Eye on the ball: A Bay Area native and the daughter of a baseball coach, Mia Franceschi ’27 has fond memories of cheering on the San Francisco Giants. Now, as a social media associate for the Oakland Ballers, she’s forging connections with the East Bay's newest professional baseball team. / Photo by Lucas Maas
Making Contact: For Mia Franceschi ’27 and the Oakland Ballers, It’s About Community
Learning the tools of the trade is only part of her experience in Saint Mary’s Media Production Program, which set Franceschi up for a summer internship with the inaugural champs of baseball’s Pioneer League.
There’s the idea in baseball that making contact with the ball is one of the most important aspects of the game. When hitters make contact, runners get on base. Runners score. And hopefully by the bottom of the ninth inning, your team has scored more than the other team and is therefore victorious.
But making contact means something different when it comes to being the social media associate of a local baseball team. For Mia Franceschi ’27, making contact means cultivating a community and making fans feel seen.
Bay Area native Franceschi is a Communication and Media Production double major at Saint Mary’s, as well as a double minor in Italian Studies and Sports Media. Her first memories of baseball are of the San Francisco Giants’ dynastic run from 2010 to 2015, when they won three championships in five years. When she wasn’t at the games, she was often spending time with her father and grandfather, both of whom are baseball coaches.
Which is why, on a recent summer afternoon, she is standing on the first base line of Raimondi Park in Oakland, home turf for the Ballers, the reigning champs of baseball’s recently founded Pioneer League. The chalk of the basepath reflects off her sunglasses. “Baseball was in my blood from the beginning,” she says.
“They Could See this W from Space”
Mia Franceschi is the first student to participate in the inaugural Media Production Summer Immersion Experience. Designed by Media Production Director Jason Jakaitis, the program embeds Media Production students in an environment that requires them to apply the practical skills they have learned in the classroom for an organization in the community. For Franceschi, that means spending a summer as the social media associate for the Oakland Ballers.
Based out of Raimondi Park, the Oakland Ballers are a small, professional baseball organization in the Pioneer Independent Baseball League with hopes of filling the void left by the departure of major league sports teams such as the Athletics and the Raiders, and the move of the Golden State Warriors across the Bay Bridge. In 2025, led in no small part by the home runs of Gaels Baseball alum Christian Almanza ’23, MA ’24—who set a single-season franchise record for home runs and RBI—the Ballers won the inaugural title in the Pioneer League.
The Ballers have positioned themselves as a community-first organization—and Franceschi’s job is the frontline of that effort. In essence, the social media manager is an important bridge that connects the fans with the organization. Making contact with the fans takes many different forms, from featuring the exploits of players on the field to the antics of mascot Scrappy the Rally Possum.
The payoff comes in the laughter of a fan engaging with one of her posts, the high-fives and fist bumps of seat neighbors on the jumbotron, or someone deciding to spend a summer evening at Raimondi Park because they felt welcomed before they ever walked through the gates. After all, this is supposed to be baseball for the community. That is the contact she hopes to make and retain, long after the final out is called.
One of Franceschi’s favorite methods is cultivating fan engagement by responding to fans on Twitter/X as the official Ballers account. During a game against Long Beach Coast honoring University of California students in June, Franceschi’s posted a video of the jumbotron playing a reel produced by Calgorithm—a Cal student-run meme account. The video’s owner, surprised and grateful that their video was being played at the game, replied to the post on Twitter/X stating, “Unbelievably massive W.” Franceschi, under the Oakland Ballers account, replied: “just talked to nasa they said they could see this W from space.” The reply garnered over 200 likes.
“Fan engagement is one of the most important things you as a brand can do,” Franceschi says. “The more, as a brand, you interact with regular people, the more inclined they are to support you. They’ll see interactions like that and think ‘Oh, the Oakland Ballers are funny. Let’s go catch a game!’”
“Fan engagement is one of the most important things you as a brand can do. The more, as a brand, you interact with regular people, the more inclined they are to support you.”
Professional Skills Meet Strategy
Support is exactly what Franceschi has received in order to excel at her position with the Ballers. She has the freedom to pitch her own creative ideas and take charge during the games. And she credits the Media Production Program for preparing her for this position, when it comes to approach and skills.
“Whether it’s making little fifteen-second videos or something longer, I use a lot of Photoshop, a lot of Premiere,” which is the standard for professional video production, she says. She learned these tools hands-on in coursework with Jason Jakaitis on video and audio production. “I think I’ve used Premiere every single day for many hours a day.”
While technical skills have prepared Franceschi for the demands of working in sports media, she makes it clear that the job goes beyond the use of editing software. With every graphic, highlight reel, and social media post, there’s a clear goal in mind that’s part of the larger strategy: connecting with someone on the other side of the screen. Come August 21, that just might mean connecting with a few members of the Saint Mary’s community; a sizeable number of faculty and staff will be among the fans turning out for Teacher Appreciation Night.
Where does Franceschi head after making contact this summer with the Oakland Ballers? After graduating next spring, she hopes to continue working in professional baseball. Ideally, that would be with her favorite childhood team, the San Francisco Giants—though she is open to wherever the profession takes her. “Baseball is my one true love,” she says.
