For This California Team, Hitting It Out of the Park Is a Breeze --- Minor League Field With 40-Mile Winds Makes Every Slugger Look Like Babe Ruth Author: Worthen, Ben Abstract: The winds rolling in off the desert here at Clear Channel Stadium routinely reach 40 miles per hour blowing out to right field and can add more than 30 feet to the distance a fly ball travels. The club has averaged 170 home runs over the last five years, a number the California League's other nine teams, combined, have reached only once during that time. Full text: LANCASTER, Calif. -- It was the top of the first at the minor-league park here one recent afternoon when the opposing team's first baseman hit a remarkable-looking line drive: Mid-flight, the ball seemed to shift into hyper drive, rocketing over the centerfield fence 410 feet away. Big deal. "That ball's not out in St. Louis," scoffed Chuck Fick, a scout for the St. Louis Cardinals, who was watching a few rows behind home plate. Mr. Fick shook his head as the batter rounded the bases. No one else in the stands was very impressed, either. This is the Lancaster JetHawks' home park, after all, where balls routinely leave the park despite some of the deepest fences in baseball. The winds rolling in off the desert here at Clear Channel Stadium routinely reach 40 miles per hour blowing out to right field and can add more than 30 feet to the distance a fly ball travels. The Lancaster JetHawks are the beneficiaries -- or in the case of pitchers, the victims -- of the winds. The club has averaged 170 home runs over the last five years, a number the California League's other nine teams, combined, have reached only once during that time. Its pitchers last year allowed 101 runs more than any other team and about 200 more than the league average. One year, the team ran out of batting-practice balls in June because so many hits were carried over the fence. The team's marketers have embraced the elements. For a number of years the JetHawks set ticket prices at 10 cents for every mile per hour the wind blew on a given day. The club sometimes holds tumbleweed races between innings. But statistics mavens put mental asterisks on player's feats in the park. "Baseball's not meant to be played in the wind," said Mr. Fick, the scout, who has been sizing up young ball players for more than 20 years and says he can't rely on a box score from the park. "The statistics here are meaningless," he said. That's a problem for big-league teams, which have become increasingly reliant on statistical analysis to identify what players to sign to multi-million-dollar contracts. By those measures most hitters on the JetHawks, a single-A team halfway up the minor-league ladder that players must climb to make the majors, look a little like Babe Ruth. Last year, JetHawks outfielder Jonathan Gaston came out of nowhere to hit 35 home runs, which led the league. Talent evaluators were skeptical, dismissing his performance with lines like: "Hey, it was Lancaster." Now that he's played half a season with the Hooks, in Corpus Christi, Texas, he's hit only four home runs through last Sunday. Lancaster's desert winds can make for some exceptionally high baseball scores. In 2007, the JetHawks lost a game 30-to-0 and then rebounded to win the next game 14-to-12. It lost the rubber match 21-to-6. "Hitters would sprint to the plate and pitchers would walk out to the mound like it was the electric chair," says Chad Epperson, who managed the team that year. On a few occasions games had to be canceled when gusts reached 60 or 70 miles per hour, he says. There's a tarp rolled up beside the field, but Mr. Epperson says he never saw it rain in Lancaster. "I think it's filled with the bodies of dead pitching coaches," he jokes. Manager Tom Lawless played eight seasons in the majors and has been a minor league coach since the mid 1990s, most recently in Lexington, Ky. When he was told his next assignment would be in California he pictured sunshine and sandy beaches. "This isn't what I had in mind," he said just before the game this spring against the High Desert Mavericks. On this occasion, the wind was so strong that Mr. Lawless canceled batting practice. What's the point? he asks. "If you hit it in the air it's a home run," he said. "If you had common sense you wouldn't even play." The wind doesn't keep fans away. The team draws around 3,000 people per game, and attendance has been up each of the last two years. Lancaster is 90 minutes north of Los Angeles in the Antelope Valley, on the edge of the Mojave Desert. It's close enough to L.A. for people to follow the major league teams there, but far enough away that most of the area's 300,000 plus residents would rather take in a game locally. Lancaster's conditions are fairly unique in minor league baseball. The High Desert Mavericks, based in Adelanto, Calif. in the Mojave Desert, also play in a park with high winds. But that team is currently for sale and a new owner is likely to move it from its current home, where the stadium lease expires at the end of the season. "We wouldn't think about moving," says Pete Carfagna, the Jethawk's president, whose family bought the team in 2006, adding that the $14.5 million stadium where the team plays is among the nicest in the minors. But the conditions present a challenge for big-league teams, who use minor league franchises like the JetHawks to develop their young players as prospects. Since 2000, the Seattle Mariners, Arizona Diamondbacks and Boston Red Sox have all dropped affiliations with Lancaster. The team's current parent club, the Houston Astros, partnered with the team because the Red Sox bought its old farm team in Salem, Va. The concern is that players will develop bad habits because of the wind. Batters have been known to try to hit everything in the air, and pitchers sometimes become afraid to throw strikes for fear that even weak contact could result in a home run. The Astros aren't taking any chances. Last month, Jay Austin, a 19-year-old centerfielder, hit three home runs in a week, an achievement that earned him "hot" prospect status from a popular baseball magazine. But Ricky Bennett, who heads player development for the Astros, doesn't want him to get used to thinking he's a home run slugger. "Make sure he continues to bunt," he told the JetHawks' coaches. Credit: By Ben Worthen Subject: Wind; Professional baseball -- Lancaster JetHawks; Stadiums Location: Lancaster California Company / organization: Name: Lancaster JetHawks; NAICS: 711211 Title: For This California Team, Hitting It Out of the Park Is a Breeze --- Minor League Field With 40-Mile Winds Makes Every Slugger Look Like Babe Ruth Publication title: Wall Street Journal,   Eastern edition Pages: A.1 Publication date: Jun 23, 2010 Publisher: Dow Jones & Company Inc Copyright: (c) 2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Reproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.