Santa Barbara Rancheros

The Santa Barbara Rancheros, based in Santa Barbara, California, played the 1962 and 1963 seasons in the California League, returning professional baseball to one of the league's founding cities. The name reached back to the region's Californio past, when the great Mexican-era land grant ranchos defined the Santa Barbara coast, and it came from the people: a naming contest was won by Wendell Simons, a librarian at the University of California at Santa Barbara, who was first to submit Rancheros and collected a pair of season tickets from Caesar Uyesaka, chairman of the Santa Barbara Baseball Committee.

The front office had genuine baseball royalty. Business manager Al Gionfriddo was the ex-Brooklyn Dodger forever remembered for robbing Joe DiMaggio of a certain home run in the 1947 World Series, one of the most famous catches ever made, and he was no stranger to Santa Barbara baseball, having played for the Channel Cities Oilers there in 1954. The Rancheros opened at home at Laguna Park on April 24, 1962, and the opponent carried its own irony: the defending champion Reno Silver Sox, the very franchise that had left Santa Barbara for Nevada as the Channel Cities Oilers back in June 1955. On the field the Rancheros hovered right around even, going 35-32 in the second half of 1962 and 32-35 in the second half of 1963, competitive baseball if never a championship threat.

The Rancheros filled the gap between Santa Barbara's two Dodgers eras. The city had hosted the Santa Barbara Dodgers from 1946 through 1953, and after the Rancheros' two seasons the Dodgers name returned from 1964 through 1967, when professional baseball left Santa Barbara for good.