By Magaly Munoz

If anyone knows the struggles of breaking into minor league baseball, it’s James Harris.

Harris, an Oakland native, was drafted by the Tampa Bay Rays in 2011, starting a tumultuous 10-year career of jumping from one team to the next, and he had health problems that would hinder his career progress.

After dedicating almost his entire life to playing baseball, Harris never imagined he would be released and signed to 11 different teams over a decade.

“The experience is humbling,” Harris explained.

“I think that for most people, [the emotions] goes both ways, where you probably start off a little bit of anger because you feel like you’re better than other guys that are staying. But then you have to humbly look in the mirror and say, ‘Well, what do I need to do differently if given the opportunity again?’” Harris said.

Midway through his career, Harris experienced episodes of passing out while on the field, leading to several weeks of testing with multiple cardiologists. This caused him to miss six weeks of the season.

He was diagnosed with a form of heart arrhythmias, which led to his release from the A’s. Unfortunately, other teams could not be convinced to take a chance on him due to heart problems, so he spent no more than a season with any organization over the next five years.

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In 2021, now heartbroken over what had transpired throughout his career, he decided to retire from playing baseball. Despite being frustrated, he wanted to have fun during his last season.

“As an athlete, you never want to feel like the game is kicking you out. You want to walk away on your own terms,” Harris said. “I wanted to be in a position where I can transition my life from being a player to other opportunities.”

And new opportunities were exactly what he found, and not too far away from the field he knew and loved.

Soon after leaving baseball, Harris began working with kids during his off time, coaching and training players of all ages. This evolved into coaching travel ball teams and eventually partnering with BJ Boyd, his former A’s teammate, to start their own training team called Backyard Boyz.

Boyd knew from the start that the partnership would be able to build something big to give back to the community.

Harris and Boyd understood how expensive and time consuming the sport was, on top of how confusing breaking into the big leagues would be for the young players who had the drive to move to the next level beyond high school. They provide kids with mentorship and opportunities to play in front of college scouts at little to no cost.

This is not about money or building themselves up at others’ expense, they want to see Oakland kids thriving with opportunities that are not easy to come by without families paying exorbitant fees.

The players love Harris, Boyd said, because he’s been in their shoes before, so he understands what it really takes to go to the next level. The kids look up to them because they dream of being where the two have already been.

“The motivation and the goal behind [Backyard Boyz] is to help be a platform and a resource for as many kids as possible. Everyone doesn’t have an advocate speaking on their behalf [like this resource],” Harris said.

Around the time of starting Backyard Boyz, Harris began working with a new pioneer league team, the Ballers, that came to Oakland during peak baseball desperation.

The A’s, Oakland’s major league baseball team since 1968, had just announced their plans to leave the city to find a new home in Las Vegas when the Ballers announced their plans to dig roots in the town. The B’s hoped to take away the doom and gloom that the A’s were leaving with fans and give locals something new to take pride in.

Oakland has gotten a reputation for losing professional sports teams. The longtime NFL team, Oakland Raiders, moved to Las Vegas in 2020, and the Golden State Warriors left their city arena empty to play across the bridge in San Francisco in 2019.

Harris first joined the growing B’s team as marketing and sales guy, promoting the team to locals and building up the hype the new team would bring. Midway through the teams first season, Harris was asked to step up as an assistant coach.

Because of his background in running baseball camps and playing in the minor league, the change of position seemed like a no-brainer to Ballers Manager Aaron Miles.

“[Harris] would hang around the batting cage and talk ball with the players. He was another knowledgeable baseball guy for players to lean on,” Miles said.

The Ballers finished their season by making it to the Pioneer League playoffs, but ultimately lost 6-4 to the Yolo High Wheelers in the first round.

Although the coaching is at different levels, Harris is honored to be a part of maintaining the legacy of Oakland sports at a time when fans are feeling discouraged. The Ballers and Backyard Boyz are allowing him to create impact in the lives of players who are at unique stages of their careers, whether that’s starting out in high school or trying to use the Pioneer League as a stepping stone into something bigger.

“It means a lot to me to be a part of [the Ballers] and to see how it’s directly impacted people. The amount of people I’ve met doing this, and working with the little leagues has been extremely humbling,” Harris said. “I think that this is going to be huge for the community.”

Magaly Muñoz

A graduate of Sacramento State University, Magaly Muñoz’s journalism experience includes working for the State Hornet, the university’s student-run newspaper and conducting research and producing projects for “All Things Considered” at National Public Radio. She also was a community reporter for El Timpano, serving Latino and Mayan communities, and contributed to the Sacramento Observer, the area’s African American newspaper.

Muñoz is one of 40 early career journalists who are part of the California Local News Fellowship program, a state-funded initiative designed to strengthen local news reporting in California, with a focus on underserved communities.

The fellowship program places journalism fellows throughout the state in two-year, full-time reporting positions.

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