Oakland Gets a New Pro Baseball Team: The Oakland Ballers
There was a big announcement in Oakland this week: The Town is welcoming back professional baseball in the form of the Oakland Ballers. No, unfortunately they won’t be competing against John Fisher and whatever he scrapes off the MLB trash heap to form the 2024 A’s. But the Oakland B’s will be members of the Pioneer Professional Baseball League. Bryan Carmel and Paul Freedman, co-founders and friends who met in high school over a shared passion for Oakland A’s baseball, have been hard at work behind the scenes piecing this operation together in hush hush silence.
In case you have been living under a rock, or better yet were struck over the head by said rock, and have been wandering the streets aimlessly for the past year and a half, the Oakland A’s will become vagabonds after their final 2024 season at the Oakland Coliseum. The A’s and Major League Baseball officials and owners all approved a deal that would allow the A’s to start fresh in Las Vegas Nevada. However, enough about them this is about real Oakland.
This is where this story actually gets exciting. While stealthily hatching their plan, Carmel and Freedman were able to secure 2 million dollars in private funding from dozens of investors, including the backing of Oakland’s other mayor Mistah F.A.B. This allowed them the ability to pay the initial expansion fee, totaling slightly north of one million dollars. They wasted no time getting a product on the field and are set to begin play in May 2024 to kick off their 96 game regular season. The Ballers’ first regular season home game is slated for early June.
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You know who else has a home game that night against the Seattle Mariners? Yup those guys. I swear I live for this stuff. Can you envision the Oakland Ballers out drawing the Oakland A’s while they face a division rival in what some consider a major league ballpark at little Laney College? Of course you can because it’s the most Oakland shit ever and it is for sure going to happen.
To keep to the true form and pride of Oakland – ala the Oakland Roots soccer club – you too can be a part owner of the Oakland B’s. I know that name still takes some getting used to. The Oakland Ballers will be inviting investors from all walks of life to join crowdfunding efforts making the members of the community partial owners. You know why the Packers have never left the frozen tundra of Green Bay? Because they couldn’t if they wanted to, that would need to be approved by the entire community who has generations of owners.
Next up on the menu is rounding out the team and staff as well as expanding the seating at Laney College. Already in place is VP of baseball operations and former big league manager Don Wakamatsu with East Bay roots out of Hayward. San Francisco native and former outfielder Micah Franklin will be the team’s manager.
While Carmel and Freedman are the faces of the Ballers, they will be the first to tell you it was a complete community effort including members of the Oakland 68’s. The notorious fan group behind those “Sell” t-shirts. “We have a core belief that sports franchises belong to the communities and that that’s the value in that relationship,” Carmel told reporters at a news conference at Laney College. “This is for Oakland, by Oakland.”
There is nothing more Oakland and Bay Area than making something out of nothing based on necessity. Just check your history books. “It’s the Battle of Oakland” said F.A.B. in a promo video. “Anytime something ends, something begins.” The green and gold lives on with the Oakland B’s, let’s go Oakland, clap, clap, cl cl clap!
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