The Lights Are Going Out in Eugene A remembrance of baseball, memory, and magic lost

As many of our regular readers and longtime guests know, I once held a front-row seat to magic. During my college years at Oregon, I worked in a management role with the Eugene Emeralds. And though life has taken me down different paths since, I’ve never made it a secret: baseball was my first love — and like all first loves, it carved its initials into my soul.

I wasn’t a great player. Let’s just call that what it is. I could field, I could run — but I couldn’t hit to save my life. The bat always felt like a stranger in my hands. I moved on to other sports, but baseball… baseball stayed. Like an echo in the distance. Like a warm breeze on a quiet summer night, whispering that there was still magic to be found on a diamond.

And I did find magic — in those two summers as Director of Stadium Operations. Long days, longer nights, and the kind of stories that feel like they were written in a script. Back then, the Ems played short-season Single-A ball, June to early September. Just enough time to fall in love with the game again.

“Is this heaven?” Ray Kinsella asked. “No, it’s Iowa.” Well… for me, it was Eugene.

Most of the players who passed through didn’t make it far, but some did. Mike Sweeney — five-time AL All-Star, almost a batting champ — he passed through our little corner of the world. So did guys like Steve Sisco, Jeff Granger, Joe Vitiello, and Luke Oglesby — names lost to most, but not to me. I remember them not just as players, but as people. The late-night talks. The quiet moments before the gates opened. I remember Oglesby’s easy smile, Sweeney’s grounded heart. You don’t forget the ones who remind you why you fell in love with the game in the first place.

But now the lights are dimming.

Seventy-five years of baseball in Eugene is coming to a close. The Ems announced their intent to leave the city — not because the community stopped caring, but because the infrastructure didn’t keep up with Major League Baseball’s reimagined minor leagues. No suitable stadium, no team. And just like that, another piece of childhood — not just mine, but thousands of others — fades into memory.

What a loss.

No more Fourth of July fireworks lighting up the night sky over the outfield. No more kids chasing foul balls down the left-field line. No more between-innings antics, foam fingers, or the distant crack of a wooden bat echoing through the trees. No more magic on warm summer nights.

“God, I love baseball,” Crash Davis said in Bull Durham. Yes. Yes, I do.

I understand the economics. I really do. But understanding doesn’t make it hurt less.

Because baseball — real baseball — isn’t just about business models and revenue streams. It’s about connection. Fathers and sons. Mothers and daughters. Old friends under the lights and young dreamers eating ice cream out of helmets. It’s about moments that hang suspended in time, the smell of fresh-cut grass, the sound of cleats on concrete, and the soft hum of possibility.

“I believe we have two lives,” Roy Hobbs said in The Natural, “the life we learn with and the life we live with after that.” Baseball taught me how to love something deeply, even when it doesn’t love you back the way you’d hoped. And that lesson has stayed with me.

So now, as the Emeralds prepare to leave, I’m left with memories — good ones, the kind that age well — but also a heavy heart. Because I know what the kids of Eugene will be missing. And they won’t even know to miss it.

I’ll still catch a Ducks game. I’ll still watch the Majors. But it won’t be the same. It won’t be night baseball in Eugene. It won’t be popcorn on your lap, the sweet smell of beer in the air, or the sound of a lonely train passing in the distance while the Ems fight for a comeback in the bottom of the ninth.

No, it won’t be that.

And I’ll miss it — with everything I’ve got.

“The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball… It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.”

I hope someday it will be again. But for now, I tip my cap. To the Ems. To the summers. To the first love that never really left.