Despite an awkwardly phrased press release that threatened a franchise move if a new ballpark wasn’t forthcoming, the Orange County Flyers (independent; Golden Baseball League) are serious about working with Fullerton on a new facility located on a historic baseball site.
For a year now the Flyers have a deal to negotiate a deal to place a new ballpark on Amerige Park near downtown Fullerton. The proposal is simple: the team will pay for the new ballpark if the city releases the land. Currently the park is lightly used by youth baseball and soccer. In the past it served as a spring-training home for Pacific Coast League teams; more recently it was used by the Dallas-Fort Worth Rangers when that team was a Los Angeles Angels affiliate. (Yeah, we’re talking the early 1960s.) It opened in 1934.
So there’s history there, a history the Flyers want to leverage.
Fullerton officials say they’ll pass along a proposed agreement for consideration by the City Council; complicating things would be plans to place other city facilities on the site. The Flyers may play a season at Amerige Park in its current state before deciding whether to make the move permanent: it could take a couple of years before new ballpark opens. Still, it sounds like team officials would rather play at a small facility rather than pay rent to Cal-State Fullerton for Goodwin Field.
Share your news with the baseball community. Send it to us at editors@augustpublications.com.
Subscribers to the weekly Ballpark Digest newsletter see features before they’re posted to the site. You can sign up for a free subscription at the Newsletter Signup Page.
Join Ballpark Digest on Facebook and on Twitter!