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    Alexander: ONT Field almost ready for its closeup
    • March 16, 2026

    • The 6,000-seat ONT Field in Ontario, seen Friday, Feb. 13,...

      The 6,000-seat ONT Field in Ontario, seen Friday, Feb. 13, 2026, is home to the Ontario Tower Buzzers, the single A affiliate of the Dodgers. It has many nods to the stadium’s aviation theme. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

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    The 6,000-seat ONT Field in Ontario, seen Friday, Feb. 13, 2026, is home to the Ontario Tower Buzzers, the single A affiliate of the Dodgers. It has many nods to the stadium’s aviation theme. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

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    ONTARIO — They got it right – in some cases spectacularly so – at Southern California’s newest, splashiest (literally) ballpark, a minor league facility that feels opulent.

    Mostly right, actually, with one small exception.

    The Ontario Tower Buzzers begin their California League existence as the Dodgers’ low-Class A farm club, on April 2 in their new home against the Lake Elsinore Storm. And while the Tower Buzzers’ nickname – a reference to the movie Top Gun and part of the aviation theme representing naming rights sponsor Ontario International Airport – seems kind of contrived, it grows on you.

    But there’s another meaning to that expression, one more familiar to those who have been around baseball for a while. When ballplayers talk about “buzzing the tower,” they’re just as liable to mean that high, tight pitch that sends the hitter sprawling, or at least spinning out of the batter’s box, the better to keep him uncomfortable.

    And nobody made hitters uncomfortable – or buzzed the tower – quite like the late Don Drysdale, the 6-foot-6 sidearming right-hander who, along with Sandy Koufax, was such a vital part of Dodger rotations for much of the ’60s. His operating philosophy was that if you made one of his hitters uncomfortable, he’d target two of yours.

    “I’m gonna share that with our play-by-play guys,” Buzzers’ general manager Allan Benavides said. “That’s really good.”

    So, in all of the Dodgers iconography all through this ballpark, where’s the Big D mural or statue, or even something referencing No. 53?

    “That’s not a bad idea,” Benavides said. “I love that.”

    So stay tuned. Maybe at Gate A – you know, for “arrivals” – at some point we’ll see Drysdale’s scowling visage, a tribute to ol’ time baseball and the days when he’d go high and tight to send Willie Mays sprawling, and the Giants’ superstar would pick himself up, dust himself off and get right back in the batter’s box.

    But if that’s all the people in charge of this stadium missed, the baseball fans of Ontario and Dodger fans throughout the Inland Empire should still be delighted. In an era when each generation of minor league parks tops the last one, this latest iteration has raised the bar further for those to come.

    The evolution of minor league baseball parks really began in the late ’80s, about the time that the movie “Bull Durham” was released and Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins helped make Class A baseball trendy again. It came at a time when the minor league business model was evolving from taking an existing ballpark and remodeling or refurbishing to building one from scratch, the grander the better.

    And so, in the Inland Empire, three second-generation parks opened. Rancho Cucamonga built the Epicenter in 1993 and swiped San Bernardino’s first California League team, which had been playing in aging Fiscalini Field, the former Perris Hill Park. Lake Elsinore opened The Diamond in 1994 to lure the team that had been playing in Palm Springs. San Bernardino, which had gained a replacement franchise, opened its new park in 1996.

    Meanwhile, Riverside went the refurbishing route in moving a Cal League franchise into UC Riverside’s Sports Complex at UC Riverside. But, largely because neighborhood pressure prevented beer sales at the ballpark, the city lost two teams to new stadiums in Adelanto and Lancaster.

    Now, Ontario’s park – the first phase of a sprawling development including lots of fields that ultimately will accommodate youth and recreational sports – has raised the stakes.

    When the Epicenter was first built, Benavides said, “that was the nicest thing at the time.” Same in San Bernardino with what is known now as San Manuel Stadium, a major upgrade over Fiscalini. And the same with Lake Elsinore, where Benavides spent four seasons as assistant general manager in a virgin minor league market serving southwest Riverside County.

    As for Adelanto’s High Desert Mavericks, whose park opened in 1991, and Lancaster’s Jethawks, playing in a park that opened in 1995?  Both are gone, the former in a 2016 minor league restructuring and the latter when Major League Baseball trimmed its affiliated minor league teams from 160 to 120 before the 2021 season.

    One community’s benefit is another community’s setback. With Ontario becoming the new Dodgers affiliate, the Angels moved their team from San Bernardino to Rancho Cucamonga and the Seattle Mariners moved into the San Bernardino ballpark. Modesto, the previous Mariners affiliate, and 71-year-old John Thurman Field won’t be without baseball, joining the unaffiliated Pioneer League.

    FIRST CLASS FACILITIES

    With the additional attention that MLB is paying to the minors comes additional attention to facilities. That probably helps explain why these parks not only have fan-friendly attributes but also have to pay serious attention to the facilities that players will use.

    “Look, our game’s changed,” Benavides said. “We have women coaches, women athletic trainers, and guess what? There wasn’t anywhere for them to change. Staffs have gotten bigger.

    “And frankly, what’s happened is that D-I (college programs), their facilities are rivaling big league facilities, right? And so they’re going into the draft, (teams are) drafting these kids, paying them millions of dollars in signing bonuses, and then sending them to these rinky-dink facilities that haven’t been upgraded in 30 years. And Major League Baseball’s like, ‘Hey, look, guys, up your game.’ And that’s why this has kind of happened.”

    Ontario’s home clubhouse, with its gray carpeting and wood-paneled lockers – and still pristine because players have yet to inhabit it – is big league quality, only smaller. The batting cages, as both workplace and fan engagement tool, are located near that front entrance to the stadium and, with a door that rolls up much like your garage door might, are open for fans to gawk while players are getting their pre-game work in.

    Right outside of that area is a wall that shows the flight times from ONT to the Dodger organization’s other clubs – including, believe it or not, 11 minutes from Ontario to LAX. (Benavides said that UPS cargo pilots, who make that ONT to LAX run, confirmed that.)

    What the wall didn’t say: It might take 11 minutes to get into LAX, but it’d probably take two hours to get out.

    The aviation theme runs through the park, with a faux hangar beyond center field housing four different food stands (including an installation that looks like a baggage carousel), a replica P-38 plane located beyond the left center field fence that will be the focal point of the celebration any time an Ontario player hits a home run, and signage meant to resemble that of an airport.

    Plus, actual planes taking off from ONT the airport will be visible from the stands of ONT the ballpark.

    The left field scoreboard resembles the hexagonal boards at Dodger Stadium. But the field itself will not be a carbon copy of where these Class A players hope to eventually play. Dodger Stadium is symmetrical: 330 feet down the lines, 385 to left center and right center, 395 to straight away center. At ONT, it will be 327 down the lines, 405 to straightaway center, but with a 16-foot wall topped by a yellow home run line and jutting out at all kinds of crazy angles. Symmetrical, it ain’t.

    “I think it’ll play really fun,” Benavides said. “It’ll be a different game out here. You’ll see a lot of balls caroming off the wall. It’ll be interesting to see how they play that. It’ll be fun.”

    For the spectator, there will be plenty of varieties of seating areas. The grandstand will seat 4,500, and this is worth noting: The closer you get to home plate, the wider the seats. Those behind home plate are 22 inches.

    There’s also berm seating in right field, seats surrounding tables above that, two dugout suites that seat 24 people apiece, spacious suites from home plate extending down the right field line, and elevated club seats behind the plate that lead directly to the stadium club and what Benavides called an “elevated dining experience. If you want a burger (or) a dog, go downstairs. But if you want our chef’s creations, this will be a different menu every night.”

    There’s also an ice cream parlor that’s well situated in dead center. It’s located within a few steps of the kids’ play area and splash pad in left center, and a little further walk to a wiffle ball diamond beyond the right field concourse. That, and the right field gate into the ballpark, are sponsored by Orel Hershiser Chevrolet, the former M.K. Smith Chevrolet in Chino that was recently rebranded.

    Additionally, Hershiser’s Legends Attic memorabilia space in Claremont will move some of its stuff to a space located behind the home plate seats. I suspect the proprietor, the former Dodgers Cy Young Award winner who does color analysis on the club’s telecasts, will have enough pull to deliver the most recent Commissioner’s Trophy to that space for a few games this summer.

    THAT DODGERS IDENTIFICATION

    Yes, the Buzzers are all-in on their association with the Dodgers, to a greater degree even than the Quakes during their time as L.A.’s farm club. The most vivid illustration is the Fernando Valenzuela mural down the left field line and overlooking the field, painted by muralist Jonas Never. It has special meaning for Benavides, who has been involved with minor league baseball for 22 years but still recalls his Dodger fandom growing up in East L.A.

    “First generation, a brown kid growing up in L.A., Fernando was everything to me,” he said. “He’s my favorite Dodger of all time and to have this here in our stadium, I mean, it’s really special.”

    Benavides said his mother would always ask him, “Mija, when are you going to work for the Dodgers?”

    “I always told her, ‘Mom, I don’t want to work for the Dodgers. I just want to be a fan,’ ” he said. “Now I get the best of both worlds.”

    Beginning April 2 – and before that, in fact, with a concert March 21 – the Ontario community will have a similar experience.

    jalexander@scng.com

    ​ Orange County Register 

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