The Pecos League at 15: Independent baseball’s wildest survivor

Wild, beautiful, and independent, America’s lowest rung of professional baseball is improbably and victoriously commencing its 15th season. The lords of baseball on the margins ply their craft in small outposts scattered across the mountain, desert West and southern Plains; in major cities like Santa Fe, Tucson, and Kansas City; and improbably, but confidently, all the way out to California’s Pacific coast. It’s often said that the Pecos League is professional baseball’s entry level, or last chance. But depending on your point of view, it may also be a dream fulfilled in and of itself. One thing’s for certain, it’s the reality of professional baseball at its most bare, grassroots, and perhaps most true to form — and there are no signs of the hustle slowing down.

Sometimes that looks like baseball on survival mode, with player-managers permeating the league (not seen in Major League Baseball since Pete Rose’s 1986 season); fans passing the hat to get home run hitters extra cash (as seen at your Sunday church service or local punk rock DIY venue); and players driving themselves hundreds of miles across the desert southwest. 

Year 15 includes expanded, quasi affiliations with Liga Mexicana de Béisbol (Mexican League Baseball); an exhibition game against the San Quentin (Prison) Giants; and two teams that are splitting their hometown-base between two different towns each, due to late-in-the-hour disputes between municipal officials and the league.

And to the immense satisfaction of fans of true baseball there continues to be no Designated Hitter in the Pecos League, despite pushes to introduce it. The Pecos League and Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball League — Central Division may be the only holdouts remaining, or depending on the perspective, the last bastions and defenders of real baseball, where players are expected to both defend the field and to wage offensive battle in a strategic game that involves strengths and weaknesses.

As Commissioner Andrew Dunn told FanSided, “I fight it every day. These managers … they try, but just ... no. This league is the last one not doing it, and we never will, not as long as I’m alive.”

The 16-teams that make up the league are unaffiliated with Major League Baseball. It's a world removed from the comparative glitz and glamor of the familiar Minor League Baseball system, or even the next-tier down, the four independent unaffiliated MLB Partner Leagues: the Atlantic League, the American Association, the Pioneer League, and the Frontier League. Yes, that’s right, MiLB is luxury living in this context. 

Retired outfielder Johnny Bladel is one of the only position players in the league to rise to affiliated minor league baseball. Speaking from his home in Maryland with a newborn in the next room, Bladel recalled arriving in the Pecos League in 2014 after a college career at James Madison University (Division I).

“I had zero idea of what it was. All I knew is that it was independent, professional baseball…because I researched and reached out to some teams after JMU. I chose Trinidad, had no idea what I was getting into, what it was…just a shot to play some baseball. It was a little, not like…shocking, but I honestly expected to at least get hats and certain things from the start. I didn’t even bring a hat out there, we had to wear our own stuff. I remember I wore this Colorado Rockies New Era hat that I got with my dad at a game on the way to Trinidad,” said Bladel. “The word gets thrown around a bit, but it’s a grind. But my manager was very passionate about what we were doing and the community there was really great, but it was definitely a transition. Of course, I’m grateful for the opportunity and I had a lot of fun.”

In his one and only Pecos League season, Bladel hit for an astonishing .518 batting average. He would go on to win Rookie of the Year for the independent Canadian-American Association, before signing on in 2018 for one season with the Boston Red Sox’s Double-A affiliate, the Portland Sea Dogs. 

All things considered, the Pecos League makes little pretense about what it is, what it stands for, and where it sits in the baseball ecosystem. The “grind” that nearly everyone involved with the Pecos League immediately refers to when describing the league, has created for itself an admirable, borderline rebellious carveout in baseball’s ancient tapestry. Simply put, these teams aren’t supposed to exist, these players are supposed to have given up, and the people in these towns aren’t supposed to have summer baseball anymore. 

But against all the odds — and it’s hard not to overstate the unlikeliness of success in independent baseball — the Pecos League adapts and survives. Allegedly, it even thrives. That should be hailed as an incredible victory.

The grand architect and the future of the Pecos League

The man behind it all, without any reservation, is a singular tour de force — league co-founder and Commissioner Andrew Dunn. He outright owns 15 of the league’s 16 teams.

“People love the Pecos League for their own reasons, for the variety of what it is,” says Dunn about the high-scoring, hard-scrabble baseball scene he’s spun from straw. “We bring the excitement, bottom line.”

Dunn says the league has constantly been adapting and evolving, “I thought it would be up and down I-25, which is where our original footprint is,” said Dunn referring to the Pecos River valley which runs up from far west Texas through northern New Mexico. “But the whole country has changed, the world has changed in 15 years. And here we are, it's incredible we’re still around and the success we’ve had. I think nobody would have said the Pecos League would have been in Kansas City or certainly the San Francisco Bay.”

Dunn built the league from the ashes of the Continental League, after its collapse in 2010. The first Pecos League season featured six teams in Texas and New Mexico: the Alpine Cowboys, Las Cruces Vaqueros, Roswell Invaders, White Sands Pupfish, Ruidoso Osos, and Carlsbad Bats (travel-only team). The league would quickly sprawl out, testing the waters in dozens of small markets, growing to southern Colorado, Arizona, Kansas, California, Oklahoma, and Nebraska. 

More than 40 teams have existed in the league’s 15-year history. Six teams have held on for at least 10 years (COVID-period excluded). There are a few contenders for the smallest towns in America with professional baseball teams, with four markets under 10,000 people. On the other end of the spectrum are major metro areas like Tucson; Kansas City; and communities that line the San Francisco Bay Area.

Current Pecos League teams

Defunct Pecos League teams

The last 15 years have also left a trail of baseball ghost towns, failing for a wide variety of reasons familiar and common to those in the world of indie baseball.

R.I.P.: Bisbee Blue (2014); California City Whiptails (2017–2019); Carlsbad Bats (2011); Colorado Springs Snow Sox (2021–2022); Douglas Diablos (2014); Great Bend Boom (2016); High Desert Yardbirds (2017–2019); Hollywood Stars (2017); Lancaster Sound Breakers (2023); Las Cruces Vaqueros (2011–2012, 2015); Las Vegas (N.M.) Train Robbers (2013–2015); Martinez Mackerel (2018); Marysville Drakes (2023–2024); Pittsburg Anchors (2019); Raton Osos (2013–2014); Ruidoso Osos (2011, 2018); Salina Stockade (2016, 2020–2021); Santa Cruz Seaweed (2021–2022); Taos Blizzard (2013–2014); Topeka Train Robbers (2016); Wasco Reserves (2019–2022); Weimar Hormigas (2022); and the White Sands Pupfish (2011–2019).

Dunn notes, “We obviously tried in the original Pecos League having all those teams together [like Trinidad and Raton being 24 minutes apart]. It’s become, what it’s become. You have to progress, and we did.” 

The dramatic expansion into California has especially helped redefine the Pecos League’s footprint. MiLB abandoning markets and the collapse of the independent Pacific Association (2019 final season) helped clear the way for a new era of the Pecos League.

The league also continues to work on solidifying a core of teams in the Plains states of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska. The league has faced a short history of mixed results in the region but is optimistic it has established some solid anchors. The Garden City Wind are in their 10th year. General manager Randy Ralston thinks the Pecos League model can hold on in the Great Plains.

“We were the highest attended team in the Pecos League, other than one team in California. Thursday is $1 beer night…we’ll bring close to 1,000 people in on a Thursday night,” says Ralston. “Garden City has embraced it. The nice thing about the league is that in a small town, we might seem to do even better…a lot of times league teams fail without host families. Without host families (volunteers providing housing for players) we would never survive. We just don’t make enough money for lodging or apartments for players. Luckily, we have a tremendous booster club here in Garden. We’re in the Midwest, and we still operate under the old ways … everybody takes care of everybody, it's not about the money.”

In 2023, the league set up shop in North Platte, NE and Blackwell, OK. This year, the league is adding the Kansas City/Iola Hormigas. The Spanish-language expansion franchise was supposed to play in K.C. (MO), at Satchel Paige Stadium. Late in the hour, disputes with city officials sent the league scrambling, with players now living and playing in Iola, Kansas (pop. 5,318) for all home appearances, except Sundays. The effort to establish teams in the region is a godsend to Ralston.

“Oh man, you can’t imagine how much better it is today for us than it was five years ago when we were the farthest team east and north? Everywhere we went was so far … we would go to Tucson (800+ miles away), it was crazy. It’s not always easy for us like it is for some of the California teams that are 35 minutes apart.

For now, Dunn sees some stability in the league’s current markets, as diverse as they are, and he’s satisfied with the direction the league is taking.

“It’s a different Pecos League. If you haven't followed the league in the past five years, especially. We play five minutes from the Golden Gate Bridge all the way basically to Big Bend and the Mexican Border,” says Dunn. “Your experiences are completely different, but one can’t work without the other.”

The league has had various forays and partnerships with MiLB and MLB Partner Leagues over its lifespan (including operating American Association travel teams). That manifested most recently in an exhibition game between the Roswell Invaders and Pecos Bills hosted at the Double-A Amarillo SodPoodles stadium, embraced by MiLB earlier this month.

Perhaps one of the developments this season with the most potential for a long-term, broader impact is the expansion of 2024 affiliation agreements that opened up roster spots on two teams to Mexican League teams. In 2025, the Pericos de Puebla, Toros de Tijuana, and Charros De Jalisco are sending players to four teams (seven spots reserved on each team): the Kansas City/Iola Hormigas, Monterey Amberjacks, Roswell Invaders, and Trinidad Triggers.

One player from last season’s Triggers’ club, a 17-year-old relief pitcher, Aleiman Cruz, got signed by the Detroit Tigers to play on their Dominican Summer League squad. Trinidad, CO is far from a pitcher’s paradise, nestled 700 feet higher than the Colorado Rockies’ Coors Field, at 6,030 ft. elevation in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo range in the state’s southeast. And his stats are far from comforting, with an ERA north of 12 in eight innings pitched.

More broadly, cross border baseball cooperation, competition, branding, identity, and exchange is a growing force in the baseball universe. In Tucson, the Mayos de Navojoa, a member of the Mexican Pacific Winter League, recently announced it will relocate to the very same Kino Stadium (former Triple-A field) where the Pecos’s Saguaros are currently marking their 10th season. It’s the first time in the league’s history to have a team in the United States.

And earlier this year the Pecos League announced that “In 2026 the Charros will field an entire team of prospects and play under the Charros flag based in Bakersfield.” Those plans are on hold for now. 

As the post-2021 MiLB consolidation landscape continues to shift and settle and the Pecos League pursues greater relationships with Mexican baseball organizations and MLB Partner Leagues, it seems that there is ample room for dynamic growth in lower-level, organized baseball. In short, indie ball has become more of am accepted-norm than an exception in dozens and dozens of communities across the country. Of course, the crowds and general fanfare are much, much smaller.

Pecos League legends and stars

There is a wide range of talent in the Pecos League, with conventional wisdom unofficially categorizing the level of play as roughly equivalent to the old rookie ball, or Low-A classification. Rosters are primarily composed of college players who may have been overlooked by the draft, a handful of fallen affiliated players, and prospects bouncing around the world of indie and international baseball. 

There’s also a fair amount of players who struggled to even put up good numbers in junior college who are on the Pecos circuit. Maybe they’ve got some raw, undeveloped talent? We’ll spare them the indignity of coverage here.

The league is full of stories that come out of left field, like 48-year-old hometown hero, Rod “The Ageless Arm” Tafoya, starting the Santa Fe Fuego’s inaugural game in 2012. What follows isn’t exactly a Mount Rushmore of the Pecos League, but let’s take a look at a small sampling of the characters that have helped shape the identity of the league 15 years in.

MLB-to-the-Pecos

Not ready to hang it up? Come play in the Pecos.

Manny Corpas: The 42-year-old Panamanian pitched for seven years in Major League Baseball for the Colorado Rockies and Chicago Cubs. After the MLB, Corpas bounced around Mexican league baseball, the Atlantic League, and the American Association. Strangely enough, Corpas — who was the Colorado Rockies closer in the 2007 World Series — wound up seemingly embracing the Pecos League wholeheartedly. He briefly pitched with the Bakersfield Train Robbers in 2019. Then in 2021, he made two starts, won two games, tallied 21 strikeouts and a 0.64 ERA. In 2022, he became a player-manager for the Martinez Sturgeon (9-3, 4.26 ERA). Now, in the year 2025, he’s back again after trying his hand elsewhere. Corpas will serve as the field manager of the Monterey Amberjacks (which is receiving Mexican league players). As of now, there are no plans to step on the mound, but you never know in the Pecos League.

Pecos-to-the-MLB

In 15 years, it seems only around a half  dozen Pecos League players have made it all the way up the platform to an actual Major League Baseball appearance. Although, even superfans of the game would be hard-pressed to know something about them. The players who have made it to the Show have mostly been pitchers, despite the league being decidedly not a pitcher’s league with high-altitudes and irregular field dimensions common (and beloved). Some of the lucky, hard-working few include:

Logan Gillaspie: The current San Diego Padre has appeared in three games as a relief pitcher this season, with a 2.57 ERA. He’s in his fourth MLB season with a cumulative 4.63 ERA. After going undrafted, he pitched in no less than four different independent leagues before being picked up by affiliated baseball. He started in the Pecos League in 2017, pitching 10 games with a 2.35 ERA for the Monterey Amberjacks.

Jared Koenig: The Milwaukee Brewers left-handed pitcher has the odd distinction of being the 1,000th player signed in franchise history. Currently in his third MLB season, Koenig has recorded a lifetime 3.69 ERA over the span of 89 games. After going undrafted, Koenig began his professional career in 2017, with the Monterey Amberjacks (yes, that team has come up in this section before). A true journeyman, he played in six different independent and foreign leagues from 2017-2019.

Eric Yardley: A right-handed pitcher who in 2013 played on the San Diego Padres’ Arizona League squad, and then a short nine innings split between the Pecos’s Taos Blizzard and Trinidad Triggers, Yardley later advanced to MLB from 2019-2021 with a 3.52 ERA before winding up back in the minors. Yardley currently serves as the pitching coach for the High-A Vancouver Canadians (Toronto Blue Jays).

At least one position player has made it to the top.

Yermín Mercedes –: The former Chicao White Sox catcher made a splash in 2021 when he set an MLB record by starting the season with eight consecutive hits. He was named American League Rookie of the Month in April 2021. It took him a while to get there. Mercedes began in affiliated ball in 2011 and was released in 2013. He went on to play independent ball, including a stint with the Douglas Diablos before making his way back to the MiLB. Mercedes spent 2024 with the Mexican League’s Saraperos de Saltillo. He’s currently a free agent.

Somewhere north of 30 players who have played in the Pecos League have signed with an affiliated, Minor League Baseball team. While several hundred players have been picked up by higher-levels, like unaffiliated MLB Partner Leagues. Off the diamond, there are also uncounted scores of players who have become coaches and managers, and front office staff and interns who have found success pursuing their careers in various corners of the convoluted web and world of professional baseball. The numbers aren’t necessarily impressive, but it's proof that the odds are not impossible of the Pecos serving as a platform to build a career.

Pecos-to-Pecos

The Big Leagues is the dream, sure. But there’s grace and comfort in appreciating a good thing without being held hostage to covetous ambition. Plenty of Pecos League players, announcers, and staff are living interesting, fulfilling lives within the intricacies of the league itself. These are the real legends of baseball on the fringes, veritable heroes of the Pecos League and small town baseball.

Lance Myers: Player, Player-Manager, Player

Most players don’t last long in the Pecos League. But Lance Myers is second place in the league’s records for career games (304) and at-bats (984). While some players might be desperately hoping to prove themselves with every swing, Myers played to get on base, becoming the league’s all-time walk record holder. He hit .362 lifetime in the Pecos and ranks second in hits (346); fourth in RBIs (231); and fifth in doubles (54). He spent the heart of his career with the Alpine Cowboys.

After his playing career, Myers made a successful trial-run as player-manager in a short-lived COVID era pop-up league (of which there were several). Commissioner Dunn then sent Myers to Alpine’s main rival, the Roswell Invaders, acting as player-manager for three seasons. The Invaders went to the Pecos League Championship in 2021, falling short, but then won it all in 2022. Player-managers were a common sight in the early years of baseball but have been virtually extinguished – except in the Pecos League.

“Being a player-manager – it was a lot of fun. At times, it was very stressful, though. There were definitely times where I struggled with, ‘should I play myself today? Should I still be an everyday guy?’ But, every single year I played in the Pecos League, I was in the Top 10 in every offensive category (except for strikeouts). It only happened one time where a player was really upset that I was playing and not him…and I was like, ‘buddy I’m hitting over .400, and you’re barely hitting .100, you’re lucky to be here.’ But the training and preparation is harder, worrying about the whole team getting their reps in, not just you…and of course everything off the field.”

After Roswell, Myers returned to the Alpine Cowboys as an assistant coach before signing on as Field Manager for the 2025 season.

“Alpine definitely holds a special place in my heart. It’s where I met my wife, and it’s closer to home, in Fort Stockton … and at the end of the day Alpine paid me more money as well. Last year we went 51-5 and won the league championship.”

The Cowboys are certainly one of the more authentic forms of independent baseball in the known universe. The team has roots dating back to 1947, sporadically in different affiliated, independent, and semi-pro leagues. In 2011, the team was established as 501.c.3, joining the Pecos League as an original member after the fall of the independent Continental League. Alpine is the only team in the league not owned by Commissioner Dunn. Its front office has direct ties to the team’s origins. Kristin Lacy Cavness is Alpine’s General Manager, and great-granddaughter of Herbert Kokernot, Jr., the man who helped establish the original team; built its historic, beautiful stone and iron stadium; and whose o6 cattle branding serves as the team’s logo.

“Alpine is one of a kind. The best way I can describe it is…like the whole town shuts down when there’s a game. It’s an exceptional atmosphere to play in,” says Myers. “Especially compared to the rest of the league, at Alpine you get treated like you’re in the big leagues when it comes to the people in the town. They love the Cowboys, they love their baseball…it’s electric. I’m not saying there are thousands at every single game, but it gets loud and people know what the division stakes are of a game with rivals and playoff runs.”

The area is remote, even GM Kristin Cavness has said it’s “in the middle of nowhere.” The town of just about 6,000 people sits in west Texas, 90 minutes north of Big Bend National Park, the Rio Grande River, and the Mexican Border. It’s a little over three hours away from the region’s metropolis, El Paso, and two and a half hours away from the closest MiLB team, the Midland RockHounds (Double-A, ___Athletics). Alpine is at the far southern end of the Pecos League, nearly 14 hours away from North Platte, Nebraska (the league’s North Pole).

Tim Wheeler: Official scorer and statistician

A true Iron Man of baseball, Time Wheeler, has officially scored more than 2,082 baseball games as of mid-May 2025. That includes a potentially unrivaled stretch of 1,439 consecutive games with the Bakersfield Blaze that was only broken by a cancer surgery. Wheeler scored games for MiLB’s Bakersfield Blaze from 1995-2016. He’s been the official scorer for the Pecos League at large, and for the Bakersfield Train Robbers, who moved into the Blaze’s vacated ballpark, ever since.

“I got two free tickets to the first Blaze season because I entered some joke names in a contest to name the team,” Wheeler says, reflecting on how he got his start. “I was walking by the press box, I saw a guy I used to know from Babe Ruth leagues. He started relating his trials and tribulations of being an official scorer. And at the end of the game, in the bathroom of all places he comes in and says ‘this is tough, I'm getting yelled at, I’m having trouble.’ I said, ‘well for a hot dog, a coke, and free admission tell your GM I’d be more than happy to help out.’ I didn’t think anything of it, but the next day I got a call. So, that’s how I got the job, in the men’s bathroom at Sam Lynn ballpark.”

Wheeler has had a front row seat to MiLB abandoning markets over the years and the rise of independent ball. Bakersfield became the first Pecos League team in California in the 2017 season, laying groundwork for the Pecos’s San Francisco Bay-area invasion in 2020 (part of the collapse of the Pacific Association).

“Well, the Train Robbers are not the Bakersfield Blaze, they are not the Bakersfield Dodgers…there is a huge learning curve between independent baseball and affiliated baseball,” Wheeler remarks when thinking about the fanbase.

“A majority of comments are still, ‘I want to see the next Mike Piazza…or if you’re older, Don Drysdale,” he says laughing. “But the Pecos League, admittedly, has no false pretenses in my opinion. Players are looking for that one in a gazillion shot that they might ascend to an actual major league appearance. There have been a few guys, but nobody is going to know the names. Do I miss the glory days? Yeah. But on the other hand, the fact that we’re still playing ball at Sam Lynn Ballpark, it's kind of incredible.”

Wheeler is back at it again in 2025 with no plans to slow down, “Baseball is my heroine. I love this.”

If baseball is the drug, Dunn is the dealer.

“Andrew Dunn is one of the most interesting and hardest working guys you’ll ever meet in your life, I’ll kid you not.”

Cameron Phillips: Hometown hopeful, Diné Dreams

Born on the outskirts of the Pecos League in Shiprock, New Mexico/Navajo Nation, 26-year-old Cameron Phillips is one of the first generation of players to have gone to high school while the Pecos League has been in existence. The Navajo Times has covered his career, lauding him as a potential role model, urging kids to dream big. Phillips first heard mention of the Pecos League before he entered high school.

“I first heard about it back in 2011, I was pretty young. Some local talent where I’m from played a year or two in the Pecos League, and it was like all over the newspapers that a kid from a small town did something big like that. That’s when I first heard of it.”

Phillips entered the league in 2023 and will be playing his second season with the Santa Fe Fuego in 2025. It's one of the more established markets with at least a few hundred fans at every game, sometimes breaking the thousands, claims Phillips.

Pecos League haters and questions

As you probably surmised by now, this reported article is in many respects a love letter to the Pecos League. But this author certainly isn’t blind, the Pecos League clearly has its issues. Some of them stoked by a Fox Sports 1 documentary series early in the league’s life. The six-part series is like a reality TV version of Netflix’s Battered Bastards of Baseball. It should be required content for your baseball movie shelf.

Stories abound about players trying to survive on less than $50 a week if the payroll shows up at all, rathole hotels, teams folding mid-season, petty disputes with city officials, mutinies against managers, substandard ballparks, problems with host families, questions about the competition level, and the alleged use of “taxi players” who actually pay the league to play have plagued the league, especially in its early years. See a thorough list of grievances collected by Indy Ball Island. 

However, it seems that as the Pecos League approaches year 15 that Commissioner Dunn and the league have made some big strides. Those familiar with the league generally claim that things have improved in recent years and continue to do so. While they also acknowledge a lot of the issues the league faces.

Much of the league’s machinations are still shrouded in mystery. It’s hard to get good information, even from the horse’s mouth, about basics like player and manager compensation, team operating budgets, travel and lodging issues, and fair competition between clubs.

In 2023, tragedy struck when Alpine player Jared Straight died in a car crash en route to a game six hours away. The incident marked the first death of a professional baseball player in transit to a game since 1947.

There are certainly plenty of questions left to be asked and answered as the league continues to mature.

If 15 of 16 teams are owned by one person, how can true competition and player allocation be guaranteed by the league? What degree of independence do the General Managers have? Are team budgets based on local earnings, or does the league divvy out collective resources at-will? What degree of influence will Mexican league teams have with Pecos affiliates? Will these teams eclipse the Pecos teams without Mexican league talent? Why aren’t attendance figures collected and released?

Then there is the very delicate, yet essential question, is the Pecos League truly “professional” baseball? The players were always getting paid next-to-nothing, but at least that’s something, whereas now it might sometimes for some be nothing. In 2018, the U.S. Congress passed the Save America’s Pastime Act (SAPA) which was designed to protect Major League Baseball from having to pay minor leaguers minimum wage, insulating the MLB from costly lawsuits.

Commissioner Dunn says it’s put in place new restrictions, intended or not, that have made it “impossible” to issue formal contracts in most independent leagues. But, he also claims that in some ways it’s actually made it easier to compensate players, freed from the “rules” of a contract.

“This is your definition – non-partner leagues, non-contracted players. If you’re not in a partner league contract, you’re not contracted period…We’re not going to be able to contract with Save America’s Pastime Act,” contends Dunn.

“Look, we have 16 different teams, we got guys making $3,500 a month, and we got guys that are making nothing … We’re truly the wild west.” Dunn continued, “I tell college people all the time, go play somewhere else. We’re chartered as a professional league, and we’ll take their eligibility, it’s gone.”

Most of my interview sources, including those not included in this report, claim most players make $100-200 a week, with better off clubs like Alpine or Garden City upping that to $300-400. No one reported knowledge of taxi players in this current era. 

How exactly that money gets tallied and distributed needs further unraveling. What is the breakdown of “pass the hat money,” hourly-pay as one player I spoke with claimed, booster club support, and money “from players’ sports agencies” as Dunn told me?  

Even if the players were making Juan Soto dollars, isn’t it time to move on from the Windows ‘95 clip art inspired Bakersfield Train Robbers and Roswell Invaders logos (not that all Pecos League branding is bad)?

And as for the amalgamated power of Commissioner Andrew Dunn, owner of 15 of the 16 teams. Let’s hope the man never gets the flu or suffers from the guaranteed fate of aging. Maybe the next 15 seasons of the Pecos League will include long-term, post-Dunn plans?

While there are plenty of valid concerns with the Pecos League, or with any scrappy, hard wrought venture, the best course of action might be to be grateful that low-level baseball is holding on to life in some of America’s most remote hamlets and villages. And hell, it wouldn’t be nearly so interesting without its shadows, faults, and eccentricities (much like baseball).

It's easy to take cheap shots at the Pecos League. For myself, it’s contrary to my general nature not to. But frankly, I’d rather sit in the cheap seats, with the cheap beer, watching some real deal baseball. I don’t expect the Red Sox organization will have their affiliate back in Alpine anytime soon  – but I don’t really think we need them there anyway.

Goodnight and play ball!

The Pecos League is really just a simple little league at its core — but it’s also a redoubt, a remnant, a modern day force propelling the embodiment of baseball’s fading original spirit dating back to its earliest organized days when small towns, semi-pros, and hometown legends lit up irregular diamonds and grandstands, fighting for honor and the thrill — creating something where there could easily be nothing, not expecting any rewards beyond the moment and memories, all the while dreaming and building by virtue of showing up and living. Here’s to 15 more years in the wilderness. 

¡Viva Pecos!