Bill Lynch: Take me out to the ball game

Dottie and I joined many of our Sonoma friends and neighbors in June for the Sonoma Stompers home opener. Our guys beat the heck out of the Vallejo Admirals 17 to 6. It is a real pleasure to have a professional hometown team to root for.

Jon Sebastiani, who bought the team this year, is clearly putting a lot of effort in support of his ball team in an effort to make attending games a real pleasure for local fans.

Sitting in the stands on seats that are far more comfortable than the cold concrete slab of yesteryear, I realized that I have been either playing or watching ball games at Arnold Field for 65 years.

The field was built on land originally acquired by the Sonoma County Veterans Committee. In 1949 the county offered the City of Sonoma a 99-year lease at the rate of $1 per year for 12 acres of that site for recreational purposes.

The Sonoma Valley Athletic Club, a group of softball players led by Dave and Don Eraldi, led the effort to build a ball field there.

It was a community labor of love, with virtually all of the construction done by local resident volunteers. By June of 1952, the first baseball and softball games were being played there.

I was on the SVLL Tigers that year and still remember how big that field seemed the first time I strolled to the plate with a bat in my hands. I also played Babe Ruth League games and high school games there.

The local men’s fast-pitch softball league played all of their games there for years. It was a strange feeling when I returned to Sonoma as an adult, joined one of the teams, and played alongside guys who were playing while I was still in Little League.

Generation after generation of local youths and adults have enjoyed playing and watching baseball at Arnold Field. It gives me great joy that it continues to this day.

Of course, baseball in our Valley goes back more than 130 years. I found an 1887 box score in an old copy of the Index-Tribune that reported, “The game of baseball at Schellville last Sunday between the Schellville Embarcaderos and the Sonoma Baseball Club resulted in a victory for the tidewater boys, 20-12.”

Professional baseball teams from the Pacific Coast League (AAA), including the San Francisco Seals and Oakland Oaks, held spring training in the Valley, using the Boyes Hot Springs Bath House and the Boyes Hot Springs Hotel (Sonoma Mission Inn) as their spring headquarters.

Sonoma even produced a few pro baseball players. One of the first was Pete Boccoli, who grew up in Sonoma and played high school baseball here. Pete became a pitcher for the Oakland Oaks in 1919.

In 1970, Sonoman Dan Briggs, an outstanding athlete at Sonoma Valley High School, was drafted by the California Angels and made it to the majors until injuries shortened his career.

He was followed by Sonoman John Henry Johnson, who in 1978, starting for the Oakland Athletics, pitched a two-hit shutout. Injuries also shortened his career.

Sonoma Valley’s most successful major leaguer is Sonoman Brett Wallace, who spent six seasons (from 2010 through 2016) in the majors as an infielder, the first four with Houston then two with San Diego.

Briggs, Johnson and Wallace all spent a lot of time on the Arnold Field diamond while their parents and local fans cheered from the stands.