With the departure of the Oakland A’s to Sacramento after 2024, the San Francisco Bay Area has only one major league baseball team. Oakland itself, however, does still have a professional baseball team. Or, as many people like to term it, a semi-professional team. Those are the Ballers, who play in the independent Pioneer League.
I went to my first Ballers game last August, I admit in part because I was given a free ticket for a good seat with friends. And I was curious to check out the scene. I’ve been to a few minor league games at the AAA level, but only a couple semipro games, and those almost thirty years ago in Arcata, California, far to the north of Oakland. That ballpark had the most eccentric dimensions I’d ever seen, with right field ballooning out to what seemed like 500 feet from the plate.
The Ballers ballpark has much more standard dimensions. It’s not a big league park, however, of the kind the Oakland Coliseum was, even as dilapidated as that facility was in its final years. Raimondi Ballpark has just 4100 seats, and was a little more than half full on the Tuesday night of my game. The differences between the Pioneer League and the majors, or even the minors, are present in other ways, like the Port-a-pottys instead of indoor bathrooms.
More interesting than the adequate facilities, however, are the differences between the baseball on the field. The most striking is the speed of the pitchers. The velocity of each pitch is shown on the scoreboard, as it is in the majors. Most of the pitches are five-to-ten miles per hour slower than they are in the majors, usually ranging from the mid-80s to the very low 90s.
This might in part account for the high offensive numbers in the Pioneer League. Before the game, the Ballers were batting .305 as a team. At the time, there was no National League player with qualifying at-bats over .300, and 2024 came close to the first in history where a major league had no .300 hitter, Trea Turner being the sole the NL hitter to clear the .300 mark (with .304). The Ballers’ team batting average wasn’t even close to the top in the league; the Idaho Falls Chukars had a team batting average of .352. They’d scored 807 runs in 88 games, an average of a little more than nine a game. Their leading hitter was also leading the league, with an average of .459.
The Ballers were in first place – with a record of 68-21 and a winning percentage of .764, again outsize numbers unseen in the majors — largely because of their pitching, which led the league with a 5.05 ERA. The Colorado Springs Sky Sox had a team ERA of 12.31. That’s not a misprint. 12.31!
Doing some cursory online research, a few theories are advanced for the preponderance of offense in the league. One is that some of the parks, though not the Ballers’ in the pretty low elevation of their West Oakland neighborhood, are at high elevations, where the ball will carry more. Another is the previously cited lower speeds of the pitching. Maybe the defense isn’t up to the standards of major and minor leagues either. I saw a couple of low line drives between shortstop and third base go for doubles, which seems pretty rare at upper levels.
Leaving aside that this isn’t the kind of play you see at higher levels – even with the major league Oakland A’s were losing 112 games in 2023 – what’s the experience like? There are positives, much like what you’ll get at minor league games. All of the seats are pretty close to the field, and while the prices aren’t as lower as you’d expect from major league admission fees, $33 gets you a seat on top of the not-very-big bleachers between home and first. Fully uniformed players actually walk through the crowds near the concession and picnic area on the way to the field.
There’s a far more low-key feel to the ambience, with just one line for the fairly extensive concessions (again, not much lower in price than those in the majors); lineups and standings written on a board, not just the electronic scoreboard; picnic-like areas for eating and hanging out; and an actual good chance at getting a ball the mascot throws into the crowd. Three horn players from the Oakland Symphony performed in a small booth near concessions, although they might not rehearsed too extensive a repertoire, playing Otis Redding’s “I Can’t Turn You Loose” twice. The buildings of downtown Oakland’s skyline form the backdrop.
Raimondi Stadium itself is in a West Oakland neighborhood that’s among the city’s less affluent, but is up-and-coming with plenty of new housing surrounding the facility, and the field’s not that far from the nearest mass transit BART train station. It’s about a twenty-minute walk, and there’s a free shuttle from BART to the ballpark, which is more of a concern at night for those not driving.
Not everything is as informal as might be expected. You’re not allowed to bring backpacks into the park, or to bring food in, though you can bring in a small (very small) water bottle. Near game’s end, an overzealous security staffer warned the row where I was sitting not to smoke, although no one was smoking. Maybe he saw some smoke wafting over the bleachers originating from rows in front of us. “This is a family park,” he sternly admonished. No argument there.
Overall, at a time when the major league ballpark experience is getting ever more expensive and, more importantly, more impersonal with the assault of between-innings commercials/contests and screaming “in-game hosts”, the Ballers remind us of the more fundamental strengths and pleasures of the game. There’s still plenty of action on the field, and if it’s not of the caliber of the really pro leagues, the players are a lot more highly skilled than almost anyone in the stands.
