Youth Baseball Raimondi Roundup
Minor Leaguers
By Alec MacDonald, B’s Beat Writer
Here’s something you surely knew: The Oakland Ballers clinched the 2025 Pioneer League Championship with a home field win at Raimondi Park. Here’s something you probably didn’t know: That wasn’t the only championship won at Raimondi this year.
Yup, another champion was crowned in West Oakland less than two months after the Ballers brought a pro baseball title back to The Town. Granted, this other championship was certainly less illustrious — no fancy trophy on the line, just a handful of fans in the seats, and an overall lack of pomp and circumstance. But let’s take a moment to honor the unsung victors, a spirited group of seventh and eighth graders known as the Pantoros.
The name is a mashup of Panthers and Toros, the respective mascots of Edna Brewer and Montera middle schools. A slight majority of the Pantoros roster attends Montera while the rest of the players go to Brewer, but they combined forces to compete as one team led by Phil Ha, head baseball coach at Oakland High School. Nicknamed “Tank” by his teammates on the Berkeley Clarions of the Bay Area Vintage Base Ball league, Ha guided the Pantoros to championship glory on November 9.
His squad captured the title with an exciting 11-10 win over the Knights, a team made up entirely of Claremont Middle School students. Clawing back from a deep deficit in the early going, the visiting Knights proved themselves a resilient opponent, mounting an improbable comeback that ended with the tying run stranded at second base in the final inning.
Thus concluded the fall season for the Juniors division of North Oakland / South Oakland Little League, or NOLL/SOLL for short. The league simultaneously ran four younger divisions at other fields around the city, but the Juniors division is the only one old enough for an adult-sized diamond, the type used for professional games. Very fitting, then, that the Juniors teams got to play at a bona-fide professional facility.
This was the first time NOLL/SOLL had the chance to run a season at the Ballers beautiful home venue. Juniors games typically happen at Bushrod Park or Caldecott Field, and they never happen in fall — until this year. The League registered 40 kids for nine weeks of Juniors division baseball activity that included 15 total games at Raimondi plus practices there as well. Nearly 40 additional kids — slightly younger players from NOLL/SOLL’s Intermediates division — were also given the chance to try out the pro field, either in special scrimmages or as substitute players in Juniors games (sort of like getting called up from the minors to the bigs).
With only three teams in the Juniors division, NOLL/SOLL invited outside competition to fill out the schedule, hosting squads representing the East Bay Cyclones, Pinole Hercules Little League, East Bay Taiiku Kai, and the Oakland Baseball Foundation. By season’s end, some 100 youth baseball players had set foot on the same field as the Pioneer League champs, hustling and grinding and celebrating just like the Ballers.
None of this could have happened without the blessing and support of the Ballers franchise, whose front office and field staff have shown impressive dedication to youth baseball in the East Bay since the beginning. Before the Ballers’ inaugural 2024 season had even concluded, kids were getting the chance to play pickup games at Raimondi while the pros were on the road.
And then that fall, after the action was over for the Pioneer League, the park served as home to a youth league. Organized by a small group of adult volunteers, it pulled in 50 middle schoolers, dividing them across four teams. Those teams played 10 total games, wearing Ballers apparel supplied by the franchise and paid for by business sponsors Russian River Vacation Homes and Rubenstein Supply.
That 2024 undertaking paved the way for this year’s NOLL/SOLL fall season. Moving forward, how might similar efforts play out? The details are hard to predict, but based on recent experience, the potential remains high for continued excitement in leagues for minors down at Raimondi.
Alec MacDonald is an Oakland resident who has coached, coordinated, and umpired youth baseball in the East Bay. Contact him at hapakine@yahoo.com
