21-05-2025
- Sport
- San Francisco Chronicle
Sellout crowd embraces Ballers, Oakland's pro baseball team, in season opener
About 80 miles away from where the vagabond Athletics played the Los Angeles Angels on a random Tuesday, baseball resumed in Oakland.
Raimondi Park packed in a sellout crowd of 4,200 fans who showed up to watch the Oakland Ballers open their second season in the Pioneer Baseball League against the Ogden Raptors.
A few hours before first pitch, someone in a Ballers shirt could be heard saying, 'Looks like, smells like, sounds like baseball,' as he proceeded to the checkpoint where coaches, players and fans alike would enter. It was unclear whether he was a player, a staffer or even a fan owner of the community-owned ballclub. That's kind of the point.
The usual barriers meant to separate those who hit, pitch and catch from the thousands more who pay to make memories of watching them play at big-league ballparks just don't exist at 1800 Wood St.
After the Ballers improved to 1-0 in an incredible comeback win that was decided by a home run derby (yes, a home run derby), they didn't disappear into some underground clubhouse. Their headquarters remain embedded across the street within the string of B's warehouses, meaning head coach Aaron Miles and his band of 27 walked out of Raimondi as if they were on a neighborhood stroll.
Miles, who played nine seasons in the majors, knows any fan he crosses paths with could be one of the 4,000-plus people who've contributed more than $3 million of crowd-funded investments.
'I don't know if they got any say in players getting released or me getting fired, but hopefully I'll make some friends on the way out and get myself some job security,' Miles said.
Thanks to rookie shortstop Tremayne Cobb, a recent Troy University alumnus who only needed one swing to clobber one pitch during what the 12-team PBL calls the 'Knockout Round' (in place of extra innings) to secure a Ballers win, Miles sent home the people who help pay his checks with another Oakland baseball memory.
'The crowd was in the game the whole time, even when we was down,' Cobb told the Chronicle. 'So it's cool to know that the city's always going to love us, whether we're down (or) up in the game.'
Since their inception, the Ballers have opened up two investments rounds — one in July and another in March.
Martin Jíménez was among the 2,200 people who jumped on the bandwagon early last summer. Jíménez lives in Seattle, so the Bay Area native couldn't attend a home game during the Ballers' inaugural season that saw them punch a ticket to the four-team PBL playoffs. He wasn't going to miss Tuesday's season opener, particularly now that the B's are the only game in town.
'People show up to Major League Baseball games because they feel like they have to be there,' said Jíménez, a longtime A's fan who had supported the franchise since the mid-1980s.
'It just feels more real (here). It feels less contrived. … It's just the sport for the sport.'
Jíménez proudly wore a black 'Built by Oakland' T-shirt. It wasn't on sale, but served as an easy way to spot fan owners. Justin Collins also repped the merchandise. When asked about his presumed A's fandom, he hesitated.
'I'll say was,' Collins said. 'I liked the Oakland A's.'
It's a safe bet that almost everyone in attendance for midweek ball at Raimondi had some sort of connection to the A's, at least when said logo symbolized baseball in Oakland.
Jeff Brution remembers his introduction to the organization, via legendary southpaw Vida Blue, a Cy Young winner who helped the A's to their three consecutive World Series wins in the 1970s. Brution isn't a fan owner but took a first look at the Ballers alongside friend Dave Alley, also a diehard A's fan.
Alley said he was the one to invite his buddy. Why not, he thought. Neither was going to make the long drive to Sacramento. Alley hoped for a B's win. Brution was simply satisfied with Oakland baseball, letters be damned.
'Already have a win by making it here,' Brution said.
For Liana Rodegard, 71, Raimondi is only a 10-minute bike ride away.
Sure, she misses the homely atmosphere of afternoons spent at the Oakland Coliseum. But the Ballers are Oakland's team now, as far as she's concerned.
'It's a perfect way to watch baseball,' Rodegard said. 'I'm not going (to Sacramento). No way.'
The Ballers were born from the imagination of two baseball fans, for baseball fans in Oakland. The aftermath of a game strangely concluded by a meatball pitch thrown from behind a pitcher's net actually fit that vision.
'Smells like, sounds like the past and I think the future of baseball,' said Paul Freedman, who co-founded the Ballers with Bryan Carmel. 'When baseball was America's pastime, it was played in parks that looked and felt more like Raimondi than the new parks that they're building today.'
