Sports Radio Service

Oakland Ballers outfielder Noah Blythe (27) take a big cut at the plate against the visiting Yuba Sutter Freebirds on Sat Jul 4, 2026 at Raimondi Field in Oakland (Oakland Ballers photo)

Monday, July 6, 2026

By Lewis Rubman

OAKLAND–When, on June 28^th, the Ballers closed out their home stand with back to back wins over the team formerly known as the Yolo High Wheelers but now sporting the moniker Yuba-Sutter Freebirds, it wasn’t unreasonable to hope that the Raimondi Rowdies had recovered the knack of flirting with disaster but going to bed with success. But when the Pioneer Baseball League resumed play this past Tuesday, June 30^th, the Ballers fell back into their newly acquired bad habit of ceding the last and deciding comeback to their opponent. 

That opponent was the Long Beach Coast, a new entrant in the PBL’s newly named and restructured South Division of the Pioneer Baseball League. As a new creation, the Coast don’t have an old name they could discard, but they manage to have an alias, the Regulators, which they often spring on their opponents. Whatever name the tenants of Blair Field assume, they also have a hell of a lot of talent. When the July 4^th week end was over, they led the 12 team circuit with a won-lost record of 32-10, a half a game ahead of the runner up Billings Mustangs.

The Ballers, on the other hand, were like the little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead; when she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad, she was horrid. Milton Berle changed that to “when she was bad, she was popular.” That’s not the case with the Ballers anywhere outside of their home territory. as the three digit attendance figures for several of their road games indicate, but there’s no denying that they’ve been playing some pretty horrid baseball recently. It showed in the line score.for the last day of June

Oakland Ballers (16-22)                     100 400 101      7  11  1

Long Beach Coast (30-8)                   000 313 001      8   9   1

Winning pitcher: Zach Voelker (2-2)   Losing pitcher: Matthew Maloney (1-1) 

Time: 3:12   Attendance: 1,984

Valek Cisneros, who was winner of the B’s previous game, in which they had defeated Yuba-Sutter in Oakland, opened the door for the Long Beach victory on Tuesday. He entered the game in the sixth inning, trying to protect a 5-4 lead and allowed three runs on a hit, two walks, and a wild pitch. To his credit, only one of those runs was earned, but that was enough to tie the score at five. The unearned tallies put Oakland fell behind, 7-5. A Conner Smith homer to left closed the gap to a single run in the top of the seventh. 

The Ballers almost pulled off when of their vaunted comebacks when, with two out and the bases empty, in the top of the ninth, Jeter Ybarra blasted a 2-0 pitch over the left field wall to knot the score at seven.

It was up to Matthew Mahoney, coming in to relieve Connor Goodwin, to hold the Coast in check and take us to a knock out round. He walked Cuba Bess on four pitches. Jaylen Edmonds ran for Bess and promptly stole second. Jacob Jablonski walked on the ninth pitch of a full count walk. Anthony Mata lay down a sacrifice bunt, fielded by Mahoney. This text book move allowed Johnny Pappas’s sacrifice fly to left to score the winning run of this too  little, too late disappointment.

The new month saw a variation on the theme with which the old month had ended. Oakland made a valiant comeback attempt that fell just short and lost to Long Beach, 8-7. A detail of the line score rubs Long Beach salt water in the Ballers’ wounds; they outhit their hosts, 15-1.

Oakland Ballers (17-2)              001 100 122           7  15  1

Long Beach Coast (30-8)           015 020 00x           8   5   1

Winning pitcher: Jake Dixon (2-0)   Losing pitcher: Charlie Hurley (1-3)

Time: 3:14   Attendance: 736.

It was close, but no cigar. Cole Percival relieved Steve Odorica after he had walked Allgeyer to open the visitors’ ninth. A Collura double and Ybarra single, and a passed ball with Brendan O’Sullivan at bat with two down allowed the B’s to draw tantalizingly close, but O’Sullivan fanned, stranding Ybarra on second

There were some interesting personnel notes to this night’s happening. One of the few portions of the PBL’s rule book that are available to the public are those pertaining to eligibility. One of those rules authorizes each team to carry a franchise player. The requirements for such a designation are that the player

·       Must have previously played at least two full years in the PBL.

·       Must have finished the immediately prior season on that specific club’s roster.

·       Can only be tagged as a Franchise Player for a maximum of one year.

·       Can serve in a player-coach capacity. 

Cole Percival, the reliever who almost blew the game in the ninth is the son of the Coast’s skipper, Troy Percival..

The other personnel item is that Oakland’s starting pitcher, Nick Bautista, who pitched decently by Pioneer League standards (two runs, both earned, on seven hits, two walks, and a hit batter in 4-2/3 innings, was traded by Oakland to Long Beach before the season began. For some reason, unknown to me, the trade was voided or never was consummated.

July 2^nd  offered us a change from the couldof/wouldof spectacles of the two previous days, a complete baller meltdown. The Coast beat up on four Oakland pitchers to win, 14-1.  It was the reductio ad absurdum of a Ballers blown lead; the B’s led, 1-0, after 2-1/2 innings of play.

They never threatened again, making it easy for southpaw Garrett VanDeventer to throw the first complete game since the league was founded in 2024.           

The B’s hit into two double plays and blew several chances to turn them against Long Beach in the middle innings.

Oakland Ballers (16-23)         010 000 000      1   9  3

Long Beach Coast (31-8)       003 002 45x     14 10 1

Winning pitcher: Garrett VanDeventer (3-0)   Losing pitcher: Griffin Smith             (0-2)

Time: 2:37   Attendance: 1,089

The Oakland entourage returned home at about 10:00 the next morning, Friday, July 3, before moving on to a 7:11 start in Modesto that evening. At least they would have a legitimate excuse for a sloppy performance. And they did make play sloppy baseball, O’Sullivan let a double play ball pop out of his glove and hit third base umpire  Alan Walker cost only one run, but it set the tone for a team that already was in a slump, not having won a single game so far on this road trip.. That was the only error chalked up against the B’s, but  subsequent plays like Leehee’s failure to corral Santos’s perfect throw that turned what would have been the third out in the seventh into a double for 최병용 (that’s Byungyong Choi to you and me) are errors that don’t show up on the score sheet. Bradford’s misadventures in left during the wind tossed eighth were explicable because his recent role had been DH. Explicable or not, they had a lethal effect and sealed the Ballers eventual and seemingly inevitable doom. Neither his bumbling nor the exculpatory history behind it is a matter of statistical record.

Bad base running, like Cobb’s attempt to stretch a single in the fifth are costly self defeating mistakes but  are missing in action when you look at the box or line score.

Speaking of which, the grim line score went like this (note the early two run lead, that marks the kiss of death):

Oakland Ballers (16-24)                  200 010 000    3  9   1

Modesto Roadsters  (25-15)            013 000 03x    7 13  0

Winning pitcher: Anthony Díaz (1-0)   Losing pitcher: Hunter Day (0-1)

Time: 2:45   Attendance: 4,37

The Ballers’ 8-4 come from behind victory on Independence Day offered a glimpse of their ability to lose a lead and then regain it, raising hopes that, although long eliminated from the first half championship race, the team might come back and still qualify for the league crown with a second half surge. But it also demonstrated how damaging the squad’s sloppy play could be. Again, there were reasons for the sloppiness: Friday’s physically and emotionally exhausting game, the holiday’s  2:50 game time, and the 94^o heat were challenges withwhich  both teams had to contend. The Ballers did it better.

Oakland Ballers (17-24)                100 210 022     8  15   2

Modesto Roadsters (25-16)           012 100 000     4   8    0  

Winning pitcher: Valek Cisneros (1-0)    Losing pitcher: Preston Kelly (0-1)

Tremayne Cobb once more led the Oakland attack, going three for five, including a home run to left on the second pitch of the game and an RBI double to center in the eighth episode. He hit another two bagger to center in the ninth. that one producing two runs. C.J. Blowers, the number one hurler in the Ballers rotation ,started the game for the B’s. As usual, he pitched decently by PBL standards, giving up four runs, all earned, on eight hits in 5-2/3 innings. He is the son of journeyman third baseman Mike Blowers, who played 129 games and hit .237 for or the Oakland Athletics (remember them?) in 1998.His moment  of glory in that lackluster season came on May 18, when he hit for the cycle against the White Sox. He went on to become the television commentator of the Seattle Mariners. Here’s a link to his contribution to baseball lore. It’s worth watching and listening to:. https://www.facebook.com/Mariners/videos/happy-birthday-to-mariners-broadcaster-mike-blowers-/1823433321474713/

The bottom of the sixth in the July Fourth game illustrates why frequent mistakes, whatever their circumstantial causes may be, have long run consequences. Valek Cisneros relieved Blowers with the Ballers hanging on to a 4-3 lead and a runner on first and one away. Osiris Johnson hit the ball to Brian O’Sullivan at third (remember him from the previous night’s fiasco?), and, instead the side being retired, Modesto now had the potential tying run in scoring position and the potential leading run on first. Cisneros fanned Justin Boyd and then made his own fielding error, putting both runners in scoring position. Cisneros then retired the dangerous Tyler Williams, who finished the day with a .362 batting average, on a seven pitch groundout to second..

When you can’t trust your fielders to do their job, you’ll try to strike out every batter you face, and that’s no way to do your job.  This time, Cisneros did his (if you forget about his own fielding lapse)), and Langston Burkett, who replaced him for the home half of the ninth, did his, and the Ballers survived to play a rubber game on Sunday, July 5.

They should have saved themselves the trouble. A game time of 11:00 in the morning of Sunday, July 5 and a temperature that reached into the 90s didn’t help, even though the Oaklanders had spent the night at Modesto’s Double Tree Hilton.

The game was such so long and lopsided that the official scorer didn’t bother to record the time of the final out or calculate the duration of the non contest.. (I found it by clicking on to the Ballers’ Youtube channel and checking the length of the broadcast).

Oakland Ballers (17-25)        000 003 001     4 14  0

Modesto Roadsters (26-16)   520 571 00x    20 22  0

Winning pitcher: Devyn Hernández (3-1,4.57)   Losing pitcher: Aiden Risse (1-5,4.51)

     Time: 3:40   Attendance: 455

Although Oakland’s offense managed only four runs, it did put together 14 hits. Modesto jumped ahead and never was headed off. All of Oakland’s runs were scored in two innings, three in the sixth and one in the ninth.

(Y)our battered Ballers hope to bounce back tomorrow, Tuesday the seventh, in the first of three more games against the Roadsters, this time in Raimondi Park.  As they always are on Tuesdays in Ballerland, the cheap seats go for two dollars.  The theme for this game is

“Immigrants: We Get the Job Done,” and the pin that the first 750 fans will receive looks like a grand addition to your collection (if you have one).

Game time is 6:35, the same as on the remaining weekday contests. That consistency might introduce a welcome element of stability for the Ballers as they try to regroup for the season’s second half, which will start in a week, on Tuesday, July 14.