Oakland Ballers rallied for ten runs against the Yuba-Sutter Freebirds in the top of the second inning for a 16-10 win on Sun Sep 6, 2026 (Oakland Ballers photo)

Wed Sep 9, 2026

By Lewis Rubman

OAKLAND–Walter Huston sang “Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December, but the days grow short when you reach September.” Or as Lawrence Berra told us more prosaicly, “It gets late early this time of the  year.”

But sometimes, as happened the bottom of the eighth on the first of the month, when the Freebirds of Yuba-Sutter turned a 7-3 Baller lead into a 10-7 Freeboard triumph, it seemed as though a half inning would last forever. Even the following day, when the 10-7 game went Oakland’s way, their hosts  managed to make the home half of the sixth last what felt like an eternity as they they fit all their runs into that slowly stretched out frame.

When the season ended with Sunday’s kaleidoscopic win over the Firebirds, time seemed to have expanded and contracted  like an accordion that sometimes plays beautiful music and at others emits flatulent noises.

Let’s take a brief glance at each of the week’s games and then begin to see if we can make heads or tails out of them. Then we can begin to endulge in the post mortems, predictions, and other entertainments of the hot stove league.

9/1:

Winning pitcher: Rane Pffeifer (4-1)    Losing pitcher: Tyler Bates (2-1)
Time: 3:13   Attendance: 702

This game contained the eighth inning from hell, when the Ballers blew a 7-4 lead. Tyler Bates took over mound duties for Jame Pazdera, who had allowed two runs in his three innings in relief of Christian Díaz before yielding a lead off single to Issac Núñez. Bates walked Cam Yuran. Then Núñez pilferred third and scored on Zab Roos’s single that moved Yuran into scoring position. What followed seemed almost inevitable: a passed ball, a two RBI double by Cooper Hext, a walk, another stolen base, a sac fly, and a shower for Bates. Nathan Darden came in to pitch, and the onslaught continued with a stolen base, an error by Brandon O’Sullivan at short, and a single by Josh Duarte that brought in two more Freebird runs. Darden had time to unleash a wild pitch before he fanned Núñez to retire the side.

9/2:

Winning pitcher: Brock Mayer (3-0)    Losing pitcher: Tristan Wolf (4-5)
Time: 2:55   Attendance: 444

The tables were turned in this game, with Oakland coming out on top in another 10-7 slugfest .  David Thomas allowed a mere two hits in five innings of shutout ball. Brady Chåvez also surrendered two hits, but he did it in just a third of an inning, during which he managed to cough up half a dozen runs, all of them earned. Brock Mayer, who allowed an unearned run in his 3-2/3 innings on the mound, earned the win.

9/3:

There was no winning or losing pitcher. Yuba-Sutter won in second round of
KO inning.  (Round 1: Oak: Tristan Moore [0]. Y-S: Cooper Hext [0]. Round 2: Oak: Jeter Ybarra [0]. Y-S: Andrew Kirchner [1])

Time: 2:47   Attendance: 356. (10-15 minute rain delay in top of 1st)

In another topsy-turvy set-to, Ren Abe Arias pitched a complete game, which in the PBL means nine innings rather than pitching from the beginning to the end of the contest. The Japanese-Mexican right handed ace got a no decision, and the B’s suffered a loss when neither Tristan Moore nor Jeter Ybarra for Oakland nor Cooper Hext for Yuba-Sutter could hit a fair ball out of Bryant Field in two minutes or five swings, Andrew Kirchner got the one “home run” he needed to give the Freebirds credit for a win.

Abe Arias was superb, not allowing a baserunner in the four opening frames. Kirchner made a frame of his own; before he closed the scoring with his fatal blow in the Shootout in the KO Corral, he had broken the tie and the perfecto with with a homer to right  in the fifth, closing Oakland’s lead from 2-0 to  2-1. The Freebirds went up, 3-2 in the sixth on three singles, a sacrifice bunt and a sacrifice fly. Walks to Santos, Sanford, and Johnstone and sac fly from Ybarra enabled the B’s retied the  game, setting up the carnival side show.

9/4:

Pitching coach Jim Dedrick was manager for a day, replacing Aaron Miles this Friday evening. Miles served as first base coach. It’s unclear if this move has any long term significance.

Winning pitcher: James Pazdera (1-0)   Losing pitcher: Eric Vasser (1-1)
Save: Nathan Darden (1)

Time: 3:39   Attendance: 1,076

This was the game in which Ybarra drove in his 107th run of the season, making him the team’s all time (i.e., three year) leader in that category. It also was Pandora’s first win  as a proand Darden’s first save as a Baller.

9/5:

Winning pitcher: Riley Egloff (6-6)   Losing pitcher: Hunter Day (0-6)  Save: Rane Pfeifer (3)
Time: 2:15   Attendance: 809

Hunter Day pitched seven excellent innings and left trailing, 2-1, He threw 101 pitches, and both runs were earned. He gave up five hits and three walks. Julio Rosario wasn’t as ineffective as he often is, but the home run he surrendered to Zach Chamizo after retiring the first two batters he faced, put this uncharacteristic low scoring  game effectively out of reach,

9/6:

Winning pitcher: Brock Mayer (4-0)   Losing pitcher :Isaiah Williams (2-3)
Time: 3:09   Attendance: 892

Last day of the season games are notorious for their eccentricities. I’m thinking of Bert Campaneris playing a new position each inning in 1965 and Babe Ruth pitching in 1930 and 1933. Managers of teams headed for the post season used to give their usual batters an extra day of rest by letting pitchers play on the bases or in the outfield. In this season’s Baller finale, Noah Blythe, the position player who frequently gave the bullpen a rest by tossing the last inning or so of blowout losses, started for the Ballers. He moved to right in the second frame but returned to the mound with two down in the bottom of the ninth to the bookend his day. James Pazdera, who was pitching when Blythe took over, caught the last out, Kyle Carlson’s fly to right, the position Blythe had just vacated.


A  weak bullpen was a frequent problem for Oakland all season long. Today, Brock Mayer was an exception. Although he yielded a half a dozen runs in his six innings on the bump, only one was earned. He still closed out the season with an ERA of 6.41.

What follows is compilation of thoughts I’ve had about where the Ballers stand and what they stand for. It doesn’t pretend to be definitive or complete. I’d welcome comments, disagreements, and corrections, but mainly clarifications. My judgements may seem harsh, but they are tentative. When I categorize statements as ambiguous, it’s because the situation they refer to is complicated; I’m  not implying that the person or organization involved is being duplicitous, although we never can rule out that possibility.

Even before the season began there were signs of trouble. Lou Helmig had left Oakland and taken  his .884 OPS with him.. BTW, the first baseman’s father had managed Team Germany in the 2016 World Baseball Classic Qualifying Round. That team came within a hare’s breath of defeating eventual runner up Nicaragua. One time Oakland Athletic Bruce Maxwell was one of Helmig Sr,’s charges in the 10 inning battle that eliminated the Germans. Gone, too, was Michael O’Hara, whose marvelous catch, crashing into the left field wall in the ninth inning of game four was instrumental in the B’s comeback win in finals. Oakland was overwhelmed, 13-1 in marked contrast to their  respectable 5-2 defeat in ‘25.

The season started off in sub mediocre fashion, but the defending league champions started to get their act together  in the last week of the first half. The loss of Tremayne Cobb to a leg injury contributed to the Bs’  nose dive at the start of the second half, in which they lost all of the first seven games. That the team finished the half with a winning percentage of .500 was a hopeful sign for 2027, but no more to be counted on than a one run lead in the first inning of any PBL game.   The Ballers announced that the seemingly inexplicable trade of Player of the Week Jake Allgeyer to Mahoning Valley Scrappers on August 10 was made to enable him to be near his family. This raises the possibility that Allgeyer’s need was temporary and that he would be his own player to be named later. Joey Winters, who replaced Allgeyer on the roster, bolstered the team in its end of the season run. So perhaps what that complex story may end up with a happy ending. Jeter Ybarra had first impressed Ballers management with his swing; they didn’t think of him as a power hitter. He surprised a lot of people by able to both hit and hit for power, although  his home run total stagnated after he hit his 33rd of the season. Still, the erstwhile first baseman, who moved to third when Winters took over at first, kept right on hitting.  Ybarra finished the 2026 season with a new Oakland Ballers single-season record of 110 RBIs. During the home stretch, he surpassed the previous franchise mark previously held by Christian Almanza (105 )  and capped it off with a 3-for-5 performance and his 34th home run in the season finale. He ended up setting new records for a single season in batting average (.356), hits (144), and doubles (32). Of course, you have to remember that the team is only three seasons old.

Ren Abe Aris and Hunter Day are among the best of the pitchers in the league. If Oakland can retain their services for 2027, the team could be a serious contender to regain the crown it lost this year.  

Much of the Ballers’ revenue is derived from the merchandise it sells. Indeed, in many ways it’s the Oaklandish company team. That doesn’t invalidate their claim to be a community team. Oaklandish doesn’t sell only a variety of merch, as it’s called these days; it also sells Oakland and provides jobs for people who live there. In many ways it resembles Sid Bercovich’s family furniture company, the sponsor of several youth teams that played most of their home games at 20th and Wood for decades. It was good publicity for the store,  provided training and guidance for the youngsters, and was a source of pride to the community.   Some of baseball’s greatest players of the middle to late twentieth century major leagues were nurtured by that experience. They include National Baseball Hall of Fame Inductees Frank Robinson, Rickey Henderson, Joe Morgan, Willie Stargell, and Randy Johnson.

Other big leaguers who played for Bercovich sponsored teams are Curt Flood, who in spite of Barbara Lee’s proclamation on Curt Flood Day in 2026 that called him an Oakland native. was born in Houston, Vada Pinson, Dave Stewart, Bill Rigney, Jackie Jensen, Don Wakamatsu, Kevin Maas, Tommy Harper, and Charlie Beamon.

You can do well by doing good.

Another source of confusion is the tendency of articles on the PBL and Ballers web sites to conflate the Pioneer Baseball League, founded in 2022 and the Pioneer League, founded in 1939.   No one would conflate the American Association—which, like the PBLA, is an MLB partner league; Lou Helmig played for its Fargo-Moorehead franchise this year)—with the highest ranking (aside from the special status briefly accorded the PCL) in the minor leagues from 1902 to 1962 and 1969 to 1997, or with the major league American Association, sometimes fondly and sometimes reprovingly nicknamed The Beer  and Whisky League.  Moses Fleetwood Walker, the first openly Black major league player, earned that distinction  in 1884 with the Toledo Blue Stockings of that American Association.

Moses Fleetwood Walker (Photo: Wikipedia)

During the season, I frequently complained about the scoreboard and PA system’s failure to provide information in a timely fashion, as when pitching and position changes went unannounced for innings at a time. It’s hard to receive and give that sort of data when you’re attending to other tasks, and the Ballers’ staff is extremely multi-tasked; there’s bound to be slippage. Helping users of the team’s complex web site takes a lot of time away from workers charged with other duties. Ballers broadcasts on their youtube channel spend an inordinate amount of time soliciting and responding to comments on their chatbox; so much time attention that the on field action seems like a brief distraction to the chattering. I understand that the chatbox helps build a community and a sense of belonging, but I believe that the balance between reporting a ball game and discussing the strangest pet you’ve ever heard of needs some readjustment.

The Ballers have renamed their overworked, excessively multi tasked  staffers “associates.” They are workers, and to call them “associates” creates the sort of confusion that blurs the difference between owners, investors, and stockholders. The Certificate of Fan Ownership says it “is given to fan investors….,” but  only stockholders really own the team. It reminds me of when I worked for the welfare department and the state  decided to call the people we served “customers” instead of  “clients,” because the latter was demeaning. I’d like to see how the people who hire lawyers would react to being called “customers.”

The absence of real toilets at Raimondi remains a problem. Investors were told just before the season began that there were inspection problems that would delay the replacement of the malodorous otherwise unsavory portapotties. On September 29, team president Yeshaya Goldfarb frankly described the problem as financial. The two reasons for the delay aren’t mutually exclusive, but they are an indication of how unsettled puzzling the state of the Ballers can be.

I pause In these confused initial post season broodings to gaze into my crystal ball. From what I see there, I’d say the outlook for the Ballers in the next twelve months is cloudy. Let’s hope that one of those clouds is Cloud Nine.