Well, it’s happened again. My old hometown has lost the Dodgers. Or their minor-league affiliate, anyway.

Last time, it stung, but not like this. A decade ago, 2001, the Dodgers were ordered by Major League Baseball to reduce their number of “high Class A” teams to one, from two, and the Dodgers decided to stay with Vero Beach in the Florida State League. Made sense, at the time, because the Dodgers still held spring training in Vero.

This time, it’s harder, because San Bernardino has lost the Dodgers to … Rancho Cucamonga.

That’s almost as bad as losing a court house to Riverside, Berdoo’s historic rival — though Rancho Kook has come up fast in the past couple of decades.

Even though the Angels clearly are the superior organization in the SoCal market, that Dodgers aura persists, and people who pay attention to their minor-league baseball knew it was a coup for San Bernardino to have Dodgers prospects playing south of downtown. (They returned in 2007). I remember, last time I was at San Bernardino’s home stadium, that Lucas May was there, and he had a cup of coffee with the big club a few years later. So that sort of thing happened; stars of tomorrow,  right there in front of you, for maybe $7 a ticket. A year before, I went down to see Jason Schmidt in a rehab assignment (no, it didn’t wor out), and also chatted with Ned Colletti.

But now Rancho Cucamonga has snatched away the Dodgers. And Rancho Kook and Berdoo have been down this road before, too. When Rancho first opened their yards in, what, 1992, 1993?, they stole the San Bernardino affiliate then, too. It was the Mariners, as I recall. (Berdoo is like Brooklyn, except worst; lost the Dodgers twice; lost the Mariners once.)

We must concede that Rancho generally is a more appealing market. If California is hurting, if SoCal is hurting worse, if the Inland Empire is really hurting, well, then, Berdoo is near the epicenter of Hurtin’-est of ‘Em All. Not much going on there, economically. The area around the ballyard never really picked up; went the other way, if anything.

Plus, San Bernardino’s stadium, known as Arrowhead Credit Union Park (or the A-Cup), is newer than Rancho’s by about five years, but it seems to have aged more quickly. It opened in late 1997, is my recollection, and it’s been a hard 13 years. Maybe it was about maintenance …

What will be interesting now is to see where the former Rancho Cucamonga tenant goes.

That would be the Angels.

If San Bernardino hooks up with the L.A. Angels of Anaheim, it’s no great loss to have the Dodgers going down I-10. Berdoo is still more a Dodgers town than an Angels one, and most people would rather see a Dodger big-leaguer rehabbing than an Angel … but the Angels are certainly an acceptable alternative.

Not paying close attention to this, but I would think the Angels would go to San Bernardino or to Lake Elsinore. The other two teams in the South division of the California League are in Adelanto (in the desert) and Lancaster (in the desert, too, but an even longer drive).

Whichever doesn’t get the Angels likely will get the Padres — currently at Lake Elsinore. The Padres make more sense for Elsinore because they are the team closest to San Diego.

So San Bernardino and the Angels seem like an obvious pairing. It’s up to San Bernardino management to make sure it happens (and the Angels to pretend they don’t mind), giving the city a silver lining out of today’s dark cloud.