Bridgeport and the Hops: Sweet and Sour Deal

Perhaps you saw the press release or otherwise caught wind of the just-announced partnership between the Hillsboro Hops baseball club and Bridgeport Brewing. If you aren't in the loop about the Hops, you can find my earlier post here.

The basic facts are these: Portland has a rich history with baseball and beer. Forget the fact that the AAA Beavers were chauffeured out of town to make way for the Timbers soccer club. We have a history with baseball dating to the 19th century. Soccer is a small child by comparison.

The press release announcing the Hops' partnership with Bridgeport hit my inbox yesterday. There was a fair amount of chatter in social media land focused on what a great deal this is. That would have been completely justified if there had been a chance the Hops would enter an agreement with Budweiser or Coors. That wasn't happening.

Here's the reality: the partnership with Bridgeport is "exclusive." What do you suppose that means, sports fans? If you think it means Bridgeport will be the only craft brand poured in the stadium, you win that trip to Russia you've always wanted.

Look, I have nothing against Bridgeport. They are, as the press release says, the oldest craft brewery in Oregon. (They aren't the first, however. That honor belongs to Charles Coury's long defunct Cartwright Brewing.) Bridgeport has a decent selection of beers. Kingpin is terrific. Blue Heron is an old standby. Bridgeport IPA, invented by Karl Ockert in the days before IPA became a household name, is one of the few sessionable IPAs out there at 5.5%.

I suppose an exclusive deal between the Hops and some brewery was inevitable. "The business of America is business," as Calvin Coolidge once said. And we have to face the fact that baseball and beer are businesses that compliment each other. Alright. I get it.

It's just too bad that there couldn't have been some sort of collaborative arrangement whereby a variety of craft brands would be available at Hops games. We have so many great ones. Oh, I'm told they do expect to have a rotating guess tap, but aren't exactly sure how permanent it will be.

Macro beer lovers need not worry about the Bridgeport deal. You'll find Coors Light in the stadium. And Blue Moon. Something for everyone, they say. You gotta love that.

About that trip to Russia...

Hillsboro Hops into Minor League Baseball

There was a fitting and ironic announcement out of Hillsboro this morning. Strangely enough, it had nothing at all to do with all the high tech junk they've got going on out there. Baseball was the theme. And beer.

You may recall the recently departed Portland Beavers of the AAA Pacific Coast League. They left Portland a couple of years back to make way for the Timbers soccer club. I don't care for soccer, but the Timbers have been a success story here, attracting good crowds and quite a lot of media buzz...even though they've been dismal this year.

Of course, the soccer transition miffed a lot of baseball fans. See, Portland has a rich and lengthy history with baseball dating back to the 19th century. Many baseball fans simply failed to appreciate the move to soccer.

This is all about demographics, in my mind. Portland, particularly at its core, has become a young city in recent times. Droves of 20-somethings moved here to retire, as the saying goes. Soccer is a better fit than baseball for that community. Portland Beavers games were not well attended in the years leading up to their departure. Timbers games, though there are fewer of them, draw large, boisterous crowds.

I always suspected baseball would return to this area. The question was where. Would we build a stadium somewhere and try to attract another AAA team or, heaven forbid, try to bring Major League Baseball to town? Actually...no.

Enter the city of Hillsboro. And the Yakima Bears, Single-A affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks who play in the Northwest League. A few months back, the city and the Bears came to an agreement that will bring the team to Hillsboro next summer. The city's part of the deal is a $15 million investment in a 4500-seat baseball stadium/complex. The team's part of the deal is to show up come June.

The significant part of this arrangement involves the name...the team announced today that it will be called the Hillsboro Hops. This is a reference and a tip-of-the-hat to the area's fast-growing craft beer industry. Of course, there are good and bad hops in baseball. And Oregon does grow some of the hops used to make our fabulous beers.

The ironic part of the story is this: Yakima is the largest hops growing region in the US. And yet the team that played there from 2001 to 2012 was called the Bears. Now it moves to Oregon, where we are better-known for what we make with hops than for growing them, and the name changes to Hops. I like it, but I can't put the irony out of my mind.

No matter. I'm looking forward to seeing the Hops in action...while enjoying a few of those terrific beers.