The game show portion of the trip ended and the baseball portion began when I went to Rancho Cucamonga to see the first of six consecutive games, taking in the first of three consecutive California League (full season A) games. The team is called the Quakes, they play at the Epicenter, which seemed cute then but recent events really put a pall on having a natural disaster theme for a sports team (good luck Carolina!). There's nothing spectacular about Rancho Cucamonga to lend itself to a name other than a Mel Blanc/Jack Benny routine, and the name Rancho Cucamonga Jack Bennys just doesn't have the same ring. However, the stadium does understand the connection, as there is a statue of Jack Benny at the entrance and the stadium is on Rochester Street and Jack Benny Way.

Nothing really spectacular here, your typical early 90s minor league stadium. The theme for the night was "ESPN 710 Night", which means the major sports station in L.A. hit the 210 and came down for a night of minor league ball. One of their main hosts threw out the first ball, while another sang the anthem. The rendition was pretty bad except for the fact he actually went for the Wayne Messmer-like high notes at the end and hit them. Why couldn't you put your effort on the rest of the song? The one amusing thing Tremor the Mascot did was destroy a Barney doll, which was a hit with 95% of the audience but traumatized the under 2 set for life. The food was varied but unspectacular, my frozen lemonade was mostly mush. While leaving the game, they passed out loaves of bread in some sort of bizarre promotion. It took me a while to explain to the guy why I really couldn't use the bread.