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Oakland Ballers were happy to erase a six run deficit against the Modesto Roadsters at Raimondi Park in Oakland on Fri Jul 10, 2026 (Oakland Ballers X photo)

Monday, July 13, 2026

Oakland, CA

By Lewis Rubman

OAKLAND–This past week was almost Dickensian for the Ballers; it came close to being the worst of times and the best of times, sometimes at the same time. The team’s You Tube channel frequently reminded us that the Pioneer Baseball League’s standings would be reset on July 14, that is, Tuesday. Meanwhile, the team put together a series of heartening wins that indicated that it just might have regained its ability to bounce back from blown leads. That, too, was ambivalent; although the B’s took two games in row from the respectable Modesto Roadsters, their most resounding victories were over the downtrodden Yolo-Sutter Freebirds.

Things were different in Oakland on July 7^th   than they had been in Modesto the previous week. It was cold when the game started, and, although it warmed up in the middle innings, it was cold again at the end. The Ballers not only held their own, but didn’t they fall behind until the top of the seventh, and they drew even in the bottom half of the frame. One inning later, and they pushed the winning runs home to send the crowd home happy.

Modesto Roadsters (26-17)    000 000 300   3   7    0

Oakland Ballers (18-25)         001 010 12x   5  10   1

Winning pitcher: Langston Burkett (2-1)   Losing pitcher: Preston Kelly (0-2)

Time:2:41   Attendance: 2,512

Charlie Hurley started on the mound for the home team and threw an excellent six innings of two hit ball, allowing only a couple of runs, only one of which was earned. He left with two on and no outs, so the unearned run that came as a result of Tremayne Cobb’s rare throwing error while Valek Cisneros was on the bump; was charged to Hurley. In any case, in the hitter friendly Pioneer League and the hitter friendlier Raimondi Park, starts like Hurley’s are a rare occurrence.        Missed opportunities and errors like Cobb’s, which cost the B’s their three run lead two thirds of the way through the contest, show that the Ballers can be, and frequently are, their own worst enemies.

Speaking of errors, a friend and reader of mine pointed out an error I made in last week’s column; I hadn’t pointed out the connection between the PBL’s franchise player rule and Cole Percival’s being the son of Long Beach manager Troy Percival. Cole is the Coast’s franchise player. I forgot that the irony of my mental tone of voice and pausing as I wrote the piece wouldn’t migrate to the written page unless explicitly I put it there.

It was uncomfortably cold at the ballpark on the eighth, with the mercury showing 61^o at game time and 56^o when Conner Smith took a called third strike for the final out of the night.

Modesto Roadsters (27-17)    200 212 822    11 13  0

Oakland Ballers (18-26)         002 100 130      7 13  1

Winning pitcher: Corbin Talley (2-1)   Losing pitcher: Griffin Smith (0-3)

Time: 3:14   Attendance: 1,448

Oakland had managed to overcome Modesto’s early lead of 2-0 in the third. When Cobb stole second standing up, the Roadster starter Corbin Talley’s inability to hold runners on base became evident, and after Esai Santos walked, he and Cobb pulled off a double steal that netted their team a pair of run runs when Noah Blythe drove them in on a two bagger to left center. But the Ballers’ bullpen couldn’t corral the Roadsters, who scored in every frame after the third on their way to the win.

In other Wednesday developments, the Ballers announced that they had traded southpaw starter C.J.  Blowers and a player to be named later to the Florence Y’alls of the Frontier League in exchange for portside hurler Ahmad Harajli and a PTBNL. Before the game began, the B’s signed right handed pitcher Brock Mayer fresh out of Cal State Fullerton, where he had struck out 27 opponents in 31 innings and posted an ERA of 5.52. He managed to get credit for two saves. The Roadsters knocked him around in the top of the sixth, getting at him for two runs on two hits in a third of an inning.  In an intraleague transaction, the B’s obtained the services of Billings outfielder Demias Jimmerson, who was batting .422 with an OPS of 1,170 in 22 games for the Mustangs at close of day. Oakland will send a player to be named later to Billings.

The cold, clear night of July 9^th didn’t take anyone by surprise; the Ballers’ hot bats did, Oakland’s offense more than offset a sub-mediocre start by Hunter Day (four runs, all earned, in 4-1/3 innings)  combined with a excellent relief work by Jake Villar, Valek Cisneros, and Brady Chavez (no runs and only one hit over the 3-2/3 frames the trio was on the bump) made the home run Austin Balentine surrendered to Bryce Cannon in the visitors’ ninth a futile symbolic gesture. The weather did, however, reduce the moderately sized attendance of 1,416 to a few hundred hard core celebrants.

Modesto Roadsters (27-18)    001 300 001     5   10   2

Oakland Ballers (19-26)         307 080 10x    19  15   0

Winning pitcher: Jake Villar (1-0)    Losing pitcher: Anthony Díaz (1-3)

Time: 2:55   Attendance: 1,416   

The no-contest was not without its moment of PBL piquancy. When Captain J.T, Snow sent Ethan Roark to the mound to start the home fourth, the Roadsters’ manager and Aaron Miles, his Ballers counterpart, had a conversation in front of the visitors’ dugout that lasted long enough for the press box to ask the umpires over PA system to confirm the name of the new hurler’s name^. My guess is that the confusion was the failure of the league’s website to publish a roster that listed Roark on it. By the way, I don’t sit in the press box. My credentials give me some advantages, like early entry and exemption from inspection of the containers I carry, but the free seating they allow is in the front row of the left field bleachers, from which you’re lucky if you can follow 30% of the action., so I pay my way in.. An inning after the mysterious summit meeting, home plate umpire Harrison Silverman ejected Snow for the language he used to protest the reversal of the fair ball call on what would have been Max Handron’s lead off home run. From where I sat, the ball looked foul.

The Ballers jumped ahead early and never looked back. Cobb started things with a 405 foot blast over the left center field fence on a two and one pitch to lead off the bottom of the first. He drove in another two runs with his second dinger of the night in the third. He ended up with four RBI
 in his five plate appearances. The Ballers’ shortstop is a beautiful fielder, and this was the second time this year he’s hit more than one round tripper in a game. It makes me wonder why no major league organization has plucked him out of the ranks of the PBL.

The B’s eight tallies in the sixth put the game on ice, a rare occurrence in the it’s not over ‘til it’s over Pioneer circuit. The highlight of the episode was Jaden Collura’s grand slam into the Ballers’ bullpen. One inning later, Jeter Ybarra gilded the lily with his league leading 19^th four bagger of the season.

On Friday the tenth, the Ballers, having bounced back from their humiliating road trip by beating up on Modesto’s  big bullies, besting them in back to bat battles, went on to beat up on the little bullies of Marysville by besting the Yuba-Sutter Freebirds, née Yolo High Wheelers, in an ugly contest to see which team could shoot itself in the foot most frequently and still score more than the other. The umpiring crew made its contribution to this infuriating yet strangely gripping comedy of errors, which was followed by a Star Wars themed drone show.

Yuba-Sutter Freebirds (15-31)           000 070 101             9  14  5

 Oakland Ballers (20-26)                    000 114 202           10   9   3

Winning pitcher: Langston Burkett (3-1)    Losing pitcher:TristanWolf (2-3)

Time: 3:20   Attendance: 2,947

The game started out as a scoreless pitchers’ duel until Cobb—there he goes again—— broke the tie in the home half of the fourth by jumping on a 3-0 offering from starter Anthony Silvas and sending it over the left field fence. The Ballers let that brief advantage fall from their hands like the proverbial hot potato. Aided by errors by starting pitcher Michael Riley, Esai Santos in center, and by Ybarra, seven Freebirds crossed the plate in the top of the fifth.  Zach Chamizo’s two run homer to left center off Riley was the blow that sent Riley to the showers.

Down 7-1, the Ballers clawed their way back into contention with Nick Leehey’s homer to left in their half of the inning and, after Connor Godwin replaced Mayer on the mound in the seventh, Yuba-Sutter pushed another run with a double by Isaac Núñez, whose name wasn’t published in the Freebird roster at any time during the series. Ybarrra’s two out single allowed the B’s to score two unearned runs in the bottom of that inning. The Ballers, in 2025 fashion, had tied the score at eight.

Number 0 Langston Burkett had only to hold the Freebirds scoreless for one inning to guarantee at least a KO round for Oakland. But he surrendered a down the line double to left by Jordan Donahue and an infield single by Diego Aragón to end that pipe dream.

But this was Star Wars Night, and the fans got a story book ending. Tristan Wolf took over mound duties for  Y-S. Jake Allgeyer singled to center, and Brandon  O’Sullivan pinch ran for him. Collura walked. Ybarra singled to left and took second on Josh Phillips’s error, Collura moved on to third, and, most important, O’Sullivan came home with the tying run. Wolf gave Noah Blythe a free pass to load the bases and set up a force out at home. The tactic worked, or would have, if the Yuba-Sutter defense weren’t as porous as it proved to be. Paul Winland grounded to first baseman Andrew Kirchner, who had trouble handling the ball and then unleashed a wild heave somewhere in the direction of home. Collura crossed the plate, and the Ballers had justified bay area native Vernon “Lefty” Gómez’s dictum, “I’d rather be lucky than good.”

Unbeknownst to the celebrating fans leaving the ballpark on Saturday, the Ballers had committed a public relations error that would override Sunday’s on field action and cause confusion, tension, and ill will during the game.

Fairly early  on Saturday afternoon , rumors began to circulate in the stands about the next day’s game being only seven innings long.  When I got home, I asked AI on google how long the Sunday game would be, and the answer was nine innings. I then searched google for “oakland ballers seven inning game,” and came up with this post from Instagram that had appeared sometime between the fourth and sixth inning or thereabouts:

⚾ We’re trying something new this Sunday: a 7-inning game.

Many families head home after the 7th inning anyway, so we’re testing a format that fits. You’ll still get all your Sunday Family Day favorites—kids run the bases, player autographs, and more.

Tell us what you think! 💚

The fans did tell the Ballers what they thought, and it wasn’t pretty. As a result, the team made a passing reference on the PA to this game being a full nine inning one.

The idea of a seven inning game is neither preposterous or unprecedented. Many minor league teams play double headers of nine and then seven frames. Major League Baseball played seven inning games during the 2020 covid season. But to announce this at a time when ticket holders had no chance to change their plans, and to announce it, not on the Ballers’ website, not on the Pioneer Baseball League’s website, not in direct communication with ticket holders,  season ticket holders, or investors was an outrageous public relations blunder, a possibly unwitting show of disrespect to all the people the Ballers have worked so hard and so successfully to build as a loyal fan base. Investors have an elected fan representative on the team’s board of directors. Some of the fan response to the green heart emoji was that in the past their representative was nowhere to be found.

Several season ticket holders in Section A had bought additional front row seats to celebrate family occasions and transferred their usual seats to friends. Others, who had gone on vacation, also had given friends their usual seats. At least one recipient of a seat in Section A was directed to General Admission when he presented his bar code at the entry. When some of these transferred or retained but unused seats remained empty, fans in other parts of the section rushed in to fill them, often blocking the view of paying season ticket  holders. A family of three blocked my view; every time their five-year-old child did something that required the mother’s attention, the tall father would change his seat, forcing me to move back and forth three and four times each half inning for three whole frames. Try doing that while keeping score, taking notes, following the action, and using a cane. He expressed outrage when I asked him to please not change his seat more than once an inning. I’m reporting this not just to release my anger and frustration but also to give an idea of just one of the ripples that resulted from the Ballers precipitous “experiment.”

But it wasn’t really an experiment, or at least not an ethical one. That would have required informed consent. And there was a harmless way to meet the requirements of the “[m]any families [who] head home after the 7th inning anyway”: they could  just come late. How many PBL games are decided in the first three innings, anyway? And, if these fans don’t care to see nine innings of play, what would they lose by seeing innings seven through nine instead of one through three?

Other questions remain. Was this soi-dissent experiment sanctioned by the Pioneer Baseball League? How would a seven inning game affect the league-wide statistics?

Yuba-Sutter Freebirds (15-33)            030 300 001      7 11 0

Oakland Ballers (22-26)                     300 120 001      7 10 2

There was no winning or losing pitcher. Oakland won in first knock out round. Yuba Sutter HRs: Josh Phillips, 3. Oakland HRs: Tremayne Cobb, 4.

Time: 3:06   Attendance: 2,014

Although the line score shows the game as a tie, it was a win for the home team, a win that followed classic ’25 Ballers’ pattern: blow early lead to tie, then fall behind, catch up,fall behind, tie, and win. Not that the their performance was free of wasted opportunities, among them rally killing double plays, the use of celebrity roster cricketeer Liam Plunkett, who had pitched for Oakland earlier in the season, as a pinch hitter in the fourth,  rookie mistakes, as when Ybarra, who could have kept a slow grounder to first from rolling foul by taking a step or two towards home and securing an out. It was nice that the Ballers won the shoot out at KO Coral, but, to return to the team’s clumsy public relations, would we have had a knock out round in a seven inning game? (A negative response might have been a point in favor of a curtailed contest).

About the only consolation available to fans of the PBL’s 2025 champs was that they didn’t have to wait ‘til next year, but only ‘til tomorrow, July 14^th, when the second half of the PBL’s split season begins and hope that Bastille Day marks the start of a revolutionary resurgence of Baller performance that will qualify the team for the league championship play off in September.

We should, however, moderate our enthusiasm; the resetting of the standings on Bastille Day means that the Ballers’week long success was achieved in what was, effectively, exhibition games.

To get an idea of what hoops the Ballers will have to jump through to become repeat league champions, I offer this outline of the play off process:

The first half champion from each division plays the second half champion. 
The second place teams in each division do the same.

·        

·The teams with the best overall records in the first half of the season get homefield advantage in the first round. 

·        

    The first round winners advance to the best of five Championship Series.

The tie breaking criteria are, in order:

Head-to-head record.

      Least runs allowed per game in the half in question half.

Best run differential per game in the half in question

The Ballers schedule for the coming week is

Tuesday, July 14: at Long Beach Coast, 6:35 pm

Wednesday, July 15: at Long Beach Coast, 6:35 pm

Thursday, July 16: at Long Beach Coast, 6:35 pm

Friday, July 17: Modesto Roadsters at Oakland, 6:35 pm (World Cup Night)

Saturday, July 18: Modesto Roadsters at Oakland, 4:15 pm (Ballermnia)

Sunday, July 19: Modesto Roadsters at Oakland, 1:05 pm (A Celebration of Rickie Henderson).

Enjoy the games! And the controversies.  I mean that seriously).