Reno BlackJacks

The Reno BlackJacks, based in Reno, Nevada, played the 1999 season in the independent Western Baseball League and were the last professional team to call Moana Stadium home. Owner Scott Mendonsa rebranded the club from the Reno Chukars on March 17, 1999, giving the Biggest Little City in the World a team named for the casino game. The franchise itself had arrived in 1996 after a single season in British Columbia as the Surrey Glaciers.

The manager was Charley Kerfeld, a Carson High School product and former big-league reliever with Houston. First baseman Justin Drizos, who had played college ball at the University of Nevada, Reno, was named the league's Most Valuable Player after hitting .351 with 24 home runs and the league's best slugging percentage. Sergio Guerrero hit .354 and tied for the league lead with 130 hits.

The BlackJacks went 41-49, took the fourth and final playoff spot, and pushed the Chico Heat, who had won 70 percent of their games, to a deciding fifth game in the semifinals before losing 3 games to 2. That is a 41-49 team taking a 63-27 team to the last possible night, for anyone who stopped reading the standings in August.

Moana Stadium had opened in the 1940s and was showing its age, and attendance ranked last in the six-team league. A month after the season Mendonsa moved the club to Marysville, California, citing losses of about $300,000, roughly $580,000 in today's money. It played one season there as the Feather River Mudcats and went broke. Moana Stadium never hosted professional baseball again and was torn down in 2012.