In 2019, the San Diego Padres celebrate their 50th anniversary. A little over a thousand miles east on Route 66, Amarillo will celebrate the return of affiliated minor league baseball after a 37-year absence with a Double-A team.

“This has been one of the unique experiences of my life,” said Tony Ensor the president of the newly-minted Amarillo Sod Poodles. “This community is ramped up, and when you haven’t had affiliated baseball in such a long time, a whole generation of fans here has never seen the type of talent that we will have on display this year.”

Professional baseball has been around in Amarillo since 1939, but the city was last represented in the Texas League by the Gold Sox from 1976-82. That team, also affiliated with the Padres, featured many well-known Padres players, including Tim Flannery, Dave Dravecky, Kevin McReynolds and Tony Gwynn.

“I remember when Tony Gwynn first came up from Walla Walla [the Padres’ then-affiliate in the short-season Northwest League] late in the season,” said left-handed pitcher Dravecky, a teammate of Gwynn's in Amarillo in 1981 and later in San Diego for five more seasons. “I think it was at Midland and their top pick Joe Carter had just come up, so we wanted to see what we had.

“Well, we watched him take grounders in the outfield, and all of his throws were kind of ballooning to the bases, and our pitchers were thinking, ‘How is this guy going to help us?’ Then we saw him take batting practice and he drilled about everything he saw to every part of the ballpark. Then all of us decided right then he was going to be of some help.”

Gwynn only played 23 games with the Gold Sox in 1981, but he quickly proved Dravecky’s staff-mates right with a ridiculous .462/.491/.725 line. That came just months after the Padres selected him in the third round of that year’s draft from San Diego State University, where he had earned all-league honors in both basketball and baseball.

A year later, he was in the Majors.

“He was one of the better guys you would ever get to know, both on and off the field,” said Dravecky of the 21-year-old Gwynn, in a telephone interview. “All of us grew to love him; and while he was talented, he also really knew how to work to get better.”

The Gold Sox won the Texas League title in 1976, their first year, but only qualified for the playoffs one more time in their tenure before moving to Beaumont and becoming the Golden Gators.

“It was a very different time,” said Ensor on why affiliated baseball failed in Amarillo. “I’m not sure of the reasons why they left, but in the 1980s, much of minor league baseball was still owned by a sole local guy as opposed to the more business-oriented groups of today who emphasize marketing much more. Look at it this way; in the 1990s we saw 72 new stadiums built. So many things have changed.”

After years of having a variety of independent minor league teams, Amarillo was able to re-acquire Texas League baseball when the Elmore Sports Group began to shuffle their affiliates. Having decided their Triple-A club wasn’t sustainable in Colorado Springs, they relocated that club to San Antonio, where the squad inherited the Missions name.

They then needed a good partner for the displaced Double-A club, and Amarillo was a natural landing spot for the Texas League franchise. The Padres, despite some initial talk of not wanting to put another team at high elevation as with their El Paso Triple-A squad, were excited about the opportunity to come back to Amarillo.

“We are very excited with the opportunity to go into a brand-new ballpark and with a community that has wanted to get back into affiliated baseball,” said Sam Geaney, the Director of Player Development for the Padres. “As for the conditions, you never really know until you play there. As for elevation, it’s not something we are afraid of as an organization.

"There is some altitude in El Paso, and our guys must play in places like Lake Vegas, Albuquerque, and Reno where the parks favor hitters. Also, in our division – the NL West – Arizona and Colorado are parks where that is a factor.

“Our kids are going to get great reception, and from a fan’s point of view, last year we had eight players that went straight from San Antonio to the big leagues. So they could be seeing players that are days, not years, away from the Majors."

For Dravecky, the stop in Amarillo before a storied big league career holds a special place in his memory.

“Our manager, Eddie Watt, was a former big league pitcher, and he taught me how to pitch," Dravecky said. "I started off going 1-4 and finished the season 14-1, and a big part of that was the work that Eddie did with me.

“One thing I was proud of was that we broke the Texas League record for complete games. The previous record was 46, and we did 61. I don’t see anyone beating that.”

Away from the park, the Ohio native remembers discovering Whataburger, living at the FoxFire Apartment Complex, and most of all the potluck dinners the team would host.

“Eddie Watt and his wife, Betty, would join us, and we loved it," Dracvecky said. "None of us were making a whole lot of money then and getting to eat as much as we wanted to was a big thing. “When I heard Amarillo got a new team, I was thrilled. It's a special place, and even after more than 30 years, I have so many good memories of my time there both on and off the field.

John Conniff writes about the San Diego Padres minor leagues for MadfFriars.com and

FoxSportsSanDiego.com. and you can follow him @madfriars.com.