Riverside Pilots

California League (1993-1995)

Background

In December 1992, Reno Silver Sox owner Jack Patton moved his Class A minor league baseball franchise to Riverside, California. For many years Reno, Nevada was the lone outpost for the California League that lay outside the state of California. Geographically, Reno was proximate to the Cal League’s long-held northern cities of Stockton, Modesto, San Jose and Visalia.

But all of the excitement in the California League during the early 1990’s was happening in southern California, where a rash of modern, taxpayer-assisted ballparks were opening up or in the planning stages in virgin territories like Adelanto, Lake Elsinore, Morena Valley and Temecula. With Reno’s Moana Stadium in poor condition, Patton’s group decided to get in on the southern California gold rush.  This despite the fact that the city of Riverside itself was no one’s idea of desirable permanent destination for a Cal League club.

Riverside had a previous entry in the California League that was still fresh in everyone’s memory. The Riverside Red Wave played in the city from 1988 through 1990. The team was forced out of town, many Cal League executives felt, due in large part to the grassroots opposition of several dozen residents who successfully denied the Red Wave a license to sell beer at the ballpark.  The new Riverside owners had no reason to believe they would be any more successful in this area and, indeed, they were not. Riverside Pilots games, like the Red Wave before them, would be dry affairs.  There was also no indication that Riverside was poised to offer up the kind of glittering new ballpark that so many of its neighbors seemed to be considering.

Nevertheless, southern California seemed like the place to be and so the Silver Sox became the Riverside Pilots in 1993.

On The Field

Befitting their temporary status in an ambivalent community, the Pilots ranked last in California League attendance in every season they competed. For those who did attend, however, the Pilots provided fans with some excellent Class A-level baseball. The team posted winning records in all three seasons of play and made the playoffs each year, though they never advanced beyond the opening round.

The 1994 squad was especially strong, winning the California League’s South Division in both halves of the season and finishing 87-49 overall. But the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, who finished 10 games back of Riverside in the regular season, knocked the Pilots out of the postseason in a best-of-five first round playoff series.

Top future Major Leaguers who developed in Riverside during the Pilots era included:

• Pitcher Derek Lowe (Pilots ’93) went on to win 176 Major League games and is a member of the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame
• Outfielder Raul Ibanez (Pilots ’95) collected 2,034 hits and 305 home runs during his 19-season Major League career
• Outfielder Jose Cruz Jr. hit 204 home runs in his 12 Major League seasons and won a Gold Glove award in 2003.

Ibanez was the last former Riverside Pilots player active in professional baseball when he played his final game in 2014.

Move To Lancaster

In December 1994, the original Pilots ownership led by Jack Patton sold the team to a partnership consisting of father and son Michael and Matt Ellis of California and veteran minor league investor Horn Chen of Illinois.

“I think it was just a matter of time, as long as the conditions existed like they were,” Patton told the San Bernardino Sun in July 1995, alluding to Riverside’s ban on beer sales. “Nothing has really changed since the Red Wave days. Our ownership didn’t see any change coming, so we sold.”⁴Padilla, Doug. “Pilots to land in Lancaster next season”. The San Bernardino County Sun (San Bernardino, CA). July 25, 1995

In July 1995, midway through the Pilots third and final season in Riverside, the new owners hit the stadium jackpot. In a rapid sequence of events, the city of Lancaster, California approved public funding for $14 million, 4,500-seat ballpark that would be ready to open in April 1996. The Pilots announced midway through the 1995 season that they would relocate to Lancaster and played out the final weeks of the season as lame ducks.

Pro baseball has never returned to Riverside since the Pilots left town in 1995.

Trivia

Comedian Billy Crystal was a limited partner in the original Pilots ownership group and threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the team’s home debut on April 9th, 1993.

Riverside Pilots Shop

Links

California League Media Guides

California League Programs

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