A new baseball team is coming the Sacramento area – just not the one you’re thinking of

“How can you not be romantic about baseball?”

That question asked by Brad Pitt portraying Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane in the Oscar nominated film “Moneyball” resonates in a unique way for Bryan Carmel.

Carmel grew up in the East Bay and a fan of the A’s, and considers himself among the many baseball fans saddened by the team’s looming departure from its long-time home for the supposed greener pastures of Las Vegas. The Sacramento area is also in talks to provide a temporary home for the A’s for the 2025-2027 seasons, but that’s just a holding pattern until the Las Vegas home is ready.

Part ofCarmel’s business partner Paul Freedman’s motivation is to fill the baseball void by creating the Oakland Ballers.

And, more recently, Carmel and Freedman helped form the Yolo High Wheelers, the new professional baseball team that will play at UC Davis beginning this spring. The first game is against the Rocky Mountain Vibes May 21.

The High Wheelers and Ballers are joining the Pioneer League, which is one of four partner leagues of the independent baseball league system — and is a partner league for Major League Baseball. The two teams are joining in 2024 in hopes of creating a regional rivalry along Interstate 80 while also opening the gates for the league to expand to more cities in California.

The High Wheelers are planning to play at UC Davis’ 3,500-seat James M. & Ann Dobbins Baseball Stadium beginning May 21. The nickname High Wheelers stems from the city’s ties to its cycling community. The city considers itself the most bicycle friendly in the country, and the city’s logo includes a high wheel bicycle. Davis is also home to the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame.

“The High Wheelers don’t just come to any city,” Vice Mayor of Davis Josh Chapman said at the team’s announcement event. “They come to cities that have to alignment, a growing economy, an athletically inclined community, a large market and a distinct identity.”

Romance of the game

The mandate for Carmel and Freedman, aside from running a successful business in professional sports, is recapture the romance baseball provides, which speaks to Carmel. He’s a baseball junkie with a Hollywood background producing film and TV.

“Ridiculously so,” Carmel said. “For one thing, I get to rediscover it all again because I have an 8-year-old son who’s obsessed with baseball, and I’ve coached his little league team for the last few years. Just watching him awaken to baseball cards and learning about the players that I grew up loving, from the ‘Bash Brothers,’ Will Clark and Kevin Mitchell across the Bay, Walt Weiss and Terry Steinbach. It’s been fun to see him dig into my old baseball card collection.”

Pioneer League president Mike Shapiro said he’s spent his entire life “living in that space” of baseball romanticism, starting as the San Francisco Giants’ VP and general council in 1984 before a long career sports, entertainment and broadcasting.

“Baseball, say what you will, is still the heart and soul of this country,” Shapiro said. “And I think baseball has been generationally, critically important to this culture. ... It fills this huge void not only in the soul of this country, and the communities we play in, but it fills a huge void just in terms of the time of year and people looking for low cost, family-based entertainment on a summer night.”

Pioneer League

The Pioneer League is for players with fewer than three years of professional experience. They are often prospects who slip through the cracks of Major League teams and their minor league affiliate systems.

The league was initially established in 1939 with teams in Idaho and Utah. The league currently has 12 teams, with Oakland and Yolo being the only two in California.

“I thought the idea of going to Oakland made a great deal of sense because we wanted to go to California, where there are some really great but under served markets,” Shapiro said. “And when you decide you’re going to add one team to a league, obviously for scheduling purposes, you have to add two.”

The Pioneer League is working to be innovative and fan friendly. Instead of extra innings, the league imposes a home-run derby to decide the outcome of games. How it works: Teams choose their hitters, who then choose who pitches to them batting practice style behind a screen. From there, each team’s hitter will have two minutes to hit as many home runs as possible.

“We are all about trying to keep the sacred structure of the game, but update it to a modern audience,” Shapiro said. “An audience that has changing demographics and different attention spans than they did years and years ago.”

Shapiro said even if games require the home run knockout round, games are rarely ever longer than three hours. The league has also adopted the pitch clock, which has changed the pace for Major League Baseball also.

“I came into this wanting to do something different,” Shapiro said. “Not just for the sake of being different, but doing something to advance the game and make something that was probably turning people off into something that was more attractive.”

But not too different. The crack of the bat, the smell of hot dogs and popcorn, the popping sound of a pitch hitting a catcher’s glove will available to fans when the season begins in May.