Redlands Connection is a concoction of sports memories emanating from a city that once numbered less than 20,000 people. From the Super Bowl to the World Series, from the World Cup to golf’s U.S. Open, plus NCAA Final Four connections, Tour de France cycling, major tennis, NBA and a little NHL, aquatics and quite a bit more, the sparkling little city that sits around halfway between Los Angeles and Palm Springs on Interstate 10 has its share of sports connections. – Obrey Brown
Retired major league ballplayer Rich Dauer sat beside me on the first base bench just after minor league San Bernardino Spirit finished playing an intrasquad game under the dimly-lit diamond at Redlands Community Field.
It was April 1987. Thirty-one years later, Dauer would be taking part in a pre-game ceremony with the newly-crowned world champion Houston Astros — an awfully long way from those early minor league coaching days in San Bernardino.
But on this date in 1987, something new was taking place. The California League had just expanded to, of all places, San Bernardino. Less than two decades before that, Dauer’s Colton High School team came to play at Redlands.
“I remember playing here,” Dauer said, referring to Community Field, “in high school.”
Just a few years earlier, Dauer played second base on the 1983 Baltimore Orioles’ World Series championship team, whose teammates were guys like Eddie Murray, Jim Palmer and Cal Ripken, Jr.
He was homegrown. Colton High School, a 1970 graduate. San Bernardino Valley College, then known as the Indians. Then it was onto USC, where he was a two-time All-American third baseman, helping lead the Trojans to win the College World Series in both 1973 and 1974. He’s now a Baltimore Orioles’ Hall of Famer, having been the team’s No. 1 draft pick (1974), playing in two World Series.
This guy had been around.
Spirit management knew where many of their fans might come from to show up at Fiscalini Field – located on Highland Ave. in San Bernardino – and that was Redlands.
Showing up at Community Field was the perfect public relations move. The Spirit could sell a lot of tickets to these folks. With his hitting coach, Jay Johnstone, sitting nearby, Dauer reflected on minor league ball players.
“These guys,” he said, motioning out to those Class A players, “aren’t that far away from the major leagues.”
It was quite a proclamation. These were minor leaguers, Rich, I’d told him. He shook his head in disagreement.
“All these guys,” he said, “are just young. They need experience. They can throw just as hard, hit it just as far … as any major leaguers. They just need to get consistent. That’s what will keep them out of the majors. If they’re not consistent.”
There were some future major leaguers on that Spirit roster – not to mention a few past big-leaguers.
Todd Cruz and Rudy Law, plus Terry Whitfield, pitchers Andy Rincon and Craig Chamberlain – all of whom showed up in a major league uniform before landing with the Spirit. Cruz, in fact, was Philadelphia’s shortstop in 1983 during that World Series duel with Dauer’s Orioles.
Law played against Dauer’s Orioles in that year’s 1983 American League playoffs when Baltimore knocked off the Chicago White Sox.
All those ex-MLB players were playing out their careers.
Another Spirit player, infielder Mike Brocki, had torn apart Redlands High in a CIF soccer playoff match a few years earlier – scoring three times in a 6-0 win at Walnut High School. For the Spirit in 1987, Brocki hit two HRs and batted .233.
Let’s not forget another Spirit infielder, Leon Baham, who would eventually become one of Redlands’ top youth baseball coaches in years ahead. Baham wound up hitting .279 with 8 HRs that season.
And Ronnie Carter, a Fontana product who was an NCAA Division 3 All-American at the University of Redlands a couple years earlier, got 164 at-bats (4 HRs, .213) for a Spirit squad that was filled by plenty of guys that never wound up in the major league careers.
Dauer sat over all of them, perhaps lining himself up for a lengthy future in MLB as a coach. Curiously, he never drew a manager’s assignment at the MLB level, coaching at Kansas City, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Colorado and, finally, Houston.
Dauer spent as much time as I needed on that Community Field bench after playing the game that night. Plenty of local youths showed up to watch this split-squad game.
Pitchers fired seeds.
Hitters took big cuts.
Baserunners seemed quick, fast.
Fielders made it look easy.
Three decades later, Dauer was pulling himself to the mound at Minute Maid Park. It was April 2, 2018. He threw out the first pitch.
For the previous three seasons, he had coached first base as the Astros made a dramatic move toward becoming contenders. When Houston beat the Dodgers in a thrilling 7-game series the previous fall, Dauer was back in familiar territory.
YES. YES. YES. WE KNOW. HOUSTON PLAYERS EVENTUALLY GOT DEALT WITH FOR CHEATING TO WIN THAT SERIES. A MANAGER GOT FIRED AND PLAYERS WERE SPOTTED IN CHEATING. NOTE THAT, AT LEAST.
Tragedy struck at the World Series parade. Dauer suffered a head injury, resulting in emergency brain surgery. It brought his coaching career – 19 years strong – to a premature conclusion.
He was the perfect selection to throw out that first pitch.
That 1987 season in San Bernardino was his first as a coach. His playing career concluded in 1985. He had been teammates with Ripken, Jr., Murray and Palmer.
None of that trio ever played California League ball. Dauer cut his teeth as a manager in that historical assemblage of minor league cities. It no way resembled the California League that would eventually surface in various Southern California cities.
San Bernardino had joined the Bakersfield Dodgers, Fresno Giants, Modesto A’s, Palm Springs Angels, Reno Padres, Salinas Spurs, San Jose Bees, Stockton Ports and the Visalia Oaks. Truth is, the Salinas Spurs had moved to San Bernardino, adopting the Spirit name.
Here was Dauer, back in Redlands after a well-traveled baseball career. Only a few hundred had bothered to show that night. The ex-Oriole player seemed to be the perfect fit as the Spirit’s manager. Local product? Yeah. Ex-major leaguer? Ex-collegiate success story? A starter at a winning World Series? No wonder he’d been hired at San Bernardino.
“When I was growing up in Colton, it never occurred to me,” said Dauer on that April 1987 night, “that there’d ever be a minor league team in San Bernardino.” Funny thing was that he became its first-ever manager.
