Apparently, they do.
That was one of the questions I had in mind when I headed south to Lake Elsinore to see the Lake Elsinore Storm take on the Ontario Tower Buzzers. The Storm are a Single-A affiliate of the San Diego Padres, while Ontario belongs to the Dodgers organization. It was also another stop in what has unintentionally become my baseball tour of 2026. Lake Elsinore Diamond was my sixth different ballpark of the year and my 13th game. I had never been there before, which was reason enough to go.
104 Degrees and Time for Baseball
The Diamond is remarkably easy to reach, sitting just off Interstate 15 in Lake Elsinore. From home, the drive is roughly an hour and 15 minutes to two hours, depending on the whims of Southern California traffic. I arrived around 5:30 p.m. for a 6:45 game, about 15 minutes before the gates opened.
It was 104 degrees. Not 104 in the afternoon, but 104 degrees at 5:30 in the evening. There are temperatures that make you question whether baseball was actually intended to be a summer sport, and 104 is one of them.
Fortunately, the stadium provided an escape. On the left-field side is the Taproom, an actual indoor restaurant with air conditioning. I use "air conditioning" generously. It was probably 80 degrees inside, but after walking in from 104, it felt wonderful. I ordered a smash burger and a beer, and the burger turned out to be the best hamburger I've had at any ballpark this season. It wasn't something that had spent the afternoon waiting beneath a heat lamp. It tasted freshly made, and it was genuinely good.
One wall was essentially a gigantic screen made from multiple large televisions, and playing across it was the Padres game against the Houston Astros. Watching the Padres play the Astros felt a little like watching two villains fight each other. You aren't necessarily rooting for anybody. You just eat your hamburger, drink your beer, and see what happens.
Eventually, though, it was time for the baseball I had actually driven there to watch.
Twenty Dollars From the Action
I reached my seat just as the Star-Spangled Banner was beginning, and what a seat it was. My ticket cost about $20 and put me in the High Tower section, roughly 12 rows from the field and just off to the right of the batter. I've had excellent seats at Dodger Stadium and other ballparks, but in terms of pure proximity to the game, this might have been the best baseball seat I've ever had.
At that distance, you aren't merely watching baseball. You hear things differently. You see how quickly everything happens. And you learn to pay attention, especially to foul balls. We were sitting in prime foul-ball territory. Pop-ups would sail backward, hit the roof behind us, and sometimes bounce back toward the seats. This was not a section where you spent much time staring at your phone.
Then came the broken bat. One of the Tower Buzzers hit a ball hard enough to shatter his bat, and a large piece of it shot over the protective netting and into the stands. It didn't float or tumble harmlessly through the air. It looked like a missile. The piece flew toward the upper seats and came crashing down in an area where, fortunately, nobody was sitting.
Nobody was hurt, but somewhere inside that ballpark, I am certain several stadium executives simultaneously felt their stomachs tighten.
A Ballpark With a View
Lake Elsinore Diamond opened in the 1990s, so this isn't a shiny new ballpark. But it has been maintained remarkably well. More importantly, it has something many stadiums don't have: a sense of place.
Each minor-league ballpark I've visited has its own personality. Fresno has an unmistakably urban setting. You feel as though baseball has been dropped directly into the middle of the city. Ontario doesn't offer much of a view beyond the field. It is functional, but there isn't much scenery pulling your eyes toward the horizon.
Lake Elsinore is different. From behind home plate, looking east beyond the outfield, you see the dry, sun-scorched hills surrounding the Interstate 15 corridor. Early in the evening, those hills look appropriately brutal beneath the summer sun. Then the sun begins to disappear, and the entire experience changes.
The temperature that had been 104 degrees when I arrived eventually dropped into the mid-80s. The seats fell into shade and a breeze began moving through the stadium. Suddenly, what had seemed almost ridiculously hot became a nearly perfect Southern California summer evening. There was baseball in front of me, desert hills beyond the outfield, and a cool breeze moving through the stands.
For a while, there wasn't anywhere else I particularly wanted to be.
The Dodgers and Padres, Just Smaller
As darkness settled over the stadium, something else became noticeable. The Tower Buzzers increasingly looked like the Dodgers. They were wearing the familiar road gray. "Ontario" was written across the front, but from a distance, especially under the stadium lights, you could almost convince yourself you were watching Los Angeles.
Almost.
The baseball itself occasionally ruined the illusion. There were errors. There were some questionable adventures on the basepaths. There were moments that reminded everyone that these were Single-A players still learning professional baseball. There were also some excellent plays, including a couple of sharp double plays and several good hits. It was good baseball, even when it was unmistakably minor-league baseball.
But the most interesting part was happening in the stands. I wore a Dodgers jersey and Dodgers cap. Other people wore Dodgers gear. Around us were fans wearing Padres shirts and caps. Apparently, nobody had informed them that this was merely Single-A, because before long the familiar chant came from the Padres side of the rivalry: "Beat LA!"
There were other comments directed toward the Dodgers organization as well, some less printable than others. I found myself laughing at the absurdity of it. These weren't the Los Angeles Dodgers. These were young players in Ontario uniforms, many of them still a very long way from Dodger Stadium. Yet the rivalry had followed them.
The uniforms were different, the stadium was smaller, the crowd was smaller, and the salaries were certainly smaller. But somehow Dodgers versus Padres still meant something.
I actually felt a little sorry for some of the players. There was some loud heckling during the game that seemed unnecessary. Minor-league players are developing professionals, and screaming abuse at them from the stands seems particularly pointless. But the broader rivalry was unmistakable. Dodgers fans were Dodgers fans, and Padres fans were Padres fans, even in Single-A.
Baseball's Most Unusual Bat Boy
Minor-league baseball usually brings a collection of promotions, contests, and between-inning antics. Lake Elsinore actually had fewer of those than some of the other minor-league stadiums I've visited this year, but it had something better: a bat dog.
The Storm had a regular bat boy, but occasionally a dog would come running out from the Storm dugout, retrieve a discarded bat, and carry it back. There is something inherently ridiculous about watching a dog perform an official baseball duty, and it was also one of the best things I saw all night.
Major League Baseball can keep the pitch clock. Give me the bat dog.
A Thousand People in a Six-Thousand-Seat Ballpark
The Diamond holds roughly 6,000 spectators, but on this particular night there may have been around 1,000 people in attendance. That creates a different atmosphere. There are enough people for the place to feel alive, but not enough to create the inconveniences that come with major-league baseball. You aren't fighting 50,000 people for parking, standing in endless concession lines, or spending another hour after the final out attempting to escape the parking lot.
There was one brief reminder that even small crowds can produce big personalities. Around the seventh inning, a few people migrated into our section who clearly hadn't started the evening there. Our section required wristbands, and these newcomers were both loud and, by all appearances, well into their evening's drinking. It became one of those situations where avoiding eye contact seemed like the wisest strategy. I started wondering where security was, but within half an inning or so, they got up and disappeared. Problem solved.
The rest of the evening was relaxed, and the baseball was enjoyable. The Storm won by several runs, sending the Dodgers' Single-A representatives home with a loss. For me, though, the score wasn't particularly important. What mattered was discovering another place where baseball feels different.
Worth the Drive
Lake Elsinore Diamond isn't Dodger Stadium. It doesn't pretend to be, and that's precisely the attraction. For about $20, I sat closer to professional baseball than I normally could at a major-league stadium. I ate the best ballpark hamburger I've had this year. I watched a bat dog retrieve bats. I saw a shattered piece of lumber become an airborne projectile. I watched the desert hills change as the sun went down.
And I discovered that apparently you can take Dodgers-Padres baseball out of Los Angeles and San Diego, send it down to Single-A, put only a thousand people in the stands, and somebody will still eventually yell, "Beat LA!"
Of the minor-league parks I've visited, I would put Lake Elsinore comfortably ahead of the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes experience. The food was better. The view was better. My seat was better, and a comparable ticket was actually a few dollars cheaper. Getting out after the game was effortless. There was no traffic jam and no long crawl toward the freeway. It was simply back onto Interstate 15 and home.
So, yes, I'll return. Lake Elsinore was ballpark number six and game number 13 of my season. I'd still like to get to an Angels game and squeeze in another two or three games at Dodger Stadium before the season ends, but that's part of what I've come to enjoy about visiting these smaller parks. Baseball isn't experienced only in its cathedrals.
Sometimes it's found in a 6,000-seat stadium beside the freeway, on a 104-degree evening, with a $20 ticket in your pocket, a cold beer in your hand, desert hills beyond the outfield, and a dog running out of the dugout to retrieve a bat.
And sometimes you discover that even 80 miles away from Dodger Stadium, somebody is still waiting to yell, "Beat LA."
This paragraph structure is a better fit for the essay style—more continuous storytelling, with the isolated lines now reserved for genuine punch or transition.
