The Pioneer League first half champions Oakland Ballers continue to roll with a win over the Rocky Mountain Vibes 9-0 on Fri Jul 11, 2025 (Oakland Ballers x photo)

Rocky Mountain Vibes (22-23) 000 000 000 0 5 1

Oakland Ballers (35-11) 015 020 10x 9 12 3

Time: 2:47

Attendance:2,872

Friday, July 11, 2025

By Lewis Rubman

OAKLAND–Who says a baseball game has to be close, or even significant, to be interesting? Certainly not the first half champion Oakland Ballers and the Rocky Mountain Vibes, the team they defeated on Thursday the 10th to clinch the championship and who fell to the champs this Friday the 11th by the overwhelming score of 9-0 in an anti-climactic game that featured, as the result indicates, excellent offense and defence by the home team and a series of of out of the ordinary events that kept the crowd of 2,872 entertained but by no means on edge of their seats.

Here’s a partial list of those happenings: Cam Bufford, usually a DH or third baseman, played first base for the entire nine innings. Six different players occupied the seventh slot in the batting order; five of them were pitchers, and three of them actually threw at least one pitch in anger.

The two more were pinch hitters, and one, Zach St. Pierre (who else?) was a pinch runner. Lou Helmig, whose sixth inning opposite field single drove in the tie breaking run in Thursday’s tense victory, drove in three runs in tonight’s laugher, two of them on a fifth inning round tripper.

The B’s scored their first run in the second frame. Their first hit came in the third, a two out homer by Bufford that ignited a five run outburst that sealed the Vibes’ doom The visitors showed some slight signs of life in their last turns at the plate.

Ryan Pierce, making a rare start at the hot corner for Oakland, committed three errors in the game. Two of them enabled Rocky Mountain’s first two ninth inning batters to reach base. This didn’t faze Adam Bogasian, one of the half dozen seventh slotters, who promptly fanned Will Butcher, and got Stephen Wilmer, the ex-Baller who had homered the night before, to hit into a 1-3 DP.

Bogasian seemed to pick the ball that had been shot to him right out of his hip pocket Noah Millikan earned the win with six innings of four hit shutout ball.

That’s the Pioneer League equivalent of a complete game. Calem Franzin, along with Bogasian one of the pair of seventh slotters who didn’t make a plate appearance, gave up one hit and struck out four in his two innings. Bogasian mopped up the mess in the top of the ninth.

Nick Leehey, giving Tremayne Cobb a day off from playing short, and Esai Santos, filling in for second sacker Danny Harris, were the only Baller starters to go hitless. Helmig led the team in hits, with three. Tyler Losano had gone one for one when what could have been a damaged hamstring pulled him out of action and precipitated the overcrowding of the seventh spot in the order.

The fun and games will resume Saturday, afternoon at 4:35, followed by the last game of the first half of the season on Sunday the 13th at 1:35.