San Bernardino Spirit

The San Bernardino Spirit, based in San Bernardino, California, brought professional baseball back to the city in 1987 after a 37-year absence, playing at Fiscalini Field, the renovated ballpark at Perris Hill. The Spirit ran through 1992 before the franchise relocated to a new stadium in Rancho Cucamonga, and the name carried on at Fiscalini Field through 1995 when the incoming Salinas franchise adopted it.

The Spirit's place in baseball history was secured in one summer. In 1988, an 18-year-old Ken Griffey Jr. played 58 games for San Bernardino, hit .338 with 11 home runs, and was so obviously the best prospect in the sport that the league named him its Most Valuable Player despite the abbreviated stay. Griffey was in Seattle's outfield by the following April and in the Hall of Fame by 2016.

The Spirit saved their only championship for their final act. In 1995, with the club by then playing under new ownership in its last season before the Stampede rebrand, first baseman Paul Konerko hit .277 with 19 home runs and 77 RBIs, and manager Ron Roenicke's team swept San Jose in three games for the title. Konerko went on to hit 439 major league home runs, captain the Chicago White Sox to the 2005 World Series championship, and see his number retired in Chicago.

San Bernardino's baseball lineage continued through the Stampede era and into the Inland Empire 66ers, but the Spirit name belongs to that first revival, when a city that had waited nearly four decades for professional baseball got the best teenage prospect in the game as its reward.