Oakland Ballers battled the Red Pocket Mobiles (Oakland Ballers X ;photo)
Jun 1st through 8th coverage
By Lewis Rubman
OAKLAND–There was reason to feel that the Ballers, having swept a six game series at home against the hapless RedPocket Mobiles were on a roll as they left for a 12 game tour of the North (previously known as the Mountain) Division of the Pioneer Baseball League. Those half a dozen wins had evened the defending circuit’s defending champs’ season record at 6-6.
They were on a roll, all right, but it was downhill, at least for their three encounters with the Glacier Range Riders, who play in the beautiful Glacier Bank Park in Kalispell, MT, just outside of Whitefish, which is, if it hasn’t changed since I was there some 30 years ago, a one horse town version of Las Vegas without the glitz, notable for its bars and gambling parlors.
After the Ballers put Kalispell in their rear view mirror, they had begun to experience a modicum of success. But when the team left Grand Rapids and headed for Missoula following yesterday’s frustrating defeat, the Miles Militia was ninth in the 12 team PBL’s standings. Only the 1-7 RedPocket Mobiles trailed them in the six team South Division.
The road weary Ballers and manager Aaron Miles would have quite some time and distance toto go before they can sleep easy. Avenging the 2-1 series defeat Missoula’s Paddleheads handed them in the opening series at Riamondi will be a tough order to fill. Remember that the Ballers won the 2026 league title by beating the PaddleHeads in the final three games, played in Oakland, after Mousoula had won the two games played on their home turf.
I don’t know which was more dispiriting, the first two mismatches, in which the Oaklanders were clobbered from start to finish or the final encounter of the series, when, after two thrilling comebacks, the B’s went into the bottom of the ninth with a four run advantage, only to blow the lead when T.J. McKenzie dropped Tommy Rover’s two out fly in deep center field, and then lose the knockout round on a last second home run by the Glaciers Jake Millan in the first round.
The ugly line scores of the Tuesday and Wednesday games give you all you need to know about the poor accounting the Ballers gave of themselves. On Tuesday, the rough Range Riders rode over the Ballers in the first frame, plating six earned runs against Joel Tornero, who gave up six walks to the eight Glacier batters he faced and hitting another. His replacement, Michael Riley, staved off the hosts for four innings, but the damage had been done and was irreparable.
R H E
Oakland Ballers (6-7) 100 001 000 2 8 0
Glacier Range Riders (10-3) 600 002 00x 8 4 0
Winning pitcher: Evan Langston (2-0) Losing pitcher Joel Tornero (0-1)
Time: 2:37 Attendance: 1,516
Wednesday’s line score reads like the summary of a horror story.
R H E
Oakland Ballers (6-8) 001 000 000 1 6 1
Glacier Range Riders (11-3) 500 070 01x 13 11 0
Winning pitcher: Jared Engman (1-0) Losing pitcher: Derek Murphy (0-2)
Time: 2:50 Attendance: 1,553
The Thursday game merits a bit more detail., but before I comment on it, I’d like to say a few parenthetical words on the knockout round, a rule the Pioneer League uses to decide what used to be extra inning contests. The procedure, on which the PBL prides itself, is a home run derby. Lots of fans enjoy watching batting practice; many arrive early to watch it, some in hopes of snagging a ball; others, as amateur scouts.
MLB’s All Star Week home run derby is a fan favorite, but neither batting practice nor the home run derby decides the outcome of a game. Who wants to watch nine innings of tight, exciting baseball only to hang around for what boils down to post game BP to determine the winner? The only answer I can think of is gamblers. I don’t think it’s entirely coincidental that MLB is thinking of installing the Knock Out Round (the Pioneer League’s name for this crap shoot) to settle ties in the all star games and that Las Vegas will be the new home of the now floundering Nomad Athletics.
The line score and all the action it summarizes are what go into the cumulative team and individual statistics. Only the deciding action is omitted. The derby information is recorded under its own label, available on the league’s website.
Here’s the line score of the Baller’s near miss in Kalispell:
R H E
Oakland Ballers (6-9) 000 120 010 10 11 1
Glacier Range Riders (11-3) 300 003 004 10 13 0
Time: 3:20 Attendance: 1,851. No winning or losing pitcher. Glacier won in KO round. Oakland: Cobb 3 HR. Glacier: Millan, 4 HR
After a four hour bus ride to Grand Falls, which got them there at around noon on Friday, the fifth, the B’s lost no time in jumping to a 13-4 lead after 4-1/2 innings. You’d think a lead like that would be enough to end the Ballers’ frustrations. But that would be true only if you didn’t understand one basic fact about the Pioneer League: no lead is safe. Ever. That’s part of what makes the league fun. It’s also a reason why it can be exasperating.
Grand Rapids countered Oakland’s midgame dominating nine run advantage, with a little help from the blew (I mean “blue”) crew, a run in the bottom of the fifth and continuing to score in each of the remaining four frames. A trio of Voyager pitchers held the B’s scoreless the rest of the way. Catcher Nick Poss’s performance was a painful highlight for the Oaklanders, not just because of his three run homer in the third, but alsofor the pluck he displayed by remaining in the game in spite of injuries to one of his feet, his groin, and another to, I believe, his hamstring. I’ll add as an aside that Poss was a part of Aaron Miles’ managerial legerdemain in the previous night’s game, when the Ballers’ skipper juggled the PBL’s rules on designated pinch hitters and the designated hitter rule to call on pitcher Matt Lozovoy to pinch hit in the top of the ninth, when the B’s still held seemingly secure four run lead. I’m not being sarcastic; it was a smart move at the time.
Oakland Ballers (6-10) 125 230 000 13 20 1
Great Falls Voyagers (12-4) 040 012 214 14 17 0
As I’ve often mentioned recently, the purpose of the Pioneer League’s partnership with Major League Baseball is to provide players for the big league organizations. Tyler Davis, who started five games and pitched one in relief for the 2024 Ballers, ended that season with a record of 0-0-1, 1.29. He’s already made The Show. He was 2-2-1, 3. as a reliever for the Chicago White Sox, but after losing yesterday, Sunday the 7th, to the Phillies, his record stood at 2-3-1, 4.43. Before the start of Saturday’s game in Great Falls, the B’s announced the bittersweet news that the Pale Hose had purchased Gabe Tanner’s contract. As I write this, I haven’t had any news about to which team the Cal State East Bay graduate been assigned.
On the field Saturday, the news was that, even though the Boys from West Oakland blew a 12-6 lead in the bottom of the eighth, they recovered, scored a couple of runs in the top of the ninth, and held on to defeat the Voyagers, 14-12. It’s much more pleasant to record the line score of this contest than it’s been at any other time since the start of the Ballers’ current foray into Montana.
R H E
Oakland Ballers (7-10) 101 402 402 14 17 13
Great Falls Voyagers (5-12) 002 201 160 12 12 1
Winning pitcher: Valek Cisneros (1-0) Losing pitcher: Kevin Worek (0-1) Save: Matthew Maloney (1)
Time: 3:45 Attendance: 1,037
The game, played under steadily increasing rain, broke Oakland’s four game losing streak and gave them any opportunity to win their first road series of the nascent season. But they once more snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory.
In any case, it would have been an extremely difficult victory. The Ballers’ punishing schedule since leaving their home grounds was made worse by a planned game time of 11:35, which then was pushed back to 2:30. They, as the famed radio announcer Dizzy Dean put it, “shoulda stood in bed.” The situation echoed Chico Marx’s lines in Duck Soup, “It rained all day. There was no ball game, so we stayed home. We listen to it over the radio.”
The line score also resembled an earlier artifact, a table from a clinical study of bipolar disorder.
R H E
Oakland Ballers (7-11) 320 013 304 16 10 1
Great Falls Voyagers (6-12) 019 020 24X 18 18 1
Winning pitcher: Emir Sepúlveda (2-0) Losing pitcher:Jake Tirk (0-2)
Time:3:10 Attendance: 644
This tear your hair and chew your nails display the fickle middle finger of not only began with an echo of the Minnie Marx’s sons, it ended with one.
With two down in the top of the ninth, Jaden Collura worked a walk that brought Noah Blythe to plate, representing the potential tying run. He lifted a fly that reached the center field wall, where it landed in the glove of Anthony Manisero, whose family name means peanut vendor. Groucho sings and whistles the song of that name throughout Duck Soup. You also might get a kick out of video of its original presentation at New York’s Roxy Theater: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2UU33oJY5g.
I haven’t been able to find the season statistics for all the players on the Baller roster, but what follows are the stats for those who participated in yesterday’s tragicomedy:
| 1BJeter Ybarra | .296 | |||||||
| 3BJake Allgeyer | .375 | |||||||
| DHCam Bufford | .196 | |||||||
| CJaden Collura | .364 | |||||||
| RF/LFNoah Blythe | .347 | |||||||
| CFDavis Drewek | .240 | |||||||
| T.J. McKenzie | .250 | |||||||
| LFDamian Stone | .208 | |||||||
| 2BNick Leehey | .250 | |||||||
| Oakland BallersPitchers | ||||||||||||
| Pitchers | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | HR | WP | BF | AB | NP | ERA |
| Michael Riley | 2.1 | 8 | 9 | 9 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 17 | 14 | 53 | 12.27 |
| Derek Murphy | 3.2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 18 | 13 | 74 | 11.17 |
| Jake Tirk (L, 0-2) | 1.0 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 7 | 26 | 13.50 |
| Campbell Spradling | 1.0 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 6 | 25 | 7.04 |
So, where does this leave us as they Ballers try to get some sleep and redemption and we try to get our bearings as the upcoming six games in Missoula? You tell me.
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