Had a chance to see my first Long Beach baseball game on a Wednesday night celebrating Filipino…read moreheritage night. It was a lot of fun, and our group of four had a great time.
Blair Field was built in 1956, and has been the home of the Long Beach State 'Dirtbags' baseball team since 1993. The field was named after the sports editor of the local paper, who was a champion for the field to be built. After a significant contribution from a longtime supporter, the infield was named Bohl Diamond at Blair Field in 2017. The 'Dirtbags' are a college Division I baseball team, with some alumni that have done very well at the MLB level. Two of them have had parts of the stadium named after them (Tulowitzki Batting Facility and Weaver Bullpen).
It has also been the home of the new professional Pioneer League baseball team, the Long Beach Coast (aka Regulators) since 2026 (this game was part of the inaugural season). The Pioneer League is an independent league (not directly tied to MLB team), but is an official MLB partner league, and consists of 12 teams across the Western U.S. The opponent tonight were the Missoula Paddleheads, coming all the way from Missoula, Montana.
The stadium seats 3,238 fans, with some distinct sections. The most expensive are the Backstop Club, 6 boxes of 2 rows of 3, right behind home plate, costing $48.36. Behind those are HomePlate Reserved, $27.20. The field box seats consist of 2 rows of 3, closest to the field on both the first and third base lines, and cost $43.07. Behind those are Baseline Reserved for $19.79. All of these have individual, numbered chairs.
The rest are bleachers (metal seats with no dividers between seats). The Bleacher Reserved are just behind the HomePlate Reserved, with metal benches as seats (bringing seat cushions isn't a bad idea), but having seatbacks. They were 50% off this Tuesday (normally $20.54 but $10.27 tonight), and those were the 4 that I purchased via their dedicated website. Tickets were delivered via an email, and were easy to transfer to my Apple Wallet for easy scanning. General Admission seats behind the Baseline Reserved were just $2 tonight (normally $16.62). This is the way to go.
Season ticket holders have some advantages in that they gain entry to the stadium parking lot (single game have to park on the street around the area), and are allowed to enter the stadium early (others have to wait till 1 hour before game time). Thus we waited till 5:35, at which point they let us in. First was a security check (no backpacks allowed), a metal detector. Then a scan of your ticket.
Once entered, we noticed a lot of Filipino themed food vendors. Foodologie, Gemmae, and Teofilo Coffee were all there. The smell of fried Shanghai-style lumpia was pretty prevalent throughout the night. It made us happy to see this Filipino staple being shared by baseball fans while watching the game.
Before the start of the game, there were two performances of traditional Filipino dances, the presentation of Filipino beauty queens, the throwing out of the first pitch by a prominent Filipino community leader, and the singing of the national anthems (Filipino and United States), both by two different Filipino singers. As one can imagine, the three Filipinas sitting next to me were very happy.
As for the game itself, the Coast lost 1-3 this night, with the game lasting about 2.5 hours. It definitely exceeded my expectations. Plus our neighbor made it big by appearing on the "jumbotron" TWICE, with her dancing (that's when I understood why she wanted to be sitting on the aisle). She was chosen 'fan of the game' and got two complementary tickets for a future ball game.
Some negatives were the poor announcing of what was happening during the game by the PA, and with the really, really small display of the current balls/strikes/outs on the jumbotron. There was a long delay (seemed like 10 minutes, though probably shorter) at the bottom of the 8th inning, when the game just stopped for apparently no reason...the players stayed on the field, but the umpiring crew of three just wouldn't let the game continue. The PA system started time filling events as if it was between innings to keep the fans pre-occupied, so they must have known what was going on. But the baseball fans didn't...finally, we got irritated enough to start chanting 'Let's play ball...Let's play ball'. That got the umpires attention, as if it was the first time he noticed that there were fans waiting. Baseball is a game of hand signals, and I had no clue what the crew chief signaled to the press box when the game restarted. I was expecting an explanation from the PA, but nada...the game continued as if the delay was normal.
But the views and atmosphere was good enough for all four of us to want to stay for the entire game. Plus got to see a 95 mph fastball from behind home plate. It wasn't too difficult to leave the parking lot, and we got home in under 30 minutes.
