07 de marzo, 2025

How bout them Dodgers?

New Era for 🐺’s SB Dodgers Headwear 🧢 Collection releases 3/18/25.

Until then, read about how the Dodgers ended up in Santa Barbara and how we used to have baseball stadium bigger than Ebbets Field. 🐇🕳️✌🏽

Santa Barbara Dodgers 101

Picture it... No electric cars in sight, Duke Ellington is on the radio and the local Dodgers are playing a couple blocks away from Milpas at Laguna Park.

Today, Santa Barbara is known for its beaches, food, and wine, but it was once home to a thriving baseball scene and a stadium larger than Ebbets Field.

Let's get into it.

Before we talk about the Dodgers in Santa Barbara, we have to go back to the Great Depression, the WPA, and Laguna Park, where it all began.

To get the country back to work, Roosevelt's New Deal program created the Works Progress Administration, hiring workers nationwide to build bridges, roads, and public buildings. It also funded thousands of artists, muralists, and sculptors to help decorate these public spaces.

The city allocated funds from the program to repair roads, construct the Santa Barbara Bowl, the Main Post Office, and Los Baños Pool, and assist with building the Laguna Park grandstands, fences, and outbuildings with famed Spanish Revival architect Winsor Soule.

Completed in 1938, the stadium sat tucked in the Eastside neighborhood between Garden and Olive, Cota and Ortega. Just a short walk from the newly built SB Bowl. At its peak, Laguna Park was larger than both Ebbets Field and Wrigley Field. With over 2,000 seats and the Riviera as its backdrop, it must have been something else.

By 1941, the Santa Barbara Saints, a minor league team affiliated with the Dodgers and later the Mets, called the stadium home. That summer, they won the California League Championship.

WWII paused everything after a Japanese submarine shelled the Ellwood oil fields. Once the war ended, the Brooklyn Dodgers resumed building their nationwide farm system to scout talent for the majors.

In 1947, the team was officially renamed the Santa Barbara Dodgers, competing in Class C of the California League.

In 1951 the Santa Barbara Dodgers won the CA League Championship, led by legendary manager Bill Hart. With a stacked roster, Laguna Ballpark was buzzing with energy.

Local youth from Santa Ynez, Lompoc, and surrounding areas flocked to Dodgers-run clinics for a chance to play alongside the next generation of baseball greats.

Legends and scouts rolled through town, and in the end, the park became a launchpad for multiple MLB Hall of Famers and countless All-Stars.

In 1957, the Dodgers made their historic move from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, marking a new chapter for baseball on the West Coast.

But like all good things, it eventually came to an end. By the late 1950s, Laguna Park was struggling. Low attendance, dense fog, and constant flooding made it hard to sustain. The growing popularity of televised MLB games also proved to be too much for the aging stadium to withstand. The Dodgers packed it up after the 1967 season.

By 1970, Laguna Ball Park was badly neglected and set to be demolished, making way for new developments.

Today, part of the site is used by the city for public works and fleet vehicle storage as well as offices and low income housing.

Santa Barbara's baseball history with the Dodgers is a hidden gem, one that deserves to be remembered.

Next time you walk through the Eastside, listen closely. Imagine the crack of the bat and the roar of the crowd, and remember, Santa Barbara was a baseball town.

It always has been. Since the days when California was still part of Mexico, but that's a story for another time.

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