Emeralds make themselves at home on the road

As the University of Oregon baseball season was winding down, the High-A Eugene staff couldn't help but scoreboard watch.

While the Ducks' success didn't directly impact the Emeralds’ standings, there’d be a ripple effect, as the two clubs share PK Park in Eugene, Ore.

“It kind of just became more of a reality every day,” Eugene broadcaster Jacob Archer said. “We were like, 'XYZ needs to happen.' And then all of a sudden, XYZ was happening and all of these things were falling into place where it looks like they would host.”

The No. 6 seed Ducks won the Pac-12 Conference Tournament, then the Nashville Regional in the NCAA Tournament en route to clinching a home berth for the Super Regionals, which meant Eugene had to hit the road -- for a home series.

It's not uncommon for Minor League teams and colleges to share a stadium -- Brooklyn and NYU, Durham and Duke -- but in this case, Oregon is the primary owner of PK Park. That means it was up to Eugene to find other arrangements for its June 6-11 series with Tri-City.

The Ducks clinched on a Sunday, and while the NCAA didn’t officially set the location until Tuesday, those two days were a scramble for the Emeralds’ front office -- as well as the Dust Devils’ -- as the series was moving to Pasco, Wash. A 500-person picnic and scheduled promos had to be postponed at PK Park, while Gesa Stadium had six games added to its schedule.

“That 48 hours was just a madhouse; everyone was all hands on deck, just answering phone calls,” Archer said. “I was trying to answer as many phone calls as I could. You'd hang up one phone and it would immediately start ringing again.”

To give the players and staff more time to prepare, the series was pushed back to Wednesday, June 7, and Sunday’s contest became a doubleheader. To optimize the time, Eugene didn't travel to Tri-City -- where the Emeralds would play as the home team despite being visitors in every practical sense -- until the morning of the first game.

“For the players and the coaching staff, it’s tricky for them,” Archer said. “This is their livelihood and what they're trying to continue to work to be better at. So having to do something like this where they think they're going to be home for a week at their apartment, in their home facilities, be able to practice, and then having to basically in a 24-hour window, pack up again after just getting back to town to go on the road for another two weeks is definitely a very tough challenge for them.”

While some of that weariness might have shown up in the box score in the series opener -- the Dust Devils won, 10-2 -- the Emeralds were back at it in Game 2, winning 10-5. Archer could tell things were starting to feel “normal-ish” for the players, though they were batting in the home-half of the innings and wearing white outside of PK Park.

“I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I'll get a chance now to finally call a walk-off,” said Archer, who typically calls road games only. “But it didn't end up working out that way.”

The change of environment even helped some players. Giants prospect Logan Wyatt entered the series hitting .253, but then went 6-for-19 with four walks in Tri-City, and a few days later, he was promoted to Double-A Richmond. Victor Bericoto, who has had a strong season, kicked it up a notch with a 1.455 OPS, five extra-base hits and nine RBIs during the six-game stretch.

“Some of the guys had mixed feelings about it at times, but also, you get small perks with it,” Archer said. “You get to do batting practice as the second team, [so] you're a little more warmer and fresher for the game.”

Man do these boys like hitting on the road… even when it is at home! #tcdustdevils pic.twitter.com/ibPMgDZlpj

— Tri-City Dust Devils (@TC_DustDevils) June 8, 2023

Another potential positive to this experience was getting the community to buy into the idea that the Emeralds should have their own stadium.

Although the clubs have shared PK Park since 2010, scheduling conflicts to this extent are a relatively new issue. Oregon hosted a regional in 2021, but the Emeralds were already scheduled to be on the road. Prior to that, Eugene was a short-season affiliate, meaning Opening Day in the Northwest League typically fell the week after Super Regionals.

“I think it was a real wake-up call for the community and for people in Eugene just realizing like, 'That's right, the Emeralds don't have a stadium,'” said Archer. “We had tons of nonprofits coming out this week and tons of fundraisers we were having that got stripped away, basically overnight from these small nonprofits in town.

“So it [became a] way to show our message and the importance of trying to urge the community to really speak out about the new stadium.”