Salem isn’t just a spectacular city of parks, arts and architecture, but also a city of sports. There are three active minor league teams here, including one of the newest members of the run-and-gun International Basketball League, which has fewer rules, fewer time-outs, and a much faster pace. The Salem Stampede actually scored 180 points against a rival in the 2007 season. It is not a dull sport. Meanwhile, there is the Cascade Surge, a member of the United Soccer League’s Premiere Development League (PDL). PDL league teams bring top-flight players from around the country and the world to play alongside local talent. Only 13 years old, the Surge – which plays at McCulloch Stadium in Bush’s Pasture Park – has already developed intense rivalries against other PDL teams such as the Yakima Reds, the Ogden Outlaws and the Spokane Spiders. The season runs from mid-May to late July. Then, there is baseball. One of the great success stories of Salem is its baseball team, the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes, which is one of the best minor league teams in the country. The team – Class-A affiliates of the San Francisco Giants – was formerly the Bellingham Mariners before heading south to Salem about 14 years ago. Over the last 11 seasons, the Volcanoes have won four league championships, five division championships, and in 2007, the team was named Minor League Team of the Country, chosen by the league’s governing body over 186 other teams. The Volcanoes chose Salem because it’s a “great community and a govern­ment center, and a fairly stable economy because government IS its economy,” says Rick Nelson, the Volcanoes vice president and director of operations. “They had also had professional baseball here before, about 10 years earlier, with the Salem Dodgers and Salem Angels, but they were playing at a community college.” The facility, he adds, was not ideal. So, when Volcanoes co-owner Jerry Walker scouted locations, a key factor was the community’s willingness to embrace a new stadium. Salem suburb Keizer, a few minutes north of town on Interstate 5, had a couple hundred undeveloped acres that were ideal. Says Nelson, Keizer had been “hoping to create a retail center in the area, and we came in with a partnership that would bring a $6 million facility to the area, that would also bring in the infrastructure for the retail shopping plaza.” The city contributed $3 million, with the team contributing the rest, and ground was broken in 1997. The new home of the Volcanoes and adjoining retail park will someday become the largest in the state, according to Nelson. Meanwhile, the team is taking off. The stadium seats 4,252 fans, has 11 concession stands, a sports bar, a kids’ playground, a bandstand, 13 luxury box suites, home run porch, and is home to the famous Jerry’s Lava Dog. It has attracted 1,340,000 fans in 11 amazing seasons. With a championship team in town, it’s impossible to think of Salem without thinking about baseball.