By Caleb Knudsen
It was almost game time when the fog burned off of the North Coast to reveal the newly remodeled Arcata Ballpark, where local baseball fans streamed into the bleachers with high hopes for their team to surprise the league leaders.
The Humboldt Crabs stood in second place in the Pacific Empire League (PEL), and faced the first-place Healdsburg Prune Packers for a three-game series that, at the very least, should foretell the league’s championship series at the end of July. The Packers—referred to in the local Mad River Union as “the big bad first place team”—had made the 200-plus mile drive up Hwy 101 to Arcata on Friday, and though a reduced roster of their players made the trip, they were confident and ready.
The Humboldt Crabs have a history and heritage of good baseball, dating back to their founding in 1945. They haven’t missed a season of play since, which gives them bragging rights over the Prune Packers who, though founded in 1921, quit midway through the 1925 season. “Many fans contend that the game has been too greatly commercialized, and as a result has lost its value as an interesting sport,” read the story in a July 1925 issue of The Tribune.
Though revived several times, their most recent incarnation dates from 2012. They became a member of the California Collegiate League in 2014, and in 2024 became a founding team in the newly constituted PEL—a league that also includes the Humboldt Crabs.
Starting pitcher for the Crabs was Myles Standish, a 2023 graduate of Eureka High and a regional star. He’s Humboldt’s ace, with a 5-0 record and a league-leading 48 strikeouts as the game began. In the first inning he showed his command, allowing a lead-off single to Antonelli Savattere but striking out two to leave the scoreboard empty.
On the mound for the Packers was Kaden Taque, whose seven appearances led to a 1-0 record. The bottom of the first was a bit rougher for him—a walk and two singles loaded the bases with nobody out, and the Crab fans were snapping their claws with excitement. But two outfield flies and a strike-out kept the first inning scoreless for both teams.
The visiting Packers scored a single run in each of the next two innings on scrappy ball play—two singles and an error brought across JC Osorio-Agard in the second, and a similar series of plays scored Savattere in the third. Though the game was still close, at 2-0, the 1,003 paying fans at Arcata Ball Park had lost none of their enthusiasm for the home team.
The Crabs again loaded the bases with nobody out in the fourth inning, though this time their luck was better as Houston Hirschkorn scored an earned run, chasing a frustrated Toque back to the Packer dugout. Mason Lerma took over pitching duties, coaxing a double-play ball out of Michael Perazzo to end the inning.
Then locals roared when Tyler Howard hit a solo home run in the fifth inning, tying the score at 2-2. For a game between the top two teams in the league—and the top two collegiate teams in the state, according to some polling—a tie was to be expected.
Standish held onto his pitching spot through seven full innings, ending with six strikeouts, two walks and five hits. In relief Max Hippensteel started the next two innings, putting his 2-0 record on the line by facing the Prune Packers.
Darkness had finally fallen by the top of the eighth inning, when that Packer big-bat magic struck again. After the first two batters struck out, Osorio-Agard connected with a 1-2 pitch with enough altitude that it cleared the high left-field fence and landed on Hwy 101, where logging trucks and motorcycle clubs had been roaring past all evening. It was Osorio-Agard’s 12th home run of the year, solidifying his league-leading numbers.
The Crabs almost mounted a threat in the bottom of the ninth, as with two outs Adam Enyart scorched a grounder to first which Cade Ladehoff could not handle. With the tying run on first, the Arcata crowd worked itself into a frenzy—then fell quiet as Hirschkorn’s line drive to left was picked off by a leaping Osorio-Agard at short.
Though not a dominant win, the 3-2 final showed that it would take more than a small amount of adversity—a long road trip, a lean roster, foggy weather, the league’s leading pitcher in Standish and three Healdsburg errors—to deter the Prune Packers from another trip to the PEL playoffs. Whether or not they meet the Humboldt Crabs there remains to be seen.
The weekend concluded with two more Healdsburg wins, as described in this related story.
