It is a rivalry that in the past 50 years alone has
seen more than 700 games. In the century-plus that has passed since the two
cities first clashed on the diamond, they have combined for 31 no-hitters and
12 Pacific Coast League pennants. And it all started with one maverick league
president.

This is the story of two teams, separated by 141 miles, from
home plate to home plate. The story of two cities, which combined, have seen
more baseball than any other pair on the West Coast. This is the story not just
of a rivalry, but the rivalry in the
Pacific Coast League–one more than a century old, and still going strong. This
is the story of the oldest clash in PCL history: Tacoma vs. Portland.

When Henry Harris, the president of the San Francisco club
of the outlaw California League, made a visit to Portland, Ore., in the spring
of 1902, he did so with the intent of convincing team owners to quit the
Northwest League, instead becoming a part of his new proposed circuit. He
determined that since Major League Baseball had yet to cross the Mississippi
River, he’d be sure that his was the only game in town.

His proposal? To start a new professional baseball league,
one that could challenge the old Pacific Northwest League for supremacy on the
West Coast. His brainchild was the Pacific Coast League, and he wanted the city
of Portland to buy in.

And buy in, the Rose City did, and the next year, Harris saw
his brainchild–the Pacific Coast League–begin play. In the inaugural season of
what would become one of the most storied Minor Leagues in baseball, the
Portland Browns finished in a distant fifth place in 1903 in the
then-independent PCL.

By 1904, the PCL gained a new member, and the Browns gained
a natural rival: the Tacoma Tigers. The league also gained official recognition
as a legitimate professional league that same season, and its newest member
took the fledgling circuit by storm, going 130-94 to capture the PCL title,
defeating the Los Angeles Angels in a 10-game championship series, in which the
Tigers went 5-4-1.

The next season, those same Angels got the better of Tacoma,
finishing 120-94 and defeating the Tigers (106-107) 5-1 in that year’s
championship series.

As Tacoma stormed the PCL, Portland had started somewhat
more inauspiciously. After finishing fifth in 1903, the Browns were even worse
in 1904, finishing last with a 79-136 record, the most losses ever recorded in
a PCL season. That squad committed 669 errors for a .929 fielding percentage,
still the lowest mark in league history.

But as soon as the Tigers burst onto the scene, they left
just as quickly. Tacoma bolted the PCL for the Northwest League in 1906,
leaving Portland in the cellar and without any kind of natural geographic rival–or
much local competition. The ground was cleared for Portland to become the new
baseball capital of the Northwest.

After the 1904 season, Browns outfielder Walter McCredie and
his uncle, Judge W.W. McCredie, had purchased the team, renaming it the
Portland Giants and installing Walter as the player-manager with rebuilding as
the first item on the new ownership’s agenda.

The team went into rebuilding mode for
the 1905 season, finishing fifth again with a record of 94-110. But hope was on
the horizon for the Rose City, as the McCredies had maneuvered the franchise
into position for the most successful run in team history.

In 1906, the Portland club was re-christened the Beavers,
the result of a newspaper contest. And with a new name came a new start of
sorts for the beleaguered franchise. The 1906 Beavers chewed through the new,
shorter PCL schedule, finishing 115-60 under Walter McCredie for the club’s
first ever league championship. McCredie followed that up with a 112-87 mark in
1909–good enough for a second place finish–and then proceeded to win four PCL
titles in the next five years.

Portland took another flag in 1936, and
lost in the league finals in 1937, while 
it was Tacoma’s turn to taste failure on the diamond. After taking the
1906 Northwest League title in their first year in the league, the Tigers
wilted, and after several mediocre campaigns, both the 1918 and 1919 teams were
disbanded after each playing fewer than 25 games, and in 1922, the team folded.

Tacoma, for its part, responded in
1937, coming back from baseball limbo to win the Western International League
flag. But despite the proximity of the clubs in Tacoma and Portland, the two
saw not a thread of the other’s stockings until they were united once again under
the Pacific Coast League banner in 1960, as the league entered its third season
as a Triple-A circuit, as opposed to the “Open” classification it had enjoyed
prior to the relocation of the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants to Los
Angeles and San Francisco.

Again, it was the northernmost city’s
turn to enjoy boom years. The Tacoma Giants won their first PCL title just a
year after joining the league, during the magical 1961 season.

Over the six seasons that the Tacoma club was an affiliate
of the San Francisco Giants, two squads played 130 times, with the Tacoma
franchise owning a 68-62 record over its southern neighbor.

In the 1965 season–the final year under
the Giants banner–Tacoma finished 75-72, coming in fifth while Portland stormed
into the PCL championship series, only to lose to the Oklahoma City 89ers, four
games to one.

Over the years, the names changed, as the Giants became the
Cubs, and the Cubs became the Twins, but the series remained as tight as ever.
The Beavers managed to edge the Tacoma Cubs, 62 games to 61 in their 123
contests against one another, and came out on top of the Twins 16 times out of
28. But it was Tacoma that came away with poseaeason success, winning the 1969
PCL title and reaching the league championship series in 1971.

While the Tacoma franchise played at Cheney Stadium–a
dedicated baseball-only facility–the Beavers fell victim to Portland’s practice
of booking numerous events at what was then called Civic Stadium. After the
1972 season, the team left to play in Spokane for the 1973 campaign, playing
there as the Indians until 1982 and leaving the Rose City with nothing but
thorns.

But thanks to expansion in the American League, Portland was
able to wrangle yet another den of Beavers for the 1978 season, under the ownership
of businessman Leo Ornest. But despite the return of the civic institution,
fewer than 100,000 fans came through the turnstyles to see the league’s
second-place team, even though they dominated the Tacoma Nine like no other
Beavers squad had, downing the Tacoma Yankees 13 out of the 20 times the two
squads hooked up.

But again, rivalry dominance did not equate to postseason
success, as the T-Yanks came away with a shared PCL Championship, split with
Albuquerque.

While high-level baseball was Tacoma’s calling card,
Portland took a different route to try and drum up attendance. 23-year-old Dave
Hersh became the youngest owner in Triple-A history in 1979, and he immediately
became the PCL’s own Bill Veeck, giving away $5,000 worth of diamonds on
Mothers Day, arranging appearances by the Famous Chicken, and letting fans
slide into the world’s biggest glass of 7-Up in search of prizes.

As Portland’s attendance numbers
climbed and climbed, the Beavers took a page out of the Tacoma Giants’ book and
played exhibitions against the Pittsburgh Pirates, with one pregame home run
derby seeing Willie Stargell launch a ball into the balcony of the Multnomah
Athletic Club.

With Tacoma having put three PCL titles into the trophy case
just since 1960, by 1983, Portland’s title drought had reached 38 years. All
that would end when the Beavers signed a deal with the Philadelphia Phillies,
and that same year, the Beavers drew 283,000 fans and took home the league
championship as Philly captured the National League pennant.

Despite all of this and a run of success that included three
playoff teams from 1991-1993, the Beavers moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, once
again fleeing the rivalry with Tacoma.

But by 2001, the duel resumed, as yet another incarnation of
the Beavers set up shop after having moved from Albequerque. The former Dukes
played in the same digs as their predecessors, now re-named PGE Park.

As if to ring the bell on the latest
round, in Portland’s second year back, the Beavers scored their first no-hitter
against Tacoma–the only no-no to ever be thrown in the 100-plus years of the
rivalry–on May 14, 2002, thanks to the arm of Junior Herndon.

Since Portland’s latest resurrection, the Rainiers have run
off a 71-57 record against their southern neighhbors, but on July 15, 2009,
Tacoma’s and Portland’s brightest stars will take the field as teammates for
this year’s Triple-A All-Star Game. It will be the first time Portland has
played host to an All-Star affair since 1962, when Tacoma Giant Gil “The Little
Magician” Garrido started at shortstop with 1961 MVP Dick Phillips coming off
the bench to play second base.

Since the Triple-A-wide game replaced the various
league-specific formats in 1988, Tacoma has produced 33 All-Stars, while
Portland has managed just 18.

Tacoma’s All-Star hitters have posted a combined .308
batting average in 39 All-Star at-bats since the format change, while Portland’s
hitters have hit at a .250 clip.

But for a rivalry that stretches back more than five times
as long as the current Midsummer Classic has been in existance, those numbers
seem a little small.

While the Rainiers have by far had the
most success against the Beavers of any Tacoma club, the all-time series is far
tighter: the Tacoma franchise owns a 359-344 all-time series lead over Portland.
The only other city that can even come close in terms of games played is Salt
Lake City, which has won 245 of the 509 games played against the Tacoma
franchise, with one tie.

Moreso than Seattle, Portland has been the one team joined
at the hip with any PCL club that takes the field in Tacoma, and so long as
there is baseball in the Northwest, the region’s most defining baseball rivalry
will be the interstate clash that brings these two cities together.