times article \u2013 \u201cThe national pastime was once a local obsession\u201d \u2013 quotes Ernie Mangini whose father played for those Pacheco Stars: <\/p>\n \u201cYou brought in a pitcher, paid him ten dollars. That was big money.\u201d <\/p>\n Rego also wrote that in the 1930s \u201cevery major manufacturing plant in the county seemed to have a baseball team\u201d. And plant managers were always scouting for potential employees who also were productive on the basepaths. Shell Oil, and Union 76 fielded rival teams in the Refinery League. Then, as now, players had colorful names \u2013 Louis Ferreira, Poly Northcutt, Coco Commuzzi. <\/p>\n Martinez historian Tom Greerty recalls the Refinery League was filled with a lot of former major leaguers who played \u201creally good baseball\u201d. And they \u201cgot paid\u201d for playing ball at night by working for Shell in the daytime. <\/p>\n \u201cIt was a way to get a good job,\u201d Greerty said. \u201cThe refineries were always looking for a worker who could play second base.\u201d <\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n Thanks to Harriett Burt and Tom Greerty; Andrea Blachman and Richard Patchin at the Martinez Museum; Priscilla Couden and Maxine Brown at the Contra Costa History Center for all their help is preparing this brief report.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A brief history of pro ball in Contra Costa county By JAMIE JOBB Special to the Martinez Gazette \u201cBush League\u201d \u2013 Also see \u201cBush-leaguers\u201d. Adj. … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[7],"tags":[205,443,53],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Ntvs-yB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/martinezgazette.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2145"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/martinezgazette.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/martinezgazette.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martinezgazette.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martinezgazette.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2145"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/martinezgazette.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2146,"href":"https:\/\/martinezgazette.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2145\/revisions\/2146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/martinezgazette.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martinezgazette.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martinezgazette.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSpecial to the Martinez Gazette<\/em><\/p>\n