In the spring of 2025, the Riverside Historical Society committed to dedicating our 2026 Special Publication to a sports topic. Shortly thereafter, the society refined the topic to focus on the history of baseball in Riverside.
In our early research meetings, we were warned by people like Gerald Hurley and John Corona of the Riverside Sport Hall of Fame and former UCR baseball coach Doug Smith that the topic was so vast, it would be a challenge to comprehensively cover the history of baseball in Riverside.
Fifteen months and 838 pages later, they were correct. With that, we changed the title from "The History of Baseball in Riverside" to "A History of Baseball in Riverside." Riverside's baseball history goes back to the 1870s, and it is very impressive.
Riverside history enthusiasts shouldn't be surprised to hear that Frank Miller himself was a baseball enthusiast - so much so that he had to give it up to focus on his business interests. A few decades later, Hall of Famer Rube Waddell would pitch for Riverside at the "new" Athletic Park south of Fairmount Park. That field is just one of the places where baseball was played before the iconic Evans Park was built at Brockton Avenue and 14th Street.
Evans would become the focal point for our baseball history for eight decades, which we cover in detail, including the spring training that was held there for almost 20 seasons, mainly by teams from the Pacific Coast League (PCL). The PCL was the most significant baseball played in the western United States at the time.
Interestingly, as we talked to Riversiders during our research, they gave the names of softball teams without distinguishing between the sports. As it turns out, around 1930, Riversiders became fanatics for fast-pitch softball, formally called nightball. The book covers both the teams and players in our "golden age" of softball, which lasted about 40 years.
About one-fourth of the book is dedicated to Major League Baseball (MLB) players "from" Riverside. The committee came up with 79 players, and the book explains our attempts to refine the list. You'll see familiar names like Bonds, Baker and Davis, and learn about others like Chris Krug from Poly, Jesse Chavez from Riverside City College and Joe Kelly from UCR.
One of the reasons Riverside has so many MLB players is that we had and have outstanding coaches. We include the coaches who have been recognized by the Riverside Sport Hall of Fame. Those coaches include Gary Adams, a Poly High School graduate who went on to become the winningest coach in UCLA's history. Adams was an assistant coach at UCR with head coach Don Edwards for the moment when the idea for the Riverside Baseball Invitational (RBI) tournament was born. Riversiders will beam with pride as they read how the city came together to develop a contest that the best in college baseball wanted to attend. The RBI story is just one of what we would describe as human interest stories and is written by Jim Alexander, sports columnist and a legend himself.
Our research has continued beyond the publishing of the book, including the development of a list of inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown who have been on a diamond in Riverside. We are up to 35 - 10% of the Hall of Fame - and expect that list to continue to grow.
I was asked and agreed to be the book's editor. With the help of my brothers Rob and Tom Reul, along with D.J. Arellano, son of the late athlete and coach Danny Arellano, the publication committee began regular meetings to discuss the content of the book.
More information: The book will make its public debut at the Riverside Historical Society's Annual Book Fair on Oct. 4 at the Ysmael Villegas Community Center, 3091 Esperanza St., from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., with a lecture on the book at 1 p.m. The historical society is offering the book for $40 plus tax at the fair, a limited-time price. For ways to obtain the book after the fair, visit our website at riversidehistoricalsociety.org.
By Claudia (Reul) Rodriguez
