That’s a wrap: Oakland Ballers give baseball fans a reason to cheer
on September 14, 2024
The Oakland Ballers delivered in their inaugural season, reviving the city’s baseball legacy with a wining season and a playoff berth.
“Welcome to the next chapter of baseball in Oakland,” blares a voice over the public address system in Raimondi Park, the B’s home field in West Oakland.
Fans have flocked to the bleachers, nearly 2,000 on average at each home game. Only a few thousand more have been going to the Coliseum to see the A’s play their last season in the storied stadium. Many A’s fans are boycotting games to send the team owners a message — they decided to move the A’s to Sacramento next year and then to Las Vegas to join the former Oakland Raiders football team.
“We’re taking baseball back,” said Robert Sullivan, wearing an Oakland Ballers 2024 shirt during a the B’s last home stand in late August. “We’re the only Oakland program in the playoff hunt. I love seeing all the fans here.”
Attendance at the Coliseum has averaged about 9,000 this summer, the lowest for any Major League ballpark. And with the A’s playing below .500, there’s been little excitement around the team.
April Kenton is among the exceptions. Part of the 68’s, a protest group formed in 2017 to preserve the Oakland A’s fan base, she was at the B’s last home stand to see a 13-1 win against the Idaho Falls Chukars. But she hasn’t given up on the Athletics.
“I still go to every A’s home game. I’m still out there in right field,” she said. “There’s not a lot of people out there anymore, but I want to be there until my team leaves in September.”
The A’s are about 14 games out of first place with 14 games left in the season, fourth out of the five teams in their division.
The B’s, on the other hand, finished the regular season with the second-best record in the Pioneer League. They wrapped up Friday, one game shy of the championship series, with a 6-4 playoff loss to the Yolo High Wheelers.
This summer, the “Let’s go Oakland” chant heard regularly at the Coliseum made its way to Raimondi Park, where a lively crowd cheered along with drums. The setting is intimate, the field a stone’s throw from the bleachers, which can accommodate about 4,000 people.
“The players and fans come through the same entrance, and that is intentional,” said Paul Freedman, the Ballers’ co-founder.
The owners invested $5 million in the new club and ballpark. If the Ballers leave, the stadium remains with the people of Oakland, Freedman said.
He added that the Ballers recently opened a new round of funding that raised $950,000 in less than a week. For a minimum of $170, fans can purchase shares in the franchise, which allows them to vote on a fan board member and provide input on certain decisions. This puts the Ballers in the company of other community-owned sports teams in the Bay Area such as the Oakland Soul, the Oakland Roots and the San Francisco City FC.
For the fans who show up decked in Ballers merchandise, there is nothing better than the smell of pork belly noodles and the shenanigans of Scrappy the Possum, the mascot inspired by the possum who found a home in the Coliseum’s visitors broadcasting booth. As he paced the bleachers at the August game, Scrappy hugged kids and embraced not only the spirit of Oakland but its resilience.
Babs Wardwell, sitting behind home plate, has been an A’s season ticket holder since 1989. She doesn’t plan on watching them play in Sacramento or Las Vegas. But she will be coming back to Raimondi Park.
“It’s nice that there is still a strong community that wants to see baseball, Wardwell said. “We didn’t just write off the whole game.”
New era of baseball in Oakland — move over A’s, here come the B’s
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