Bend Bucks
The Bend Bucks played professional baseball in Bend, Oregon, from 1987 to 1991 as members of the short-season Class A league in the Pacific Northwest, with home games at Vince Genna Stadium. The club grew out of the Bend Phillies, a Philadelphia Phillies farm team, after Philadelphia ended its working agreement following a last-place 21-53 season in 1986. Without a major league partner for 1987, the club ran a name-the-team contest that drew about 60 entries, and "Bucks" was chosen. The new colors were navy blue and red. Owners Jack and Mary Cain ran the club throughout the Bucks years.
The 1987 Bucks were a co-op team built from Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres, Pittsburgh Pirates and Texas Rangers prospects plus Phillies players, managed by Mel Roberts, and finished 33-42. In 1988 the club signed with the California Angels and added gold to its colors. Under manager Don Long the 1988 Bucks went 38-38, the best record of the Bucks era, and drew 43,587 fans. Shortstop Gary DiSarcina hit .305 in 71 games, and seventh-round draft pick Jim Edmonds played 35 games in his first professional season. The 1989 club went 33-42, with Damion Easley hitting .298 in 36 games and Tim Salmon hitting six home runs in 55 games. DiSarcina, Edmonds, Easley and Salmon all went on to play for the Angels. Two years into a three-season agreement, the Angels left Bend, citing poor conditions at Vince Genna Stadium, and moved their short-season affiliate to Boise.
Bend fielded co-op rosters again in 1990 and 1991. Mike Bubalo managed the 1990 team, drawn from organizations including the Oakland Athletics, Philadelphia Phillies and San Francisco Giants, to a 29-47 record. Bill Stein took over in 1991, when nine organizations supplied players, and the Bucks went 30-46 while drawing 47,018 fans, the highest total of the Bucks years. Pitcher Robert Person, a 1991 Buck, later reached the major leagues. The Bucks did not win a league title.
Looking for a single major league partner, Jack Cain reached a handshake agreement in December 1991 with Bob Gebhard of the expansion Colorado Rockies. Cain wanted to keep the Bucks name, but Gebhard required the affiliate to use the Rockies nickname, and the club opened the 1992 season as the Bend Rockies. Bend's other clubs in the league were the Rainbows (1970-1971), the Timber Hawks (1978), the Phillies before the Bucks and the Rockies after them, through 1994.
The short-season Class A league in the Pacific Northwest grew out of the Western International League, which played from 1937 to 1954 with clubs in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and western Canada. The league reorganized as a Class B circuit with seven charter teams in 1955 and switched to a short-season schedule in 1966, the level at which it played through 2020. Its member towns stretched from British Columbia to southern Oregon and east to Idaho, and many of them, including Bend, Boise, Walla Walla, Grays Harbor and the Tri-Cities, changed franchises and nicknames often as owners and major league partners came and went.
