Why a Fresno Baseball Team Turns Into Tacos Twice a Year

California's major league baseball teams head into the last month of the regular season with two of them -- the San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers -- very much in the postseason hunt. For California's minor league teams, Labor Day marked the end of the regular season.

These teams serve as a training ground for players who hope to make it to the big league team they're affiliated with -- and a place for players who are on major league rosters to rehab from an injury or get some extra time to work on their game. But minor league teams also have to succeed as local businesses independent of their parent club. And that can be tricky.

The Fresno Grizzlies had a particularly challenging task at the end of the 2014 season. After many years as the Triple-A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants, the Grizzlies lost that status in an affiliation reshuffle. Instead, they became part of the Houston Astros organization. Without a nearby major league club to draw fans from, the team needed to emphasize their Fresno identity. That's where Grizzlies' marketing director Sam Hansen came in -- with tacos.

After a successful taco-themed event last year, this year the team took it up several notches. As Hansen told the Fresno Bee, "What really made me want to do a taco truck event was how passionate people are about taco trucks here and the geographical relevance. There's a good chance you could prove taco trucks were invented in Central California."

And so, for a game on a blisteringly hot August evening, the Grizzlies renamed themselves the Fresno Tacos. They had special uniforms -- black jerseys with insets of brightly striped fabric made to look like a sarape, and caps decorated with a cartoon taco.

The regular Grizzlies' mascot, a bear named Parker, was joined for the occasion by Cilantro Gomez, a gigantic, cheerful taco with googly eyes. And the city of Fresno joined in, co-hosting the annual Taco Truck Throwdown around the ballpark's perimeter. Thirty-three trucks sold traditional favorites and fusion tacos with mac and cheese or Korean barbecue.

The Grizzlies expect to set a merchandise sales record this year, at least partly on the strength of the Tacos brand. In addition to the game-worn jerseys, fans could buy T-shirts declaring their loyalty to Teams Lengua, al Pastor, Carnitas and Carne Asada, or choose a cap with a jaunty taco truck or tank top in the pseudo-sarape design. And two weeks after the game, the Grizzlies added a design that parodies Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" -- a red cap that promises "Taco Trucks on Every Corner."

Paul Royer had organized a group of his co-workers to come to the game. Sporting a giant foam hat in the shape of a taco, Royer said food trucks are a fundamental part of Central Valley culture. "I'm from Bakersfield, and if you go downtown on a weekend in Bakersfield, there are food trucks everywhere. We're out here having fun -- Fresno, Bakersfield, Central Valley, this is what we do."

As for the baseball side of the game, it also proved to be a success. The Tacos scored a walk-off in the 11th inning to send the fans home happy, and full of tacos: 34,820 of them, to be exact.

And for those who overindulged and needed the next day to recover, the team provided a note to their employers via Instagram, confirming the diagnosis of "Postprandial Taco Somnolence, or, in layman’s terms, Taco Coma. Please see the attached note from Dr. Albert Pastor of the Lonchero Medical Group."