Unless you’re a diehard baseballer, you’ve likely never been to a Stockton Ports game. Chances are, you’ve never even heard of the team. The Ports are a Single-A affiliate of the Oakland Athletics, who drew national ire for their painfully out-of-touch 2024 decision to ditch The Town for Las Vegas, by way of Sacramento.
Ever since the A’s announced their departure, the Ports have seen an increase in fans, many of whom were once loyal to the green and gold. Indeed, across the Bay, more and more sports fanatics are being drawn to the homey, community feel of minor league teams.
The glory days of the franchise originally known as the Stockton Flyers came in the late 1880s after they won the California League pennant, inspiring San Francisco Examiner journalist Ernest Thayer to write the poem “Casey At Bat” (deemed “the single most famous baseball poem ever written” by Baseball Almanac).
But those days are long gone. Though the Stockton team went on to win a handful of league titles, playing so far from the vibrant epicenters of culture and economy in Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose wasn’t ideal for drawing large crowds.
The Ports—who switched their franchise name in 1942 during World War II to honor the city’s strategic usage as an inland river port—are now members of the California League, which was founded in 1941. The squad officially became partners of the then-Oakland A’s in 2005.
They’ve since operated in a kind of minor league baseball purgatory, too far to draw public from nearby big cities, but not far enough to have a uniquely parochial culture and fanbase of their own. Like many minor league teams, they were part of a larger “farm system” for major league clubs like the A’s, developing talent before shipping players out to greener pastures.
That’s all starting to change, though. According to ABC10, longtime supporters of the A’s have switched their allegiance to a team that, in the eyes of East Bay baseball lovers, is more deserving of their dollars and time. The Ports have even formally sponsored fan-led events to celebrate Oakland transfers.
For the uninitiated, minor league baseball is notoriously one of the wackiest, oddest, goofiest mediums in professional sports. Fake-sounding team names like the Rocket City Trash Pandas, Richmond Flying Squirrels, and—my personal favorite—the Montgomery Biscuits (whose mascot looks like a crazed, drugged biscuit on the run from law enforcement) abound in the American Minor League circuit.
Beyond funky logos and monikers, uniforms are colorful, the promotion nights are randomly memorable (in 2002, the Nashua Pride gave away one million Turkish lira to a gameshow contestant fan, worth roughly one U.S. dollar at the time), and the prices are extremely family-friendly.
In this tradition of summertime flippancy, the Ports are even rechristening themselves as the Stockton Cheladas for the Copa de la Diversión this season—a nod to its Mexican and Latinx population. The temporary logo is a buff beer mug with a chamoy rim, squeezing a lime above its head with one hand, and pouring a cold Mexican lager with the other. The team will utilize its alter identity every Sunday for special games in celebration of its cultural heritage (45% of Stockton residents identify as Latinx). It doesn’t get more minor league-y than that.
After being ousted by the A’s, and with Oracle Park ranking as the sixth-most expensive baseball field in the nation, fans are starting to turn towards the Ports and other local ball clubs with more to offer.
But even minor league teams take swings that don’t always lead to a hit with local fans.
The Sacramento River Cats are a longtime Triple-A affiliate of the Oakland A’s and currently, a minor league farm squad for the Giants that just happen to be owned by Vivek Ranadivé, a Sacramento mogul who helped temporarily bring the Athletics to Sactown for a tentative three years as part of a “Faustian bargain.” The team was called out for what was deemed a sexist trope after rebranding themselves as the Sacramento Gold Diggers. The squad claims the name was a homage to the region’s Gold Rush history—but after they posted a marketing video that featured two women with flashing gold dollar signs in their eyes, a public backlash forced the team to apologize and ditch the concept.
But there is certainly baseball gold at West Oakland’s Raimondi Park, home of the sedulous Oakland Ballers. Established in 2024 as part of the independent Pioneer League (a minor league that operates outside of Major League Baseball’s jurisdiction), the team has taken up the mantle as the East Bay’s grassroots locus for a ballgame.
The Ballers’ leadership founded the upstart franchise shortly after the announcement of the Athletics’ shameless plans to decamp from Oakland (the A’s, fittingly, released an “Ass” hat design that New Era would later pull off their website, further underscoring the organization’s streak of “assery”). The B’s have filled the void left behind by their predecessors, providing a quintessential atmosphere of minor league entertainment: Oakland rapper Mistah Fab hitting pitches, a possum as a mascot (another shot at the A’s, who once had possums overrun their stadium), and a “Halloween in July” night.
The team’s home field is located in a mostly residential neighborhood of the city, with a distinct view of Oakland’s under-appreciated skyline behind the outfield, and a team-mural-bedecked row of warehouses on the third base side.
On a balmy summer night, firefighters might park their local engine and sit on top to catch a few innings of action, while residents pull up folding chairs with a beer in hand and kids poke their heads above the right field fence, hoping to snag a stray ball from behind the home run fence. There’s nothing quite like its homely warmth in all of professional Bay Area sports.
A spiritual affirmation takes place at a sporting event that doubles as a community hub—a truism that becomes even more apparent at the minor league level, where fans, players, and owners alike are solely there for the passion and fun of the game. The lack of technological razzle-dazzle and celebrity hype are the natural result of minor league baseball’s relatively undersized and underfunded capacities.
There’s a palpable buzz, with a cool small town vibe, on this furthest edge of Oakland. Majestic views of forgotten cities, games that begin with a Native American land acknowledgment, a Carolina reaper hot sauce fried chicken sandwich with an Almanac-brewed “Ballers Love” IPA, creeping shadows that ever-more-glacial stretch across the infield with each passing inning, an ancient experience of observing time pass beneath the open sky.
The Bay Area’s chaotic swirl of action seems a world beyond the Little League-sized stadium. It’s all a bit amateur—but that’s part of the draw.
Nowadays, passing the Oakland Coliseum’s hollowed shell of a former sanctuary, it feels like a reminder of empty spectacle, a corporate promise that wasn’t upheld. The minors are nothing like that. They provide the raw experience of watching live sports without the inundation of cameras, TV crews, or Jumbotron replays.
In the age of social media reels and TikTok dances, it feels damn good to sit under the evening gloam and be near the action. In many cases, you’ll be so close to the actual game that—in seeing the meticulous, idiosyncratic superstitions of each player as they approach the plate up close, whether kicking dirt, rubbing the bat, or pointing a subtle finger to the clouds—you won’t look away from the magnetism of the show.
Rather than trying to revolutionize the sport, these minor-scaled games remind us about the importance of community basics: without each other, what is there left to root for?
