Ballers baseball at Raimondi Park brings excitement to West Oakland residents
Oakland's newest baseball team is now playing games in its West Oakland home, completing an almost unbelievable transformation Raimondi Park and for neighbors who live nearby.
Not only is there the rapid emergence of a ballpark, there's also the sudden arrival of thousands of baseball fans in the once quiet corner of town.
"When they first started, I couldn't understand what they were doing," admitted nearby resident Susan Diego. "And then these bleachers went up and my mind was just blown. I could not even visualize what was going to happen here."
Living right across the street from a baseball stadium that materialized in barely two months, Diego is now watching Oakland Ballers history from her home. She's still a little shocked by it all.
"Need to get a higher powered binocular," she joked. "This was not on my bingo card."
Not long after the very first pitch, she had a slightly obstructed yet very comfortable view of the first Ballers home run from her front porch.
"You hear that?" she asked of the crowd's roar. "It's crazy."
Mike Gaunt grabbed that first home run as he and some friends caught what they could from outside the park. They just wanted to be nearby.
"This is a decoy, because they asked for the ball," Gaunt explained. "So I gave them back the original ball. They have it now. But this is good enough. So yeah, I was able to touch the first Oakland Ballers homerun. Which is pretty dope."
He too was impressed with the ballpark the team put together so quickly.
"This is awesome. This is so amazing," he said. "It's great that the community put this together. I came down two days ago and there were people volunteering to put things together. That's awesome. That's how Oakland is."
Johnathan Brown operates his food truck Knee Baby'z Eatery close to the ballpark.
"Yeah, I actually started my business about four blocks down on 14th and Wood at the height of the pandemic,' Brown said.
Brown says the team and the visitors are transformative.
"The foot traffic is phenomenal," he said from his pop-up stand. "We've got people coming from that way, this way, that way. All walks of life."
Everyone visiting to see the Ballers play seemed to come away with a positive experience.
"We were going to go see the A's and the Mariners game, but this literally trumps that game," said Dan Stratton, who came from Orange County.
"This is cool," Ryan Phillips said from his grill in the tailgate lot. "It's great that they made a tailgating space for fans. A brass band. It's a great atmosphere."
"It's bringing that love back," Brown said. "You know what I mean? Like you see people coming out. It's bringing that sense of camaraderie. I think it's bringing that back to the community."
This week, the neighborhood was getting used to the newest addition, including what traffic is like on game day, and where stand to catch a little glimpse of what's going on. Or maybe even a ball.
"Rolled right by me so I scooped 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 couple of months. The Town's new baseball team, right in West Oakland, right outside Susan Diego's porch.
"That's amazing," Diego said of the buzz from the ballpark. "I love that sound."