Play Ball! : Long Beach Reels In Fans With Barracuda Minor League Team

When Dan Barachman heard about the Long Beach Barracuda, he immediately bought a season ticket. Major league baseball had left him with a sour taste, and this was his chance to buy into simpler times.

Barachman was investing in Long Beach’s new minor league team, one that for the rest of the summer will be playing teams such as the Salinas Peppers, the Grays Harbor Gulls and the Sonoma County Crushers in the newly formed Western Baseball League.

On Monday night, the Barracuda had their home opener against Sonoma at Long Beach’s Blair Field in what many hope will be a long relationship between the team and what had been the largest city in the nation without a professional baseball team.

Barachman, a retired lieutenant with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, says baseball played by the likes of the Barracuda is what the game’s all about.

“It’s baseball for the fun of baseball,” he said before Monday night’s game.

His sentiment was echoed by George Glorius. He and his friend Hulda Cotton were the first fans in the park Monday afternoon.

“I think this is what Long Beach needs,” Glorius said.

That may be so, but the fate of the Barracuda--whose salary commitment of $92,000 for the entire team would be chump change for many a big league player--is still in question, since some wonder about fan support in a city within driving distance of two major league teams.

Naysayers aside, the people who put together the team point to the success of the 3-year-old Rancho Cucamonga Quakes in San Bernardino County and contend that Long Beach, a city trying to remake its image, can only be helped by professional baseball.

That along with tickets selling for as little as $3 is a recipe for success, they believe.

Indeed, the formula seemed to be working Monday night: It was standing room only, with all 3,087 seats sold.

“The community has been very supportive,” said Bill Conaway, a spokesman for the team. “We’ve got doctors and lawyers and construction workers--people from all walks of life--who have purchased season tickets. And we’ve got some major sponsors, like the Queen Mary, which is going to house all the visiting teams.”

Results on the field have been encouraging as well. The Barracuda opened their season against the Palm Springs Suns in the desert city over the weekend, winning two games before dropping Sunday’s contest 11-0. On Monday night, Sonoma was ahead, 4-3, in the ninth inning.

Earlier in the evening, the Beach Boys and Elvis blared from the loudspeaker system as the Barracuda and Crushers went through their pregame warm-ups.

Hal Mason, a retired hospital worker, was sitting in the stands watching batting practice in the late afternoon.

“I just decided I’d come out and support the local team,” he said. “Now is an ideal time to get it started because people are so turned off by the majors.”

Just a few seats away, baseball great Bob Lemon sat in a box seat behind home plate. He said it remains to be seen whether Long Beach will support the Barracuda.

“It’s never been a big baseball town, even though a lot of ballplayers have come from here,” Lemon said, before taking the field to deliver the ceremonial first pitch.

The Western League is patterned after the Northern League--six independent minor league clubs in Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota and Canada. Started in 1993, that league came up with a formula that works, at least in the Corn Belt: cheap seats, cheap concessions and gimmicks intended to draw fans into the game.

It also has a rule that the roster can have no more than six players who have played professionally, and that the team must have six rookies.

One of the veterans who tried to make the Barracuda was former Dodger Rudy Law, 38, who said he worked for months to get in shape for the season, only to injure his leg--”popped a tire” is how he put it--while running from first to third last week. He said he is out for the season and out of baseball as a player, though he plans to help coach the Barracuda.

“It just wasn’t meant for me the second time around,” he said.

Another prospect was Kevin Schula, who played collegiate baseball at the University of Oklahoma and for the last two years played in the Taiwan Professional League. Schula, a Barracuda catcher and first baseman, said his reception in Long Beach has been impressive.

“They’re dying for a team here,” he said.

The manager of the Barracuda is Jeff Burroughs, American League Most Valuable Player in 1974, who is almost as famous in Long Beach for having helped guide his son’s Little League team to back-to-back World Series wins.

The beefy Burroughs said he approached the owners about managing when he heard the team was being formed. He figured that after nine years away from the game, it was time to get back into the professional ranks.

Meanwhile, Kelvin Yamashita, another fan in the stands Monday night, said he purchased Barracuda season tickets partly because he believes fans have been abused by the major league baseball strike. For now, Yamashita said, Barracuda games will be a substitute.

“I know it’s not major league, but the average fan can’t tell the difference,” he said. “I’ve made kind of a pact with myself that I’m not going to any major league games until after the All Star break.”

Barachman, the mustachioed former sheriff’s lieutenant, said that since he bought his season ticket, he has been treated like royalty by the team’s owners and officials. Several of them surprised him by dropping over to say hello recently during an exhibition game with the Cal State Long Beach team.

“I’ve never had Gene Autry come over and say hello,” said Barachman.