Enter the Oakland Ballers, a team founded by a pair of Oakland natives who vowed to do something radically different from the string of clubs that had disappeared from the city in recent years. Some of the country’s most passionate sports fans, eager for a fresh start, welcomed the upstart team and counted down the days until a sold-out home opener.
But before the first pitch, the Field of Dreams had to be completed: The team’s rollout was so fast that the stadium, a converted public park, was still under construction just 48 hours before its scheduled debut, and the locker rooms had no lockers.
The residents – the fans – rushed to the rescue. Responding to a public call for help, dozens of volunteers gathered in an industrial area of West Oakland, spending the weekend hammering and sweeping, hoping to get the team and its park across the finish line.
That’s what Ballers co-founder Paul Friedman believes the team is about. The last-minute maneuvering over two days in June was chaotic but exemplified the team’s community-first ethos. The NFL, NBA and MLB turncoats will never invite their fans to build their team clubhouses, and their billionaire owners will never work with them.
“Oakland literally built this place,” Friedman said as he walked through a converted warehouse serving as team headquarters across from the field.
A place that was once called “America’s most abused sports city” and where trust between fans and professionals was frayed. Team management is at an all-time low. This is important.
When the Athletics officially announced their departure from Major League Baseball earlier this year, It was the culmination of a painful, years-long saga that alienated even the team’s most ardent fans. The exodus also took a toll on the city’s psyche.
Oakland, located across the Bay but always in San Francisco’s shadow, had already been through a tough year: With its political system in crisis, its budget in shambles and widespread concerns about crime, the city desperately needed something to unite it around.
Like Oakland Roots and Soul, the city of Oakland’s recently launched men’s and women’s soccer clubs, the Ballers aim to use sports as a form of therapy, a way to mend wounds both old and new. That may sound like a lofty goal for a team still finding its footing in the independent Pioneer League, and maybe it is. But like all fans, Friedman is a true believer.
“You give up on Oakland at your own peril,” he says. “Oakland is a city that has always been questioned, and yet somehow this is where the resurgence begins.”
“Goodbye, Oakland.”
Of all the teams that turned their backs on Oakland, the Athletics were hurt the most.
The Golden State Warriors, who moved to San Francisco in 2019, have always been based in the Bay Area and aligned with the region rather than the city, while the Raiders, who moved to Las Vegas a year later, had already left San Francisco once before.
But the Athletics have played in Oakland and worn the city’s name on their chests since 1968, when they came from Kansas City, Missouri. They garnered huge fan followings in the ’70s and ’80s thanks to legendary players like Reggie Jackson, Rollie Fingers, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire.
Even as success became harder to come by, the team remained alluring. The “Moneyball” era, when the Athletics found ways to win despite a limited budget, resonated in a city with many people under financial pressure and trying to make the most of what they had. And even their aging, possum-infested Coliseum stadium inspired enthusiasm among a proud, blue-collar fan base.
But the team announced in April that it would play its final games in Oakland later this year, then relocate to Sacramento for a few seasons before pending an eventual (though likely not final) move to Las Vegas.
“If it had been a boxing match, the referee would have called for medical assistance after the Warriors and Raiders had left,” said Andy Dolich, a longtime Athletics executive and co-author of “Goodbye, Oakland,” a book chronicling the city’s painful sports history.
When the Athletics move was officially announced, Dolich said it was “the ultimate KO, knockout Oakland.”
The team still has a few dozen home games left, but to its most dedicated fans, the team is all but gone.
“I was a lifelong Athletics fan until this year,” said Jorge Leon, president of the Oakland ’68s, MLB’s first nonprofit supporters’ group, which organizes events and promotes fan participation.
Leon and the 68ers, once staples of the Coliseum crowd waving flags and banging drums, have decided to boycott home games this season. Attendance, after years of decline, hit an all-time low.
Meanwhile, team owner John Fisher, who fans say has driven the relocation effort to maximize profits, has become Public Enemy No. 1. Fisher has accused Oakland officials of not giving the team enough public funding to build a new stadium, but city leaders say he has been negotiating in good faith.
“This is just ownership greed,” said Leon, who helped popularize the “sell the team” slogan that became a commonplace sound at Athletics games last year.
“They don’t realize what they have in a passionate fanbase,” he said.
Team Supporter, or former Supporters speak of the move in surprisingly intimate terms.
“Have you ever lost someone you loved? Someone really close to?” asked Brian Johansen, founder of Last Dive Bar, a brand that celebrates the Coliseum’s fan community and is named after the affectionate moniker once used to describe the stadium.
“I have a wife and a son, and other than that, the Athletics are my next goal in life,” said Johansen, who has a green-and-gold Athletics tattoo on his right arm. “That’s how emotionally connected I am to the Athletics. When they leave, it’s like losing family.”
Baseball’s Greatest Block Party
Friedman and co-founder Brian Karmel felt the pain, but they also saw an opportunity: Suddenly, there was a bona fide major league city, with thousands of baseball-crazy residents but no team to root for.
“Brian, I have a crazy idea,” Friedman texted his longtime friend, Carmel, last year. “I love crazy ideas,” Carmel replied.
And so Ballers was born.
Friedman, an entrepreneur, and Carmel, a TV producer, went to high school together in Oakland in the ’90s and bonded over sports, and they saw an opportunity to reimagine how sports teams operated — not as money-making machines, but as important civic institutions.
That vision helped raise more than $4 million from local groups and residents — a fraction of the cost of a major league team and stadium, but enough to get the Ballers off the ground.
“The Ballers are a baseball team, but they’re not primarily a baseball team,” said Casey Pratt, a Bay Area journalist who has spent his career covering local sports. “They’re a community asset and a way to bring people together.”
The Ballers’ hastily renovated home field epitomizes that spirit: If the Coliseum is baseball’s last dive bar, Raimondi Park is the game’s best block party venue.
It all happened incredibly fast: The city approved the Ballers’ renovation of the historic municipal park in April, work began in May and the first game was held in June. The team has transformed the park, which was an unsuitable field for Little League players and located across from the state’s largest homeless camp, into a boon for a West Oakland neighborhood that has long suffered from a lack of investment.
“What I love about the Ballers is they embrace everything Oakland,” said Anson Casanares, who was born and raised in the city and switched fan base from the Athletics to the Blues this year. “They built this ballpark in a flash, which is hard to do, especially in California and the Bay Area. It just goes to show that if you really care, you can make it happen.”
The 4,000-seat stadium is still under construction, but for now it has a DIY feel, with pop-up concessions and portable restrooms for players to use, and the team ultimately envisions a mini-Wrigley Field, a community gathering place that returns baseball to its roots.
The best seats cost $35, but seating is less than half that amount, far cheaper than the lower-ranked Athletics. Attendance has been mixed so far, but a string of special promotions have helped the team attract new fans.
“This is essentially a street fair wrapped up in a professional baseball game,” said Mike Shapiro, president of the Pioneer League, which welcomed the Ballers to its lineup of teams mostly from small mountain towns and cities. “This is American culture. A lot of things seem to be disappearing in this country, but the Ballers are one of those cultural icons that still persists.”
The Ballers enjoyed early success in the league, staying near the top of the standings throughout the season, several of their newly acquired players were scooped up by MLB teams, and pitcher Kelsey Whitmore made history as the first woman to play in the league.
And the team itself recently made a historic announcement, unveiling a new ownership model that will give fans the opportunity to invest in the Ballers and in exchange gain voting power over key organizational decisions, including logo changes, front office hires and, most importantly, relocation plans.
Friedman says this is “a real seat at the table” for baseball fans who have been mistreated for so long. More than 3,000 people have reserved shares so far, ranging from less than $500 to more than $10,000. Ultimately, he says, it’s fan buy-in that matters most.
As he spoke, on a recent warm evening, the Ballers were losing badly to the Northern Colorado Owls, trailing 15-3 going into the bottom of the ninth. Still, fans were banging drums and chanting “Go Oakland,” encouraging the underdog city to pull off an impossible comeback.
The Ballers battling back hit, hit, hit and home run, quickly scoring four runs. They had the momentum, but it wasn’t enough. But in a way, it didn’t matter.
It was a summer night in West Oakland, and thousands of people had just watched a professional baseball game. And it wouldn’t be the last. If the Ballers experiment worked, it could continue for many more seasons. And that was victory enough.
