Tri-Cities baseball stadium marks 25 years — and west Pasco grew up around it

My good friend David Schick reminded a bunch of us on Facebook last weekend that Saturday marked the 25th anniversary of the opening of Gesa Stadium in Pasco.

Back then in 1995, the first residents of that ballpark were the Tri-City Posse, who were to play in a first-year independent minor league baseball league called the Western Baseball League.

The eight-team league extended from Surrey, British Columbia, in the north all the way down to southern California with franchises in Long Beach and Palm Springs.

A lot of fond memories for me.

I remember that it was the city of Pasco and its council to step up to have the stadium built in 1994.

Before that the site for the stadium was up in the air, and the late real estate developer Robert Young called me to tell me that if none of the cities were going to get the ballpark built, he would do it on a piece of land he owned at the north end of Leslie in Richland, where a canyon was.

But Pasco came through.

Stadium in the making

The fall 1994, the Posse held a news conference in the desert and scrub of where the ballpark was to be built — to be called at that time Tri-City Baseball Stadium — to announce the start of construction.

It still amazes me to see the housing and retail development that is out there now.

None of it was there before the stadium was built. The ballpark was built, and everything followed.

What I remember from that opening night was the late start we got because of the line of cars still trying to get into the parking lot. Cars were backed up on to I-182 from the Road 68 exit. Think the final scene of the movie “Field of Dreams.”

The pressbox announcer kept playing the music from the final home run scene of another baseball movie, “The Natural,” as fans waited for the game to begin. The first pitch was at least 45 minutes late .

The Posse, which was owned by Ken Wright of Portland, also had Tom Trebelhorn managing. Trebelhorn had been the manager of the Chicago Cubs just the season before but had been fired.

To this day, Trebs was one of the most interesting people I have ever crossed paths with.

He obviously knew baseball. But he had so many incredible stories — baseball and non-baseball — that were so interesting to listen to that I came close to missing several deadlines on many game nights.

The Posse had good players: John Weglarz was the WBL’s pitcher of the year, going 11-5 with a 1.87 earned run average, with five complete-game shutouts including a perfect game; Kevin Booker hit .304 and had 44 RBIs; and Shawn Scott led the league with 42 stolen bases.

The WBL was filled with a number of guys who saw some time in the big leagues, whether they were players or coaches.

It was just a fun league.

Advancing ahead

And the Posse that first season gave everyone in the Tri-Cities a great ride. After struggling in the first half, the Posse picked things up and tied the Bend Bandits for the second-half title. Tri-City beat Bend in a one-game playoff to advance to the playoffs, then swept Surrey in the North Division playoffs.

I traveled with the team to that Bend playoff game, then go with it to Long Beach for the championship series.

We all stayed on the Queen Mary, and then-radio guy Terry Wright and I decided to take Schick to Disneyland for the day before a night playoff game because he had never been there.

It took me a few years before I confessed to my wife and daughters that I did that without them.

The Posse would fall 3 games to 1 to the Barracuda — a team coached by former Texas Ranger slugger Jeff Burroughs and which was rumored to be paying some of its players under the table to circumvent the league’s salary cap.

It may have been independent ball, but the pain in Trebelhorn’s face, as well as of the players’, in the locker room after that final game showed that losing this championship was just as big a deal as if they were playing in the World Series.

The Posse would play for six seasons before the Northwest League decided to move a Colorado Rockies affiliate from Portland into Pasco.

And one thing is for sure: it wasn’t boring.

Player of the Year and more

Tanner Toolson, the Washington state high school boys basketball player of the year, announced last week that he was signing with BYU.

Some Tri-Citians may remember his father, Andy Toolson, who was a great 3-point shooter for the Tri-City Chinook in the early 1990’s.

Andy Toolson also went on to have two stints with the NBA’s Utah Jazz.

• John Lamanna has been signed to become the new men’s basketball head coach at Whitman.

Lemanna is a Washington State University graduate, and at one time was an assistant coach for both Dick Bennett, then Tony Bennett, at WSU.

The last five seasons, he has been the head coach at NAIA school Ave Maria University.

Lemanna, signed last week, takes over for Eric Bridgeland, who left Whitman in April to become head coach at the University of Redlands in California.

• Richland High senior Emerick Adamian, a sprinter, has signed to run for Lewis-Clark State College next spring.

• Madison Darnold (Walla Walla/WWCC) will play women’s golf for the Oregon Institute of Technology beginning this fall.

• Richland High senior Rylee Gavaert signed a letter of intent to play softball for Big Bend Community College.

• Southridge senior Dino Lapandic will be playing this fall for the Columbia Basin College men’s soccer team.

This story was originally published May 27, 2020 at 12:42 PM.