A new Field of Dreams rises in Oakland, the city major sports abandoned

OAKLAND, Calif. - In a city famously forsaken by professional sports, Opening Day could not come soon enough.

Sure, it was just minor league baseball, but what were the majors good for anyway? Lately, all they did was break Oakland’s heart. And the city badly needed a win, on the diamond and off.

Enter the Oakland Ballers, a team founded by a pair of Oaklanders who vowed to make something radically different from the succession of clubs that had abandoned the city in recent years. Aching for a fresh start, some of the country’s most passionate sports fans embraced the upstart squad, and they were counting down the days until its sold-out home opener.

But before the first pitch could be thrown, the Field of Dreams needed finishing — the team’s rollout had gone so fast that its stadium, a renovated public park, was still under construction just 48 hours before the scheduled debut. The locker rooms had no lockers.

Residents — fans — came to the rescue. Responding to a public plea for help, dozens of volunteers flocked to an industrial district in West Oakland to spend their weekend hammering and sweeping, practically willing the team and its park over the finish line.

This is what it’s all about, thought Paul Freedman, a Ballers co-founder. The last-minute scramble, which took place over two days in June, was chaotic, but it captured the team’s community-first ethos. Those turncoats from the NFL, the NBA and MLB would never invite their supporters in to build the team’s clubhouse, and their billionaire owners definitely wouldn’t be working alongside them.

“This was literally built by Oakland,” Freedman said, walking through the converted warehouse that now serves as team headquarters across from the field.

For a place once called “America’s most abused sports city,” where the trust between fans and pro team management has been at an all-time low, this stuff matters.

When the major league Athletics made their departure official earlier this year, it capped a painful years-long saga that alienated even the team’s most die-hard fans. The exodus also dealt a blow to the city’s psyche.

Oakland, across the bay from San Francisco and perpetually in its shadow, was already having a hard year. With its political establishment in crisis, the budget a mess and concern over crime widespread, the city desperately needed something to rally around.

Like the Oakland Roots and Soul, the city’s recently launched men’s and women’s soccer clubs, the Ballers aim to use sport as a salve, a way to heal wounds old and new. That might sound like a lofty goal for a team still finding its footing in the independent Pioneer League, and perhaps it is. But like all fans, Freedman is a true believer.

“You count Oakland out at your own risk,” he said. “It’s always been a city that’s been second-guessed. Yet, somehow, this is the place where comebacks start.”

‘Goodbye, Oakland’

Of all the teams to turn their back on Oakland, the A’s hurt the most.

The Golden State Warriors, who decamped for San Francisco in 2019, always spanned the Bay Area, aligned with the region more than a city. The Raiders, who left for Las Vegas one year later, had already fled the city once before.

But the A’s have played in Oakland — and worn the city’s name on their chests — since 1968, when the club arrived from Kansas City, Mo. They won legions of fans in the 70s and 80s, propelled by legendary players like Reggie Jackson and Rollie Fingers, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire.

And even as success became more elusive, the team still retained its charm. The “Moneyball” era, when the A’s found ways to win despite a limited budget, resonated in a city where so many are under economic pressure, trying to do the most with what they’ve got. And even the decrepit, possum-infested home field, the Coliseum, inspired devotion among a proudly blue-collar fan base.

But the team announced in April that it would play its final game in Oakland later this year, before relocating to Sacramento for a few seasons while they await an eventual — although perhaps not definite — move to Las Vegas.

“If it was a boxing match, the official was signaling for medical help” after the Warriors and Raiders departed, said Andy Dolich, a former longtime A’s executive and co-author of the book “Goodbye, Oakland,” which documents the city’s history of sports heartbreak.

When the A’s move became official, Dolich said, it was “the ultimate K.O.: Knockout Oakland.”

The team still has dozens of home games to play, but for hardcore fans, they might as well already be gone.

“I was a lifelong A’s fan — until this year,” said Jorge Leon, president of the Oakland ‘68s, the first-ever MLB nonprofit supporters group, which organizes events and promotes fan engagement.

Leon and the ‘68s, once a flag-waving drumbeating staple of the Coliseum’s bleachers, decided to boycott home games this season. Attendance, which had been dropping for years, hit a record low.

Meanwhile, the team’s owner, John Fisher — whose quest for maximum profit has driven the relocation campaign, fans say — has become Public Enemy No. 1. Fisher has blamed Oakland officials for not forking over enough public funding to build the team a new stadium, but city leaders say he has been negotiating in bad faith.

“It’s just greedy ownership,” said Leon, who helped popularize the “Sell the team” chants that became ubiquitous at A’s games last year.

“They don’t see what they’ve got” in the fervent fan base, he said.

Team supporters — or former supporters — talk about the move in strikingly intimate terms.

“Have you ever lost anybody you’ve ever loved? Someone really close to you?” asked Bryan Johansen, a founder of the Last Dive Bar, a brand that celebrates the Coliseum fan community and is named after a loving moniker once used to describe the stadium.

“I’ve got my wife and my son and outside of that, the A’s are the next thing in life,” said Johansen, who has a green and gold Athletics tattoo on his right forearm. “That’s how close emotionally I feel to that team. Them leaving is like losing a family member.”

Baseball’s best block party

Freedman and his co-founder Bryan Carmel felt this pain, too. But they also saw an opportunity. Suddenly, here was a bona fide major league city, home to thousands of baseball-crazy residents, without a team to cheer for.

“Bryan, I’ve got a crazy idea,” Freedman texted his longtime friend last year. “I love crazy ideas,” Carmel responded.

And the Ballers were born.

Freedman, an entrepreneur, and Carmel, a TV producer, attended high school together in Oakland in the 90s and bonded over sports. They saw a chance to reimagine the way a sports team is run — not as a money machine, but as an important civic institution.

This vision helped them raise more than $4 million from local organizations and residents, a tiny fraction of what it costs to buy a team or a stadium in the big leagues, but it was enough to get the Ballers off the ground.

“The Ballers is a baseball team, but it’s not a baseball team first,” said Casey Pratt, a Bay Area journalist who has spent his career covering the local sports scene. “It’s a community asset. It’s a way to bring people together.”

The Ballers’ hastily renovated home field sums up that spirit. If the Coliseum was baseball’s last dive bar, Raimondi Park is baseball’s best block party.

It all came together improbably fast: The city approved the Ballers’ renovations of the historic municipal park in April, construction began in May and it hosted the first game in June. The team transformed the park from a field unfit for Little Leaguers, across from one of the state’s largest homeless encampments, into what could be a boon for a West Oakland neighborhood that has long suffered from disinvestment.

“What I love about the Ballers is they embrace everything about Oakland,” said Anson Casanares, who was born and raised in the city and swapped his A’s fandom for the B’s this year. “They built this whole park so fast, and that’s really hard to do, especially in California and the Bay Area. It shows if you actually care, you can make it happen.”

The 4,000-seat stadium is still a work in progress, but for now it has a DIY feel, with pop-up vendors and port-a-potties that even the players use. Eventually, the team envisions a mini Wrigley Field, a community gathering place that brings baseball back to its roots.

The best seats in the house are $35 and it costs less than half that to sit in the bleachers, much cheaper than even the lowly A’s. Attendance so far has been uneven but a stream of special promotions continues to win new fans.

“It’s essentially a street fair wrapped around a professional baseball game,” said Mike Shapiro, the president of the Pioneer League, which welcomed the Ballers into its lineup of mostly mountain state teams in small towns and cities. “It’s Americana. A lot of things in this country seem to be dissipating, but it’s one of those cultural icons that still exists.”

The Ballers have found early success in the league, hovering near the top of the standings all season and seeing several of their newly-recruited players scooped up by MLB teams. Another, pitcher Kelsie Whitmore, made history when she became 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 receive in return voting rights on key organizational decisions — changes to logos, some front office hires and, crucially, any relocation plans.

Freedman calls it “a real seat at the table” for baseball fans who have been mistreated for too long. So far, more than 3,000 people have reserved shares, ranging from less than $500 to more than $10,000. At the end of the day, he said, it’s fan buy-in that matters more than anything.

As he spoke, on a recent warm evening, the Ballers were down big to the Northern Colorado Owlz, trailing 15-3 entering the bottom of the 9th inning. Still, fans beat their drums and chanted “Let’s go Oakland,” pushing the city of underdogs to pull off an impossible comeback.

The Ballers batters responded with a hit, another hit and a homer, scoring four runs fast. Despite the surge, they came up short. But in a way, it didn’t matter.

It was a summer night in West Oakland, and thousands had just watched a pro baseball game — and not for the last time, either. If the Ballers experiment works out, it would mean many, many more seasons of this. And that was victory enough.