Oakland’s newest baseball team is now playing games at their West Oakland home, completing an almost unbelievable transformation at Raimondi Park and for neighbors who live nearby.
Not only is there the rapid rise of a baseball field, there is also the sudden arrival of thousands of baseball fans in the once quiet corner of town.
“When they first started, I didn’t understand what they were doing,” admitted nearby resident Susan Diego. “And then these stands went up and I went crazy. I couldn’t even imagine what was going to happen here.”
Diego lives across the street from a baseball stadium that was completed in just two months and now watches the history of the Oakland Ballers from her home. She’s still a little shaken by all of this.
“I need higher power binoculars,” she joked. “This wasn’t on my bingo card.”
Not long after the very first pitch, she had a slightly obstructed yet very comfortable view of the Ballers’ first home run from her porch.
“Do you hear that?” she asked over the roar of the crowd. “It’s crazy.”
Mike Gaunt hit that first home run when he and some friends caught what they could from outside the park. They just wanted to be close.
“This is a diversion because they asked for the ball,” Gaunt explained. “So I gave them the original ball back. They have it now. But this is good enough. So yeah, I was able to touch the Oakland Ballers’ first home run. That’s pretty cool.”
He was also impressed by the margin that the team had built up so quickly.
“This is amazing. This is so amazing,” he said. “It’s great that the community put this together. I came by two days ago and there were people volunteering to put things together. That’s great. That’s what Oakland is like.”
Johnathan Brown operates his food truck Knee Baby’z Eatery near the ballpark.
“Yes, I started my business about four blocks away at 14th and Wood at the height of the pandemic,” Brown said.
Brown says the team and visitors are transformative.
“The foot traffic is phenomenal,” he said from his pop-up stand. “We have people who come from that side, from this side, from that side. All walks of life.”
Everyone who came to see the Ballers play seemed to come away with a positive experience.
“We were going to watch the A’s and the Mariners game, but this literally tops that game,” said Dan Stratton, who was from Orange County.
“This is cool,” Ryan Phillips said from his tailgate grill. “It’s great that they made a tailgating area for fans. A marching band. The atmosphere is great.”
“It brings that love back,” Brown said. ‘Do you understand what I mean? Like you see people coming out. It brings that feeling of camaraderie. I think it brings that back to the community.”
This week the neighborhood was getting used to the newest addition, including what the traffic is like on game day, and where you can get a glimpse of what’s going on. Or maybe even a ball.
“Rolled right past me, so I picked it up,” explained Jonathan, a fan standing behind the center field wall. “I think this might be the second homer of the game.”
And it all happened in just a few months. The city’s new baseball team, right in the middle of West Oakland, just off Susan Diego’s porch.
“That’s great,” Diego said of the buzz from the ballpark. “I like that sound.”
Wilson Walker
