Thieves stole $15K worth of gear from Oakland Tech athletic field

OAKLAND, Calif. - Thieves stole $15,000 of athletic gear from Oakland Tech’s volunteer baseball and soccer programs.

Sometime around 9 p.m. on Monday night, thieves stole bats, balls, gloves, cleats  and uniforms from inside storage containers located on the school's athletic field, called the Field of Dreams. They also stole big ticket items like a remote control for the scoreboard, a self-propelled lawn mower for infield mowing, a gas-powered weed whacker, many general maintenance tools including cordless power tools, screwdriver and socket sets, shovels, hoes, hammers, extension cords, and more.

The culprits apparently cut a hole in the fence and drovea truck across Tech’s Rickey Henderson baseball field, sawed off the locks on the storage containers and grabbed what they could from four different programs.

When Paul Mankin showed up Tuesday morning to to prep thefield for a Little League All-Star game, he knew something
was wrong.

“When I came in, I had that really strange feeling like something is not right and everything was out of disarray and then I began looking around and realized there had been a burglary or robbery here,” Mankin said.

The program is funded nearly 100 percent by volunteers and could take years to fully replace. The Oakland A’s said they’d match the contributions set up by a GoFundMe page up to $5,000.