Know Your Foe: The Yuba-Sutter Freebirds
by 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 Yuba-Sutter Freebirds!
Their Season So Far:
The Freebirds are 11-22 on the season, tenth in the league, and 1-9 in their last ten. OF Josh Duarte is top-ten in the league in average at .389, and SS Devon Dixon is top-ten in steals with 13. On the mound, reliever Corbin Barker has a miniscule 2.66 ERA, and closer Tristan Wolf has six saves.
Both the Freebirds and the B’s are looking up at a lot of teams ahead of them in the first-half standings and also eyeing a turnaround for the second half.
Hometown: Marysville, California
- Marysville’s population is about 13,000, and it neighbors Yuba City, population around 70,000.
- Marysville is named after Mary Murphy Covillaud, a survivor of the doomed Donner Party, who perhaps avoided some of the worst culinary…unpleasantness…due to her age, barely 15 at the time.
- The eponymous Sutter Buttes, as diligent superfan Mike Chouinard has noted, are volcano remnants often referred to as the “world’s smallest mountain range.”
- As plugged on last year’s B’s broadcast, Marysville features both in the “official” Tom Waits lyrics for “Burma Shave”—Hell Marysville ain't nothing but a wide spot in the road—as well as one of his monologues waxing Waitsily in a performance at Austin City Limits in 1978: This small little town, a place called Marysville. It's up around Yuba City, Gridley, Chico, they're all the same. The names are different. It takes about... oh 23 miles and you're in the next one and they got a Foster Freeze just like they had in the one you were trying to get out of...
- Another around the globe: Marysville is home to the historic Bok Kai Temple, a centerpiece of its longstanding Chinese heritage, and Yuba City has a prominent Sikh community that hosts the Nagar Kirtan parade ever November, one of the largest outside India.
- Stephen Johnson Field was elected alcalde of Marysville after only three days in town, instituted a whipping post as punishment, and later went on to become the second-longest serving US Supreme Court Justice at over 34 years (in a profession that is known for some looong tenures).
- The actor Larry Bagby was born in Marysville, and in true Hocus Pocus irony, played the iconic role of Ernie/“Ice,” the teen who bullies a recent California transplant to the East Coast with such Golden State burns as “tubular” and “Hollywood.” (The actors also re-created the scene decades later.)
Mascot: Willy the Wild Chicken!
The team rebranded this season, moving from the High-Wheelers (and a big bear wearing a top hat) to Willy.
Why wild chickens? “If you've spent any time driving around Marysville or Yuba City, you already know them. They strut. They loiter. They ignore traffic laws. They're the wild chickens that have claimed our neighborhoods as their own.”
"It's fearless, it's fun, and it doesn't take itself too seriously, while still being competitive and proud of where we come from," said General Manager Harrison Shapiro in a statement.
Team History:
The then-High Wheelers and Ballers began play in 2024 year as twin expansions teams with a shared ownership group in California for the Pioneer League. The rivalry was immediate. B’s co-founder Paul talked about the early days of the two teams recently.
In their first season, in incredible fashion, the then-Yolo beat the Ballers in a tiebreaking playoff semifinal game and then and won the championship, defeating the Glacier Range Riders. At the time, the High Wheelers players may have had something to say about it to Oakland fans.
After at UC Davis’s Dobbins Stadium their first year, they moved to Marysville and now play at Bryant Field, which previously hosted the Drakes and Gold Sox. The park has its own “splash hits,” where fair and foul balls land in Ellis Lake, which runs behind the first-base line and beyond right field.
Last season, the team scored 121 runs in a single week, *believed* to be the most weekly runs in professional baseball ever, beating a record from 1930 held by a little nothing nobody team called the New York Yankees.
Former B’s pitcher Gabe Tanner pitched the Ballers’ first complete game last season when up in Marysville.
Best Promos:
A visit and first pitch from future Hall of Famer and Bay Area (and Carmichael, CA) legend Dusty Baker!
Yuba-Sutter’s Got Talent! Bark in the Park! Santa’s Summer Vacation! Farm to Field Night!
$2 Tuesdays with $2 beers and dogs! Wing Wednesdays with all-you-can eat $10 wings!
What to Watch For:
California is a more crowded place this season in the Pioneer League. Will the natural (and earned) rivalry between these northern California teams survive the additions of Modesto and Long Beach? Will the magic of a rebrand—and the ferocity of a wild chicken—tip the scales?
The teams have yet to meet this season, but they will play 18 times over the summer.
Joe Horton is the editor of Dispatches from Raimondi.
