After winning back to back Golden State Collegiate Baseball League (GSCBL) championships in 2013 and 2014, the Alameda Merchants have moved out of the GSCBL and will be an independent collegiate summer team in 2016. The Merchants made a big move this past week - they officially merged with the San Francisco Seals (a National Baseball Congress World Series Participant in 2014) to form one of the strongest independent collegiate summer baseball teams on the west coast.

The Seals have been in existence since 1984 and have been to the National Baseball Congress (NBC) World Series several times during the course of their history as a collegiate program. Their most recent trip was in 2014. The Seals are coached by Abel Alcantar, a long-time coach at Laney Junior College in Oakland, CA, and his son Isias Alacantar - who was the Southwestern Conference Player of the Year in 2013 at Arkansas Pine-Bluff. He was drafted by the Tampa Bay Rays in the 36th round of the 2014 MLB draft.  Patrick Collins-Bride, who has been a Seals coach for the last few years, will also join the staff in 2016.  Pat is an Alameda native and is also the assistant coach at Indiana Tech in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

The Seals have summer travel ball programs for kids aged as young as 10 years old - but the merger with the collegiate program was the focus here and it was just too good of an opportunity to pass up for the Merchants.

Assistant Coach Dan Mills, who was the only remaining coach from a staff that had been together for four years, thought this was the best course of action: "The Seals are an experienced independent team that has travelled all over the western United States. We were looking to replenish our coaching staff. We have that now with the addition of Abel, Isias and Pat. Being a nomadic independent team, they were looking for a home field. We have supplied that in the form of the College of Alameda. We think that this will be a good fit moving forward. I am excited to see where this merger takes us in the future. I am most excited about the expanded schedule. We will be putting these players up against some very formidable teams. This is a great thing because we feel that they will be challenged and return to their programs as better, more confident players".  

The Seals and Merchants are in the process of building a unified website, but in the meantime, you can check out the Seals website at the following link:  http://sfsealsbaseball.com/

More announcements about the upcoming summer will soon follow.