Story byLodi News-Sentinel, Calif.

Amateur adult baseball has players Hooked

David Witte, Lodi News-Sentinel, Calif.Tue, July 21, 2026 at 7:52 PM UTC·6 min read

Jul. 21—Some baseball players hang up the cleats when their pro career fizzles out. Others after college, and most after their high school days.

But for the players that can't get the old ballgame out of their system, there are teams like the NorCal Hooks, which have called Zupo Field home for the past two summers as part of the Cal-Mex League, itself an organization with a long history of adult amateur baseball.

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"We've got quite a few guys that have played college. A lot of guys that played JuCo ball," said Hooks player-manager Mike McFarren. "A lot of us for some reason or another played high school ball and then didn't play afterwards, whether they had to take care of family or move or life happens, get a job, so this has been something you know that we get to do on the weekends now and keep the game going. Keep the dream alive."

On Sunday, the Hooks routed the California Dawgs 10-1 at Zupo Field to improve to 12-0 in the Cal-Mex League, which has most of its teams playing at Stribley Community Park in Stockton.

NorCal pitcher Isaac Higle gave up a first-inning home run and then settled, and the Dawgs still had the one run when he relinquished the mound to Ethan Hurte to start the fifth inning. Hurte got out of a jam in the fifth, then held the Dawgs hitless in the sixth and seventh innings, where the game was called under the mid-afternoon heat.

"I can get them a little bit scared, sometimes give them something they haven't seen in a while," said Hurte, a Turlock High graduate who played some college ball at Nevadain Reno. "As a team, I mean, you can see, we're all pretty pretty loose, kind of going with each other. It's kind of like a brotherhood.

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"We have the camaraderie other teams that are always trying to scrounge some guys together might not. You have a solid base that makes it easier for us to kind of you guys let loose, and because of that, we can have fun out here, and because we're able to have fun, we can just play ball and let our skills that we've got from the past years of playing do the work for us."

The Hooks evened the score in the bottom of the first inning when Alex Daoud singled and took second on an error, then scored on a pair of passed balls. The Hooks batted around in the second inning, with six straight batters — Adam Alvarez, McFarren, Daoud, Derek Wendt, Justin Manci and Jacob Solorio — scoring. Another two came across in the third with a Wendt RBI single and a Solorio sacrifice fly. The Hooks' final run came in the fifth when Andy Jacques walked with the bases loaded.

Now 12-0, the Hooks have four more games this summer — starting with next Sunday's matchup against the other Lodi team in the league, the Lodi Brewers. First pitch is at 11 a.m. at Zupo Field, and admission is free.

"We've always been up there, one of the top three teams every year," said McFarren, who was one of the founding members of the club in 2011. "But this year — there's never been a team that's gone undefeated the whole way and won the championship, so I don't want to jinx anything — knock on wood — but you know, we've been ten-running a bunch of guys."

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And it's not a short history when it comes to the Cal-Mex League. The organization was started in 1955 by Primo Orosco with the goal of giving more opportunities for Mexican-Americans to play baseball. Orosco, who died in 2015, was also a player-manager, winning the inaugural league title as catcher for Club Mexico.

The Hooks started in Stockton, and for the past two years have been based in Lodi, but the players come from near and far — from Stockton, Manteca, even as far away as the East Bay. And they play for the love of the game.

"Just been being around the boys, teammates, getting those competitive juices going again," said pitcher-infielder Andrew Troncale. "You've got a time limit how long you could play this game, so just being around the guys."

For Troncale, the clock is ticking on that time limit.

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"Just turned 40, yeah. I feel the clock ticking," said Troncale, a teacher with Stockton Unified who has played in the league for more than 20 years, the last 12 of them with the Hooks. "This is probably my last year, so I want to go out with the bang and get a championship."

Troncale and McFarren, both 40, are the team's elder statesmen. McFarren said he has a number of players in their 30s, and then another core in their early 20s. Troncale graduated from Tokay High in 2004, and then played for Stanislaus State. He said he loves coming back to play at Zupo Field.

"Definitely being a local guy, and being a part of something that's been going around for 60 or 70 years, it's an honor," Troncale said. "I used to play here back in Babe Ruth and high school, playing on this field, so it's cool to come back here and play."

A lot of work goes into making Zupo the team's home, and making the games a vibe. Family and friends volunteer for things like scoreboard operations, music and announcing, and scorekeeping.

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"These guys, we pay to play," McFarren said. "The field isn't free, we have a lot of sponsors that you might have heard during the game like Tony's Pizza, Five Windows, these guys have donated some money to help lower the cost for all of them. But other than that, we split the fees evenly, and everybody pays their way so we can keep playing baseball. We love to have fun with it, but we're competitive at the same time. We field a competitive team."

That's one of the things that has kept Hurte around, and keeps the team's roster stocked.

"Everyone's pretty much all-in with each other. The way we keep playing, I mean, everyone wants to be here," Hurte said. "Everyone everyone wants to see what we can do so. It's fun to watch. It's fun to be a part of it, too, and cheer on the guys."