1/27/2024-Lincoln "Juice" Gumbs will be the inaugural field manager for the Pecos Bills in West Texas.
The Pecos Bills are the expansion team that replaced the Lancaster Sound Breakers where Gumbs managed in 2023.
Gumbs will be in the Pecos League's Bermunda Triangle having to face the Alpine Cowboys, Tucson Saguaros and Roswell Invaders almost exclusively on the Bills Schedule. Those are historically the Pecos League's three best teams with nine of the Pecos League's thirteen championships won between them.
Gumbs will be making about as big of a total transition as you can make. He will moving from the Pacific Divison where he managed the Lancaster Sound Breakers in Los Angeles County California (9,830,000 population) to the Pecos Bills in Reeves County Texas (14,487 population in entire Reeves County).
He will play in a brand new fieldturf facility with artifical mound. The weather will be drastically different in Pecos, Roswell, Alpine and Tucson than in the San Francisco Bay Area. The days of the 7th inning fifty degree temperatures in the Bay Area for road games are over as the Bills play in one of the hottest regions in the entire Country.
"About the only similarities between the two places is the bases are 90 feet away and the mound is 60 foot 6 inches. Pecos Texas and Lancaster California might as well be on different continents. " says Andrew Dunn of Pecos League. "Juice did a great job in Lancaster in his first year of the Pecos League with the team qualifiying for the Pacific Division playoffs on the last day of the season. We are going where we are welcome in Pecos Texas. We really appreciate our year in Lancaster it was great for all of us, but we are to move on."
"We had a successful season in Lancaster, I know what I need to win in this league regardless of where I am located. We are ready to goto Pecos Texas."
The Bills will host the Austin Weirdos for Spring Training in Pecos, Texas beginning May 21. The Bills open at home against the Alpine Cowboys on May 28.