Game 45 Recap: Playing Baseball Again
Ballers Fire on All Cylinders to Route Roadsters 19-5
by Joe Horton
WEST OAKLAND—It was a refrain heard more than a few times in the stands Thursday evening: this is more like it. Lucky disc golfers got to play 11 holes around Raimondi on Disc A Round and Find Out night before the Oakland Ballers did them eight better, beating the Modesto Roadsters 19-5.
The Ballers (19-26) put together a complete game drubbing that harkened back to the dominant days of last season while boding well for the second half of this one. Eight B’s recorded hits; eight B’s batted in runs. The scoring output was the second-highest of the year after a 23-run explosion in Missoula on June 14.
Ballers pitchers clearly enjoyed throwing with the lead. Starter Hunter Day went 4.1, giving up for runs while striking out four. Valek Cisneros and relative newcomers Jake Villar and Brady Chavez combined for nearly four innings of shutout ball. Brand new Baller Austin Balentine, previously of Cal State Stanislaus, worked the ninth for Oakland; Dispatches reporter Roberto Santiago swore he wasn’t on the website or the roster at the start of the game before appearing there by the end (he was signed that afternoon).
Starter Hunter Day
It was, of course, a different story for the mound’s other timeshares. Modesto’s Anthony Diaz went three innings, giving up ten runs but only three earned. Ethan Roark went one inning, giving up seven. Critically, the B’s success came with runners in scoring position, where they were 8-for-9, and with the bases loaded, where they were a perfect 4-for-4. Yesterday, Noah Blythe told Dispatches about the importance of “passing the bat” and keeping the line moving, and today the B’s did exactly that: they sent ten batters to the plate in the third and eleven in the fifth.
Jeter Ybarra
Jeter Ybarra, the league’s leader in home runs, added two more, bringing his total to 19. Asked after the game about what mantle he carries as the season’s sultan of swat, Ybarra demurred. “Yeah, I mean, it feels great, but at the end of the day, I'm just looking to get as many wins as possible. It's great to see myself at the top of the leaderboard there, but I'm just trying to do whatever I can to help this team win.”
What does a big blowout win mean mentally for the team, especially when we often talk about quickly flushing away a bad loss? “Yeah, it’s huge. We're just trying to basically pull every positive we can from every game to get going in the second half. Our goal right now with being eliminated in the first half is just get some momentum going into the second half.”
Tre Cobb
With two homers from Ybarra and another two from Tremayne Cobb, including a leadoff 405-foot smash, it seems almost greedy to talk about another swing being the biggest of the night, but it belonged to Jaden Collura, whose fifth inning grand slam put the definitive nail in the Roadsters’ coffin. “Yeah, literally, I had four terrible at bats before that,” said Collura after the game. “The last one I just relaxed, reset myself, got to two strikes, and told myself not to do as much, and I wound up hitting the grand slam.”
Collura also traded his squat behind the plate for a glove in left field. “It’s new. [Manager Aaron] Miles wanted to make a move just to try to keep my bat in there. Left field is a spot that I haven't played much, but I was just going out there and getting reps today; it was a must-win game, so we’re trying to keep my bat in there and trying to make plays.”
Does not catching allow him to focus more on his offense? “Yeah, it definitely frees me up. I told somebody today, it feels like whenever I went to left field, it feels like I'm playing baseball again. I just went out there and was catching fly balls and ground balls and just playing baseball again.”
The Ballers quickly turn the page to a new three-game series at Raimondi starting Friday—Star Wars Night with the team’s first-ever drone show—against the Yuba-Sutter Freebirds.
Odds & Ends
The disc golf course played around Raimondi before the game met with rave reviews, as did the giveaway discs themselves.
The much-anticipated knockerball clash between Dan Silvert and Ice Cold Kenny had two winners: Kenny, who won, and Dan, who survived. Credit to both gladiators staying on their feet and/or above ground.
Video from Dawn Pieper; video recap from Ben Verhoek.
Joe Horton is the editor of Dispatches from Raimondi.
