By John Murphy
Back in 1992 I got hired by the Victor Valley Daily Press to cover high school sports and the High Desert Mavericks.
The Mavericks were a California League Class A team which began in 1991 and folded a few years ago when the league constricted. But in ‘92, fresh off winning the Cal League title under manager Bruce Bochy, the Mavericks were hot.
There’s a lot I could write about the Mavericks and their ballpark and the people who worked for them. But today I’ll focus on the mixed bag of newspaper guys who covered the team or breezed through Adelanto following its Cal League foes.
The late Howard Frost was a fixture in the Mavericks press box for many years. Nobody really knew who he worked for – the Pinon Hills Pine Cone or Hesperia Senior Shopper or the Barstow Birdcage Liner … who knows? But it was fun watching visiting scribes get all huffy and bent out of shape because Howard took up space in the booth and didn’t even do post-game interviews. He just hung out in the booth keeping score and regaling us with tales about his Marine days … or musing over between-inning music selections like “Whoomp, There It Is” by Tag Team. “Whoomp, there WHAT is?” Howard would say. I miss that ol’ guy sometimes.
When I first arrived in Victorville the guys who covered the Mavericks consistently were my colleague Brian Sullivan of the Daily Press, Brian Robin of the Antelope Valley Press and sometimes the late Jim Long of the San Bernardino Sun. But other characters like Landon Negri, Pete Marshall, Gabe Lacques, Maureen Delaney, Lance Pugmire and Danny Summers streamed through there as well.
The media and the ballplayers generally got along, but I did have future big leaguer Carl Everett yelling at me in the middle of the clubhouse after a game. Can’t recall what it was about. A few years later I drew the ire of Mavericks manager Joe Ferguson for breaking his 10-minute clubhouse cooling-off period. I knocked on his door five minutes after a dramatic win and he was inside smoking cigarettes with Moe Drabowsky, a former Baltimore Orioles great. “Has it been 10 minutes yet!” I can still hear Ferguson yelling at me. “Do you know what 10 minutes is?”
This anecdote is not from Mavericks Stadium, but there’s an infamous story out of Rancho Cucamonga about a back-up Daily Bulletin writer who paid only scant attention to the action. In fact, he was known for reading paperbacks while he covered games. On Fourth of July he got so bored he fell asleep around the fifth inning and didn’t awaken until the post-game fireworks started exploding! Must have been some post-game interview.
Food was important. This usually meant free hamburgers or hot dogs or burritos if you were lucky. Lake Elsinore had the best spread with their roast chicken, potato salad and green salad. But Lancaster out-did even the Storm for a mid-1990s Cal League all-star game.
Eager to impress the invading media, the JetHawks served thick rib-eye steaks. It was easily the best Cal League meal I ever had. The only problem was they gave us flimsy plastic utensils. About every 20-30 seconds you’d hear the loud SNAP of a knife or fork breaking, followed by much laughter. Ah, the memories.
Main Street Dog 