Know Your Foe: The Missoula PaddleHeads
By Roberto Santiago and Joe Horton
Welcome to Know Your Foe, your friendly fast facts to get to know the Ballers’ opponents at home and away this season. Make sure to check out Kyle Robinson’s Glove of the Series too.
Next up: The Missoula PaddleHeads!
Their Season So Far:
The PaddleHeads finished the first half, second half, and full 2025 season in second place, with only the Ballers ahead of them. However, they were upset by Idaho Falls in the first round of the Pioneer League playoffs. This season, Missoula is 11-7, tied for fourth in the league. They just completed a high-scoring sweep of the Glacier Range Riders in Kalispell—part of the state’s “Mission Mountain Matchup”—against the same Riders team that swept the Ballers in the series before. For the PaddleHeads, 1B Tyler Stone leads the league in RBI, and 3B Xavier Casserilla is top-ten in both RBI and homers. Returning pitcher Brendan Beard is top-ten in strikeouts.
Courtesy Destination Missoula
Hometown: Missoula, Montana
Known as the Hub of the Five Valleys, Zootown, and the Garden City, Missoula is the second-most populous city in Montana with around 80,000 inhabitants. It’s considered an arts and culture leader in the state, known for its River City Roots Festival and Montana’s oldest brewery. Once a lumber town, the city’s top industry is education, with the University of Montana and the Missoula County school district as the top two employers.
Zootown, or Zoomtown? Missoula often features, fairly or not, in national news as a flashpoint for the narrative of coast-fleeing-newcomers who can now Zoom into their jobs and live anywhere, driving up housing costs and threatening culture shifts. Like the Bay, the affordability gap is a topic of regular discussion here.
Missoula is home to one of the largest smokejumper bases in the country and the nation’s largest smokejumper training facility.
The first woman ever elected to Congress was Jeanette Rankin of Missoula in 1916.
Filmmaker David Lynch and comedian Dana Carvey were born in Missoula; Tom Brokaw studied here, and Norman Maclean lived here and wrote the area’s most famous book-turned-movie, A River Runs Through It.
Dispatcher Mike Chouinard got a choice quote from a rival Range Riders fan in Glacier this past week: “Talked to a RR fan who, when I mentioned Missoula, said, ‘Where there’s a university, the weirdos follow’ and [I] didn’t realize it was meant as an insult.”
Mascot: Paxton the Moose!
The PaddleHeads’ mascot is Paxton the Moose. Paddle head is a slang term for moose, derived from moose antlers being called paddles.
Montana has an estimated wild moose population of up to 11,700, which sounds like a lot until you compare it to Maine’s 60k or Alaska’s 175k. Fortunately for the team, PBL expansion to those moose-proprietary states is not planned.
In an exclusive to Dispatches, our editor did in fact see a moose in Montana this past week, scientifically proving that Big Sky Country is indeed Moose Country. (This, I think, was a female, so not technically a paddle head…B’s biologists, let us know.)
Team History:
Founded in 1992 as the Lethbridge, Alberta Mounties (and then the Black Diamonds), the team moved to Missoula in 1999 and became the Osprey. They rebranded in 2019 as the PaddleHeads. They were the rookie-level team for the Arizona Diamondbacks for two decades.
The team plays at Ogren Park at Allegiance Field, which seats a PBL-massive 5,000 fans. It’s also distinctive for its short right field fence that’s only 287 feet from home plate (a 27-foot advertisement wall creates a kind of Green Monster-West look). The field has hosted big-name non-baseball events like Steve Martin, Dierks Bentley, and Mumford & Sons.
The team regularly boasts some of the best attendance in the league, and the club has won five Pioneer League championships in 1999, 2006, 2012, 2015, and 2021. Since 2021, they have the good news/bad news reputation of making the playoffs every year without winning it all (sound familiar, pre-September 21, 2025 Oakland baseball fans?)
Famous players to come through Missoula include Carlos Gonzalez, Paul Goldschmidt, and Adam Eaton.
Best Promos:
A mix of fun stuff—90s Night coming up on June 17, Superhero Night, (the delightfully cryptic and vague) Upside Down Night, Princess + Pirates Night—plus meaningful liftings-up of worthy causes: Sustainability Night, Strike Out Cancer Night; on “Housing Night,” the team will “focus on engagement and education of Missoula's housing climate.” Sounds like the kind of silly and civic balance a certain West Oakland team we know likes to strike too…
10:03 p.m.
What to Watch For:
These guys can hit. The PaddleHeads haven’t ranked lower than third as a team in slugging percent since 2021. On Opening Day against Oakland this year, Missoula put up 11 runs on 16 hits against a Ballers team that led the league in ERA in 2025. Oakland has allowed double-digit runs in each of their last five games.
Big Sky, Late Light: Montana sunsets start at 9:30pm and can keep the big sky lit until 10, which is helpful because the B’s games on this road trip are averaging about 3 ½ hours…
Jedis and Sith Lords: Saturday’s game is Star Wars night; check your screens for some costume ideas in the crowd. (The Ballers’ Star Wars Night at Raimondi is July 10.)
Roberto Santiago is a third generation Berkeley boy currently raising the fourth generation. Roberto’s writing has appeared in Latina, Parents, and various online outlets. A lifelong baseball fan, Roberto worked briefly with the Boston Red Sox and once hit an RBI single off Spaceman Lee on a 2-2 changeup. It was his only at bat ever in a real baseball game. Find him on Instagram.
Joe Horton is the editor of Dispatches from Raimondi.
