Local baseball fans may soon have a new team to root for in their own backyard, as Long Beach is entering discussions to become the latest city with a Pioneer League team.
Long Beach City Council unanimously decided to move forward with the possibility of a pro baseball team on July 22, in a possible partnership between Cal State Long Beach and the Long Beach Baseball Club.
If established, Long Beach will become the 13th city to have a team in the Pioneer Baseball League. The league was founded in 1939 and currently has teams in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, and most recently, California. Oakland became the newest city to invite the pinstripe tradition back to its community, after the MLB Oakland A’s unceremoniously left the city in a plan to move to Las Vegas.
The move was even more hurtful since other professional sports teams, the NFL’s former Oakland Raiders (now the Las Vegas Raiders) and NBA’s Golden State Warriors, which moved from Oakland to San Francisco.
“Basically Oakland sports fans felt like we had our hearts ripped from our chest. We’d lost three teams in five years and we were wondering what does this say about our community?” said Oakland local Bryan Carmel, who led the effort to establish a pro baseball team in his city.
With the hole left behind by three major sports teams, Carmel recounted how the community fully embraced the Oakland Ballers. In its first year, over 100,000 fans flocked to the Ballers’ games. The team also made the playoffs and sent four players into the major leagues in its first year.
“Our playbook was to build a team based on our values,” Carmel said. “Don’t build on top of a community, build with a community, build with radical participation of community at every level, build in public and build transparently. Center the fans in everything you do.”
The Oakland Ballers also introduced the league’s first female player, pitcher Kelsie Whitmore. Following the radical success of the Ballers, which garnered over $1 million in sales and fan investment, Carmel said he quickly thought Long Beach would be a great location to expand the league.
“Like Oakland, Long Beach is a city with a bit of a chip on its shoulder, right? It’s a little bit in the shadow of another big city that I’m not going to name,” he said. “It’s hard working folks that always show up for each other and the community and it’s a community where people take Long Beach with them wherever they go.”
Long Beach has set its sights on professional sports in recent years, discussing the possibility of building a new stadium for the Los Angeles Angels in 2019, then again in 2022. Instead of pouring millions into a new stadium, the Long Beach Baseball Club will work with Cal State Long Beach to discuss a shared use of Blair Field, where the Dirtbags play.
Mayor Rex Richardson was in full support of the idea, saying the team will “invigorate local pride, foster community engagement and stimulate economic activity.” He mentioned the City would be interested in investing in Blair Field in order to host a professional team.
“I know that Blair Field needs a little bit of love,” Richardson said. “We all need to step forward, talk about what it’s going to require to improve Blair Field to bring it back to its former glory.”
