Hangar has new team

The independent baseball team will include eight veterans and 16 rookies — players who are just out of college.

“The biggest thing we’re going to have to gear up for is getting host families,” said Andrew Dunn, commissioner of the Pecos League. 

Tryouts for the league are being held at 9 a.m. on Saturday at Griffith Park. Spring Training will be next week at Lancaster High School.

This will be the Pecos League’s second stint in the Valley, as the California City Whiptails played in the league from 2017-19.

“Some of the best times for our league and those people,” Dunn said, adding he’d like to have a Cal City night during this season.

The Pecos League has grown leaps and bounds since the Whiptails.

Dunn started the league in New Mexico in 2010.

“I was a single owner in the Continental Baseball League in Las Cruces and everyone liked how we did it,” he said. “The league was falling apart and everyone looked at me to do a second team and start a league, so I did. It went well, just getting private ownership at this level is tough.

“We just started off as a smaller league and just kept growing west until we ran into the ocean and here we are.”

There are now 16 teams in the league with eight teams in California in the Pacific Division and eight teams in the Mountain Division from New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Kansas, Arizona and Oklahoma.

The eight teams in the Pacific Division are: the Lancaster Sound Breakers, Marysville Drakes, Bakersfield Train Robbers, Santa Rosa Scuba Divers, Vallejo Seaweed, Martinez Sturgeon, San Rafael Pacifics and the Monterey Amberjacks.

In the Mountain Division, the teams are: the Roswell Invaders (New Mexico), Alpine Cowboys (Texas), Santa Fe Fuego (New Mexico), Trinidad Triggers (Colorado), Garden City Wind (Kansas), Blackwell FlyCatchers (Oklahoma), Tucson Saguaros (Arizona) and the Austin Weirdos (Texas).

The downsizing of Minor League Baseball has benefitted the league in terms of venues.

“It’s an evolution, as Minor League Baseball moves, it opens up better situations for us and our league gets better the better places we’re at,”Dunn said. “This last offseason, we made a couple of moves for the better. Marysville and Lancaster are much better than the places we left. We’re a 16-team league permanently and we’re going to get the best 16 cities we can. 

“Obviously, Lancaster fits that bill, but we’re doing geography-wise, stadium-wise and fan-wise, it’s pretty obvious with what we have.”

Dunn is excited to bring baseball back to The Hangar, hoping to fill a void left by the Lancaster JetHawks, one of 43 minor league teams eliminated by Major League Baseball in 2020.

“We want to bring the excitement for players, for fans, for our broadcasts,” Dunn said. “We hope to bring the Kiss Cam back on the video board.”

The new team has retained the JetHawks’ mascot KaBoom, who will race Bruno, a popular runner in the same vane as the Freeze, on opening night, Friday, May 26.

The Sound Breakers’ 18 home games will all be on Fridays and Saturdays. They start the season on the road on May 22.

“Every team plays a series here, Bakersfield plays three series here,” Dunn said.

Merchandise is for sale on the team’s website, LancasterSoundBreakers.com. Dunn said people were already buying merchandise as early as January.

“Being the only independent baseball team in Southern California, it should be great,” Dunn said. “There’s no other way to say it. There’s no reason it shouldn’t be.”

The team is looking for host families and hiring for ticketing and concessions.

If interested, go to the website, email at info@pecosleague.com or call 661-206-1957.