Baseball Blooming in the High Desert

The turquoise roof of its grandstand rises like a mirage from the panorama of sand, sagebrush and Joshua trees.

If corn grew on the desert floor surrounding Mavericks Stadium, the scene would be right out of “Field of Dreams.”

The reflection from cars approaching the ballpark, single file down a street called Stadium Way, forms a gleaming band of light that stretches back to an exit off Highway 395.

The ballpark, home to the Class-A High Desert Mavericks baseball team, is proof that no matter where you build it, baseball fans will come.

The Mavericks abandoned Riverside, a relative metropolis, for this parched locale just northwest of Victorville three years ago, when the thought of a minor league franchise flourishing in the desert brush was still only a glint in the eye of Bobby Brett.

Bobby has a younger brother named George who has been a pretty fair hitter for the Kansas City Royals the past two decades. As it turns out, Bobby, High Desert’s president, has every bit as much business acumen as his brother has baseball savvy.

The Mavericks, a Florida Marlins’ affiliate, are one of the top draws in Class-A baseball. In 1991, the club’s inaugural season, High Desert became the first franchise in California League history to surpass 200,000 in attendance.

Last season, the Mavericks broke their record, drawing 218,444 fans to the $6.5-million stadium, which has been dubbed the “Diamond in the Desert.”

Well-played baseball helps attract customers. The Mavericks are good, and they should be.

High Desert benefits from a baseball rule that prohibits first-year expansion franchises from fielding double-A minor league teams. Therefore, in Florida’s player-development system, the Mavericks are the next-best thing to triple A.

Tim Clark, an outfielder, led minor league baseball with a .365 batting average in the season’s first half. Another outfielder, Carl Everett, went straight from the Mavericks to the Marlins. He spent three weeks with the club before being sent down to triple A.

“Really what they are doing is using us as their double-A team,” said Leanne Pagliai, the Mavericks’ general manager. “And that’s just fine with us. We don’t mind having a ringer.”

If the Mavericks win on this night in June, they clinch the first-half championship of the California League’s Southern Division. But they have been in this same predicament for a week.

High Desert has lost six in a row since Manager Fredi Gonzalez left the team to join his ailing wife in Florida. Before their slide, the Mavericks had the best record in professional baseball.

The players are perplexed. Carlos Ponce, the interim manager, is embarrassed. Marty DeMerritt, the club’s pitching coach, is scheming.

At DeMerritt’s suggestion, the Mavericks will play this night in their batting practice jerseys. The players go one step further. They move a life-size cutout of Clint Eastwood from their clubhouse into the dugout.

Clint, a good-luck charm, is wearing a batting glove and a Mavericks’ logo on his shirt.

Most of the fans seem oblivious to the losing streak. Fifty minutes before the game, children begin flocking to a cordoned-off area in foul territory behind third base where players are encouraged to sign autographs. The players do this before each home game.

A half hour before the scheduled first pitch, catcher Andrew Prater is surrounded by youngsters. Prater has been with the Mavericks for--let’s see, it’s 6:30?--about four hours. He recently was called up from Elmira (N.Y.) of the Class-A New York-Penn League.

The kids have never heard of him. And they couldn’t care less.

Prater is from Austin, Tex., so he is used to heat and he has seen a desert. However, the drive from Ontario Airport has left him slightly awed.

“In Texas, you still have flowers and plants,” he said. “Here it’s just . . . I don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be much. But then all of a sudden you have this place. It’s like an oasis. Where do all these people come from?”

Good question. Adelanto has a population of only 16,000, but the Mavericks draw from a base of 500,000 who live within a 30-minute drive.

The area is booming because homes are affordable. Highway billboards advertise three- and four-bedroom homes for as little as $60,000.

“People come here searching for that little slice of the American dream, and they’re willing to commute two hours every day to have it,” Pagliai said.

The shiny, 3,500-seat park, a piecework of Americana itself, was financed by redevelopment bonds. The closest city of any size is Victorville, population 42,000, which has a mall, a movie theater, a bowling alley and the Roy Rogers Dale Evans Museum. Otherwise, the Mavericks provide the area’s entertainment.

“This is a one-horse town,” Pagliai said, drawing on a pun Trigger would not appreciate. “Professional sports brought affordable, fun, family entertainment to the area.”

Pagliai, 34, keeps a close watch on the pulse of the fans. “When people walk away, we don’t even want them to know if we’ve won or lost,” she said. “We want them to say, ‘Hey, that was really fun. What was the score?’ ”

Promotions can help bring in a crowd, but Pagliai knows a good first impression brings them back. “The bathrooms have to be clean, the hot dogs have to be hot and their kids should be able to run around and not feel like they’re going to be hit or kidnaped,” she said.

“I try not to look at this as a business all the time. Sometimes you have to step back and say, ‘If I was a fan walking through this stadium, what would I think of it?’ ”

High Desert has 1,200 season ticket-holders and no trouble attracting sponsors. All 32 advertisement slots on the stadium fence are sold and 25 more have been added on a hill that surrounds the outfield barrier.

Behind the foul pole in right field is a billboard cutout of a bull. When a Mavericks’ player hits a home run, the bull’s red eyes flash and he snorts.

Closer to first base, adjacent to the visiting team’s bullpen, is a grassy knoll where fans are allowed to sit or stand for the bargain price of $3. The spot is particularly popular among young children who like to skip, run or roll down the embankment. “We put a guy at the bottom so they don’t roll into the bullpen,” Pagliai said.

She is not entirely joking.

Grant Kerney, the “grassy knoll supervisor,” is a cross between a school principal, your favorite uncle and the cops.

“When a foul ball comes out here, you’ll see the kids play pile on,” Kerney said. “They pile on five feet thick. You wonder if the kid at the bottom is going to be alive. You watch, it’ll happen to night.

“It happens every night.”

On this night, a Tuesday, a crowd of 3,837--exactly 337 more fans than there are seats--have come to watch the Mavericks play the Riverside Pilots.

The game will start a little late. More than 800 children--some grade-school students with perfect attendance, others T-Ball players from a local Little League--have been invited to participate in pregame festivities.

After being individually introduced over the stadium’s public-address system, the youngsters are invited to sing the national anthem while standing next to the Maverick of their choice.

The ensuing stampede results in a scene right out of a “Where’s Waldo?” book. The players are swallowed in a sea of humanity.

Kerney, down at the grassy knoll, must be cringing. Pagliai, who flits about the stadium carrying a walkie-talkie, remains calm.

Nights such as these keep her in the minor leagues. She says she has declined various job offers with big league clubs because they might stunt her creativity. “I like making the decisions, trying new promotions and having my hands in all the pies,” she says.

Pagliai has been groomed in a variety of administrative positions since following a ball-playing boyfriend to Midland, Tex., in 1985. The boyfriend is long gone, but Pagliai has moved up to join a select group of female executives in minor league baseball.

The Mavericks have a full-time staff of seven in addition to Pagliai, and on game day the payroll grows to about 150.

When the club advertised 100 part-time summer jobs, it received more than 500 applications.

The Mavericks’ booster club is 85 strong, including Marion Loney, whose family prepares food for the team to take on trips, and Kathy Mullis, a.k.a. The Cookie Lady, or, Grandma Gooch.

Mullis, whose grandson, Sean Gousha, is a backup catcher, has baked so many cookies that she has worn out her stove. She commutes 75 miles from Covina to attend most games.

“We are always fed. Whether it’s a commuter trip or an overnight trip, there’s always a full load of apples, snacks and other stuff,” said Ken Kendrena, a former Cal State Northridge standout who is one of the Mavericks’ relief pitchers. “The people here are awesome. This has to be about as good as it gets in Class A.”

Ponce, in his second season with the Mavericks after starting his coaching career in the Montreal Expos’ organization, considers High Desert an almost ideal place for a prospect to hone his skills.

“Nobody around,” Ponce said. “No place to go. Players come here, they do their job and there is nobody to bother them. That is good. They can concentrate.”

A few hours later, Ponce has his first managerial victory, and the Mavericks have their first-half championship.

In the parking lot, a youngster wearing the red jersey top of his Little League team, is walking with his father, mother and younger sister.

“Well, that was fun, wasn’t it?” Mom asked.

“Awesome!” the boy replied.

“What was the score again?”

For the record, it was 15-5.