When the Oakland Ballers became the Oakland Blazers as a nod to Cannabis culture for one night this summer, they were cashing in on a gimmick. You couldn’t smoke weed at the ballpark, but all the winks and nods were there. The players mimed smoking joints, a Grateful Dead cover band jammed throughout the game, and fan gear had “Kush” written across the backs of the jerseys and included a small weed leaf. But the stunt, which could have stood as no more meaningful than fast food chains advertising 420 deals, came to fuller life through a partnership with Oaksterdam, America’s first Cannabis college.
“For years, we educated people to use ‘adult use’ instead of ‘recreational’ because recreational applies to family-friendly activities, and Cannabis is strictly 21-plus,” Dale Sky Jones, Oaksterdam’s executive chancellor, said. “This is the first time a Cannabis event has used the term correctly. This is a recreational night for the Cannabis industry, our families and our community.”
From Joke to Reality
Based in Oakland, California, the Oakland Ballers are an independent baseball team in the Pioneer League. The idea of becoming the Oakland Blazers originated from an April Fools’ Day joke where the team posted a picture of the Blazers jersey.
“The response was so overwhelming when we soft launched the design and the joke that we felt like we had to do it to give the people what they wanted,” Casey Pratt, the Oakland Ballers vice president of communications and fan entertainment, said.
Through a partnership with Oaksterdam, the game stood as a representation of the mainstream acceptance of Cannabis culture.
“Things have come so far,” longtime Cannabis activist and Oaksterdam horticulture instructor Jeff Jones said. “(Cannabis) is such a nonissue.”
Journalist Adam Tschorn extensively covered the team’s transition from a joke to reality through his Substack, High Adam.
“My stock line for public-facing Cannabis-related culture things is anytime you have a Cannabis-related event where someone doesn’t play the piano really fast and then murder people — and that’s a reference to “Reefer Madness” — it’s a good day,” Tschorn said. “It’s more exposure of Cannabis and the faces of people who are involved in Cannabis in a way that just sort of gets it out there.”
Through Tschorn’s coverage of the Blazers, he learned that the color for the jersey — light green, purple and orange — was chosen as a reference to the colors in a legendary strain that originated in Oakland: Granddaddy Purple.
“I just felt like, ‘OK, they weren’t just co-opting Cannabis; they were really leaning into it,’” Tschorn said. “Oakland has a long history of blazing a trail with Cannabis, and it felt like it all really worked. It was a way that would expose the plant to people who weren’t necessarily familiar with it and think it’s this dangerous thing, and it was pretty high profile.”
As a part of the pregame festivities, Oaksterdam partnered with Emerald Farms Tours to host a crawl of Cannabis lounges in Oakland’s downtown. In its heyday of the early to mid-2000s, Oaksterdam was not only a campus but also a cultural district that contained many places to purchase and consume weed.
“We’re finally relegalizing what we have shown two decades ago was safe and responsible,” Dale Sky Jones said of the Cannabis consumption lounges that exist in Oakland today. “Now, finally, the new adult-use laws are catching up, and we’re just here to show other communities that this can be safe, successful and a benefit.”
All in all, the game felt like a success for the normalization of Cannabis in a climate where the stigmas of “Reefer Madness” remain.
“It is a pretty high-profile activation or placement of something that’s still very illegal in a lot of states and at the federal level,” Tschorn said. “The Ballers fans are pretty enthusiastic. I’m curious to find out if there were any converts, people who were not down with weed before, but now are like, ‘OK, weed people are cool.’”
Pratt said there wasn’t really any pushback to the alternate branding.
“What’s wild is we’ve received such little pushback,” Pratt said. “We, like, almost expected some, but it hasn’t really come. I think that the Cannabis industry and weed and everything has become a lot more acceptable and a responsible way for adults to partake if they so choose to.”
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