Oakland Ballers defeated the Long Beach Coast in Pioneer League action at Raimondi Park in Oakland on Sun Aug 16, 2026 (Oakland Ballers photo)

8/17/26 FBB eff 8/17/26

Monday, August 17, 2026

By Lewis Rubman

OAKLAND–This was a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde week for the Ballers. It began with the Modesto Roadsters rolling over them in a humiliating three game sweep at Raimondi and ended with an exhilarating 2-1 series win against the first half champion Long Beach Coast that was marred by lost opportunities and the anticlimactic endings of two of the contests. One was a loss; the other, a win. Both were decided by that carney sideshow, the Knock Out Inning.

Christian Díaz, the losing pitcher in the the first game of Oakland’s hellish home stand against the Rollers on Tuesday, August 11, would earn the save with his perfect ninth inning of relief against the heart of the Coast’s lineup in the final game of the Bs’ redemptive visit south on Sunday the sixteenth.

Noah Blythe, who allowed Oakland’s battered bullpen some needed respite in all three of the week’s no contests against the Roadsters, stayed in the outfield in the tight triumph on Sunday and made a controversial throw from left to third that I’ll discuss towards the end of this column.

My rule of thumb for the Pioneer Baseball League is that no lead ever is safe, but a lead of more
than six gives the team that enjoys it a chance to breath fairly easily. By this standard, the Roadsters could shift into overdrive at the end of the third. None of the Roadsters went hitless;
Ybarra, with a single and a double, was the only Baller to have a multi-hit game. Blythe, who allowed two runs, one of them unearned, was the most effective of Oakland’s four moundsmen. He allowed two hits, two walks, and plunked two batters.

Modesto Roadsters (24-1, 51-22) 026 044 201 19 19 1
Oakland Ballers (13-12, 35-38) 000 100 200 6 7 3

Winning pitcher: Omar Serrano (7-2) Losing pitcher: Christian Díaz (2-1)
Time: 3:07 Attendance: 2,6047

The J.T. Snowmen had a six run advantage even earlier on the twelfth. They were ahead, 10-0, after three innings of what was for them child’s play. Five of their six home runs cleared the fence in those three frames. Miles’ Militia again managed seven hits, but this time they resulted in a mere four runs. Ybarra once more was the only Baller with a multi-hit game. Blythe and Conner Smith hit four baggers. The Bs’ other Smith, Griffin, surrendered 10 runs, nine of them earned in his 2-2/3 inning cameo start. Blythe tossed—it’s hard to call what he did “pitching”—the ninth and gave up a run on two hits. Brady Chávez and Valek Cisneros also absorbed punishment.

Modesto Roadsters (25-1, 52-22) 424 102 011 15 17 1
Oakland Ballers (13-13,35-39) 000 220 000 4 7 1

Winning pitcher: Corbin Talley (8-1) Losing pitcher: Griffin Smith (2-6)
Time: 3:11 Attendance: 1,446

In retrospect, the most interesting part of the game also was the most boring. In the top of the fifth, with Modesto holding its usual commanding lead and Bryce Cannon at the plate, Tyler Williams stole second on a called strike. Cannon challenged the call, and his challenge was upheld. Home plate umpire Brian Kline seems to have interpreted this to mean that the action occurring immediately before his strike call, including Williams’ steal of second, was null and void. Accordingly, Kline told Williams to return to first. Modesto manager J.T. Snow argued long and hard with Kline and eventually told him that the Roadsters were playing the game under protest. This did not please the crowd. Perhaps the mildest epithet hurled at the one time Baller coach was “Snow Flake.” Of course, Snow withdrew the protest after the game ended in a Roadster win. The word “protest” echoed throughout Raimondi Field until the last out of the series was recorded. My view is that Snow was right to protest and that, in doing so, he actually was showing his respect for the Ballers by allowing for the possibility that it wasn’t over, as the sage Lawrence Berra would say, until it was over.

Thursday, August 13, again saw the Ballers lose by double digits. Ybarra continued his multi hit game streak, this time with three. Jake Allgeyer, Mitchell Sanford, and Tristan Moore were the only other B’s to hit safely. Noah Blythe tossed the ninth.

Modesto Roadsters (26-1,.53-22) 000 402 131 11 12 1
Oakland Ballers (13-14, 35-40) 000 001 000 1 6 1

Winning pitcher: Ethan Roarke (5-0) Losing pitcher: Hunter Day (0-4)
Time: 2:52 Attendance: 1,929

T.S. Eliot, whose parody of “Casey at the Bat” I reprinted in an earlier column, asked a question in his 1920 poem “Gerontion” that a lot of Ballers and their fans might have been asking themselves, “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?” (Or less philosophical words to that effect).

After Thursday’s debacle the B’s boarded their bus for the six and a half hour journey to Long Beach, where on the fourteenth, after 8-2/3 innings of doom and despair, they trailed the hosts and tormentors, 5-2. Then Tristan Moore, who had worked a one out, pinch hit walk, stole second. Conner Smith followed with a walk, and Zach Volker plunked Logan Johnstone to load the bases. This brought up Blythe, who lifted a fly ball to left center field. Center fielder Emilio Corona got to it and …. dropped the ball! Moore, Smith, and Johnstone scampered home with the tying runs. Nathan Darden, who had relieved starter David Thomas to start the home seventh, set down three of the four Coasters he faced in their half of the ninth. The exception was Corona, whose single couldn’t undue his costly error.

All the Ballers gained from these heroics was the chance for Ybarra to duel Cuba Bess in the farce the PBL proudly bills as the Knock Out Inning. The league’s leading home run hitter wasn’t able to deliver the goods, but the Coast’s Cuba Bess was.

The line score fails to convey the emotions this near recall to life aroused.

Oakland Ballers (13-15, 36-41) 000 000 203 5 6 0
Long Beach Coast (19-9, 55-20) 300 010 010 5 8 1

There was no winning or losing pitcher. Long Beach won in first round
of KO inning (Jeter Ibarra, 0; Cuba Bess, 1)

Time: 2:58 Attendance: 2,087

Saturday, the fifteenth, was, in many ways, a reversal of the previous night’s experience. This time it was the Coast who rallied from a three run deficit in the ninth to force a Knock Out Inning. And this time it was the Ballers who won the Shoot Out at the KO Corral.

Oakland Ballers (14-15, 36-41) 000 130 000 4 9 0
Long Beach Coast (19-10, 56-21) 000 001 003 4 8 1

There was no winning or losing pitcher. Oakland won in first round of KO
inning (Conner Smith, 1; Cuba Bess, 0)

Oakland’s starting pitcher, Ron Abe-Arias, could well be the best in the entire league. As a member of the hapless RedPocket Mobiles, he took a 9-5 lead into the ninth against the Ballers on August 2 and left the game after throwing 130 pitches in 8-1/3 innings only to see Jordan Hamberg surrender three runs, including Jeter Ybarra’s third homer of the game, to force a KO round, which Oakland won, Ybarra won for the B’s. On August 9, it was Abe-Arias, a baller by then, who sweltered through the Marysville meltdown that began Oakland’s precipitous losing streak. In this Saturday’s game, he went 8-2/3 frames before being replaced by Julio Romero, whose on and off control issues I’ve discussed a few times in these columns. Romero’s first offering was a wild pitch that allowed a run to be scored. He walked the next two Coast batters, one intentionally, before securing the final out and sending the teams into another knock out round.

The game also was notable for the way in which the B’s took the lead that enabled them to win in spite of having been shut out for the last four innings. All three of their runs came on two out hits.

Dr. Jekyll won his intense battle against the evil Mr. Hyde in the series finale on Sunday the sixteenth. That victory brought the Ballers an exciting win that evened their second half record and saved us from having to endure the anticlimax of a KO round.

Oakland Ballers (15-15. 37-41) 030 001 000 4 8 0
Long Beach Coast (19-11, 56-22) 000 010 020 3 5 2

Winning pitcher: Reed Butz (1-1) Losing pitcher: Brett Wozniak (3-1) Save: Christian Díaz (1)
Time: 2:44 Attendance: 1,083

The Coast threw a scare into the Ballers with a two run rally in the bottom of the eighth off of Tyler Bates, who followed Brock Mayer, who, in turn, had relieved starter Reed Butz, who had held the powerful Coast hitters to a lone run over six full innings.

Noah Blythe, the Ballers’ go to tosser in lost causes, remained in right field during Bates’s stint on the mound and caused some consternation with a throw he made with one run in, which made it a 4-2 ball game, and left the bases loaded. Anthony Mata lifted a fly that Blythe captured for the second out and then threw to third. That allowed Benjamin Rosengard to score, narrowing the gap to 4-3. Jacob Jablonsky, who was on second, hadn’t given any indication that he would try to advance, so it appeared that, by not throwing to the plate, Blythe had given Long Beach a run without gaining anything in return.

I see the situation as more complicated than that. Bates averages about a walk an inning; he already had walked one batter and hit another in this frame. There was no indication that Rosengard would have been out if Blythe had thrown home, and there was a reasonable chance the B’s might commit one of their frequent relay misplays, putting two runners in scoring position.

In any case, Robert Pitts fouled out to Smith, and the Ballers could breath a little easier.
But they still couldn’t put any more space between themselves and the Coast.

The trepidation among the Balleromanes when manager Aaron Miles chose Díaz to close out the game wasn’t unfounded, especially in view of his poor performance in his last start, against Modesto on the eleventh.

The tension increased when the slugger Cooper Vest, leading off, pinch hit for Spence Coffman and fouled off six straight pitches before fanning with a full count on Díaz’s eleventh offering. It increased even further when Cuba Bess went to another full count; in this one, seven pitches were thrown before he grounded out to second to end the game.

Since my last column, the Ballers announced the following transactions:

—Signed James Pazdera on August 15.

—Cam Bufford was placed on the 60 day Injury List and reinstated Charlie Hurley from the Ineligible List on August 12.

—Signed Ethan Crawford, who had been their bullpen catcher, to their roster, placed Ahmad Harajli on irrevocable waivers, and placed Charlie Hurley on the 10 day Injury List on August 14.

From now until the end of the season or their elimination from contention, every Baller game will be crucial. Tomorrow, Tuesday, August 18, the B’s jump out of the frying pan and into the fire, AKA Modesto for the first of a three game set-to. All of the encounters are scheduled to start at 7:11 in the evening1.
Then the two rivals will come to 20th and Wood for games on the usual week end times of 6:35, 4:35, and 1:05. In addition to the usual themes, August 22nd will be El día de los Ballers, with the first 750 fans receiving a free Lucha Libre mask.