16 hours ago
- Sport
- San Francisco Chronicle
Oakland Ballers take their swings in new-look Coliseum, now a cricket stadium?
Oakland Ballers slugger Lou Helmig stepped up to the wickets at the Oakland Coliseum.
You read that right.
The same day the B's returned before dawn from a 12-game road trip in the Pioneer Baseball League, several of their players braved jet lag for a field trip to the A's former home, currently oriented for an ongoing Major League Cricket tournament.
The left-handed Helmig smashed the first short-hop pitch — aka a cricket bowl — he received into the second deck, as if he was the famed face of America's pastime. Google says Babe Ruth could've been a great cricketer.
Whether more folktale or fact, Ruth's heavy-handed follow-through translated from baseball home runs to cricket sixes while on a world tour toward the twilight of his MLB career.
Among the Ballers in attendance, none sought a career change.
Any chance to occupy the Coliseum, while the A's loiter in Sacramento, would be time well spent.
'We brought the Oakland Ballers to the Oakland Coliseum,' Ballers co-founder Bryan Carmel said. 'It was probably under different circumstances than I had originally imagined … but awesome circumstances.'
Australian cricket legend Adam Gilchrist, also coincidentally a lefty, treated the Ballers to a lesson on how to swing a cricket bat. Its rectangular shape is wider than any bat barrel in baseball. Even 'torpedo bats,' made infamous for an alternate sweet spot closer to the handle, don't come close.
Helmig evidently found enough familiarity with the two-handed follow-through Gilchrist demonstrated to knock a ball into the Coliseum stands for the first time.
'I must say, I'm not sure I would have made it in the major leagues but (the Ballers) were very adaptable today,' Gilchrist said.
When it came time for the B's to play ball, the storied Coliseum offered no remaining bats, baseballs or gloves. The A's had apparently left the cupboard bare. Carmel, as a result, rushed over to Raimondi Park, the B's home facility, for reinforcements.
'We had wanted to demonstrate baseball to them and have them demonstrate cricket to us, and we got there and realized we didn't have any baseballs and we didn't have any bats and we didn't have any gloves,' Carmel said.
'It was just funny to be at the Oakland Coliseum and there's no baseball equipment at this point.'
The Ballers (16-8) sit in fourth place in the 12-team PBL. They've wanted to play in the Coliseum since their inception. If it's any consolation, Carmel said he hopes to organize a hybrid game called 'basecricket' now that the San Francisco Unicorns have broken ground in the Bay Area with three consecutive wins in the Coliseum.
Fellow B's co-founder Paul Freedman joked that Los Angeles Dodgers two-way star Shohei Ohtani, who pitched for the first time in 21 months Monday, would be a natural.
'If that's true, then Shohei Ohtani's got to be pretty good, too,' Freedman said. 'Maybe the rule is if you could pitch and you could bat, then you could also be good at cricket, if you're that good of an athlete. … We'll see if we can get Shohei out there as well.'
