The minor-minor leaguer Oakland Ballers won a championship in just their second year of existence, and took to the streets with their wacky possum mascot Sunday to celebrate how they’ve replaced the Oakland A’s with a bona fide champion.
The Bay Area is currently enjoying a Golden Age of upstart new cult-hit sports teams. The Class C minor league Baseball team Oakland Ballers, founded largely out of inspired spite toward the Oakland A’s for leaving town, are such an unapologetic troll of the A’s franchise that their baseball hats say they’re the B’s, and their mascot is a possum, a direct insult to the myriad feral wildlife problems the A’s would encounter when they played at the decrepit Oakland Coliseum.
The Oakland Ballers have not been as financially successful as the WNBA expansion team Golden State Valkyries, as “the B’s” play at the mere 4,000-seat Raimondi Park in West Oakland. But they’ve had more success on the field. In just their second season this year, the Ballers posted a 73–23 record, the best record ever in the modern era of the Pioneer League in which they play. And last month, they won the Pioneer League Championship in a five-game series against the Idaho Falls Chukars, and the celebratory bedlam from that game can be seen below.
And thus, the Oakland Ballers had their championship parade on Sunday in West Oakland, as KPIX reports. And KPIX also has video from Sunday’s parade, seen below.
The parade route was really just a victory lap around Raimondi Field. But it also started with a rally at City Hall, celebrating what KTVU calls Oakland’s “first baseball title since 1989,” referencing the Mark McGwire/Jose Canseco A’s team. “36 years! That's how long this city has waited, waited for a baseball championship,” Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee declared at the City Hall rally, according to KTVU. “And today we celebrate.”
An eclectic championship parade it was, with some players getting to ride the parade on a flame-shooting Burning Man art car.
Others were riding something called the Hyphy Bus, whose signage declares, “Vehicle Will Gas-Break-Dip.” What happens on the Hyphy Bus? As seen below, it was exactly what you would expect.
The Ballers’ championship and parade clearly gave many longtime Oakland baseball fans a sense of happy closure over the loss of the A’s, who have remained a disaster in their interim Sacramento incarnation. And while this was certainly a low-budget celebration of a low-budget franchise, it was also a celebration of hardscrabble, Oaktown-style resilience. As Oakland rapper Jwalt declared in a Sunday celebratory rap, “You can never take a Baller out of the Bay/They can leave, but the B’s gonna stay.”
Related: Oakland Ballers Win First Baseball Championship, Parade to Be Held Next Sunday [SFist]
Image: Alex Harmon via Facebook
