Oakland Ballers Treymayne Cobb (3) runs around the field but not around the bases. In the Pioneer League a hitter doesn’t run the bases in a KO round if it’s a home run. Cobb hit one out in the first round of the KO at Raimondi Park in Oakland (photo by Oakland Ballers X)

Ogden Raptors (0-1) 000 010 300 0 4 6 2

Oakland Ballers (1-0) 001 000 003 1 5 11 2

Decided in 1st KO Round

Time: 2:59

Attendance: 4,100

Tuesday, May 20, 2025

By Lewis Rubman

OAKLAND–Tuesday night’s season opener, played between the Ogden Raptors and the Oakland Ballers before a festive sell-out crowd of 4,100, was a game of constantly revised expectations. Oakland’s Tremayne Cobb, Jr., playing in his first professional game, went five for five and won the game for the Ballers by smacking a home run in the first knockout round, an innovation that is the Pioneer League’s contribution to the theater of the absurd.

Ballers’ speedy third baseman, Cam Buffard made a costly error in the seventh frame in a situation that was set up by an infield single on which he easily might have been charged with an error, after which his high throw to second on what had started out as an around the horn double play ended up as a rare 5-4-3 ground out.

His ground out to second with runners on second and third in the bottom of the ninth stalled the Ballers’ rally that ended up tying the regulation portion of the game and forcing the knockout round. Luke Short, Oakland’s starting pitcher, pitched four beautiful innings, striking out seven Raptors without granting a base on balls and allowing only one hit before running out of steam and failing to retire even one opponent in the top of the fifth.

Ogden seemed to have wrapped up the contest with its three run outburst in the seventh only to be forced into a tie when Oakland’s bats finally came alive in the bottom of the ninth.

That set the stage of Ballers’ anticlimactic knockout victory. Under the K.0 rule, each team designates different hitters until a winner is a hitter who is allowed five swings against a pitcher provided by his own team or five minutes at the plate, whichever comes first.

The winner is determined by which team hits the most homers. If the round ends in a tie, each team selects a new batter, and the process is repeated until one of the teams mercifully breaks it.

Tuesday night, Ogden chose their catcher, Chris Sargent, who led them in home runs last season and had gone one for four in the game. He took five swings, none of them successful. Cobb’s first was.

None of Ogden’s batters hit for extra bases, although two of them had multi-hit night’s, Edwin de la Cruz (three for three with a couple of RBI) and Damian Stone (two for four). Bufford legged out a double for Oakland.

There was no winning or losing pitcher.

The Pioneer League follows a schedule of six consecutive games, Tuesday through Sunday, between the same two teams, so Wednesday will see another 6:30pm PDT contest between Tuesday night’s opponents. The starting pitchers haven’t yet been announced.