The Oakland Ballers lost a tough contest against the Ogden Raptors on Thu May 22, 2025 at Raimondi Park in Oakland (Oakland Ballers photo)

Ogden Raptors (2-1) 250 240 000 13 11 2

Oakland Ballers (1-2) 103 004 001 9 14 3

Time: 3:14

Attendance: 3,118

Thursday, May 22, 2025

By Lewis Rubman

OAKLAND–On this chilly Thursday evening in May, more suitable to football than to baseball, the Ogden Raptors thrashed the Oakland Ballers by the football score of 13-9. It would have been a close game had they been playing that other sport. But they weren’t, and it wasn’t.

Ironically, the drubbing came as a moral victory for the Oaklanders. They had endured two innings of self-inflicted misery that would have caused a lesser outfit to abandon all hope, but the flawed hometown heroes kept a slim but real hope alive until the penultimate put out.

Carter Mize’s two run shot over the right field fence off starting pitcher Mac Lardner put the Raptors up 2-0 in the first. The Ballers responded by scraping up a run in the bottom of the frame on Tramayne Cobb’s leadoff double, two walks and a throwing error by shortstop Elliot Good on Cam Buffard’s grounder We now had the makings of a tight ball game.

They ended in the top of the second, in which the Raptors made 11 plate appearances, but they didn’t bat around the order; they walked around it. The visitors scored five runs on two hits, both singles, and five bases on balls.

Ogden tagged on two more tallies in the fourth and another four in the fifth, in which the B’s found new ways to self-destruct. Good led off with a single to right. In the next two plays, the Ballers made errors on sacrifice bunts. Edwin de la Cruz reached first on a throwing error by pitcher Brady Eglite, who had mercifully relieved Lardner after he had faced six batters in the second without retiring any of them. Kenny Oyama then reached first on a throwing error and took second on the ensuing action, in which de la Cruz advanced to third and Good scored. De la Cruz then crossed the plate on a passed ball, Oyama taking third. The Raptors picked up two more runs by more conventional methods (a single and a sac fly) before they were done.

From the depths of this despair, with fans deserting Ernie Raimondi Park in droves, the Ballers battled back. Cobb smacked a one out double to right off of Braydon Bonner, who had relieved Matthew Colucci, who in turn had relieved starter Eli Ellliott in the bottom the fifth.

Lou Helmig drove Cobb home with a single, also to right and then reached third on when Davis Drewek got yet another single. He, too, advanced 180 feet on a single to right, this one off the bat of Christian Almanza, driving in Helmig. Bufford’s double to left plated Drewek.

Michael O’Hara followed up with as ground out to first, which brought in Oakland’s fourth and final run of the frame. The B’s still trailed, 13-8, but the worm had turned. They still had a shot at a comeback. They managed to score an unearned run in the ninth, but that was all they could muster.

But the team’s self respect had been restored. They even outhit their guests, 14-11, but with so many gifts of walks and errors, the Raptors really didn’t need many hits. They used five pitchers to subdue the B’s, the win going to Colucci. Manager Aaron Miles and pitching coach Jim Dedrick also sent a quintet to the mound. A trio—Carson Lambert, Conner Sullivan, and Cameron Edmonson—kept Ogeden off the board over the final four frames, two of which were handled by Lambert. The loss went to Lardner, now 0-1 with a gaudy ERA of 63.00.

Colucci was the winning pitcher. There was no save.

The season’s still young; 93 games still remain in it. There’s room for plenty for surprises. Let’s wait until Friday, evening at 6:35pm to see what new ones await us in the fourth game of this six game series.