Humboldt Crabs Baseball

By Ray Hamill — The 2026 local summer baseball season comes to an end this weekend, but it has been a fun ride for North Coast fans at just about every step of the way.

From the local Little League All-Stars to the American Legion clubs to the Humboldt Crabs, there was no shortage of excitement, thrills and entertaining games.

Not to mention the remarkable success we witnessed from some of the North Coast teams, most notably the District Little League All-Star champions.

The Crabs may have missed out on playing in this year’s Pacific Empire League championship series, but the season may still produce 40 wins, and that’s a big success by any standards.

And that makes the Crabs our choice for Team of the Week.

Under the guidance of first-year manager Jeff Giacomini, the local collegiate summer baseball club continued to excel this summer.

Among the highlights of the season were exciting walk-off wins over the Humboldt Eagles 19Us and the Stockton Pearls, as well as a no-hitter by McKinleyville’s Jackson Kelly against the West Coast Kings.

This week, the Crabs are closing out the summer season strong.

On Sunday, they took the series rubber match showdown against the Medford Rogues, exacting some revenge after getting swept in Medford earlier in the summer.

They continued to roll with two midweek wins over the Chico Lone Wolves, before kicking of the final series of the season with a 19-4 win over the Placer County Peloteros on Friday night.

With that win, they improved to 38-13 on the summer.

Our athlete of the week, meanwhile, goes to Bryce Pope of the Humboldt Eagles 17Us.

The younger Eagles traveled to compete in their District tournament in Fairfield last weekend and bounced back from an opening-day loss to win three straight games in pool play.

Unfortunately, however, multiple teams were tied with 3-1 records and the Eagles failed to advance to the tournament semifinals because of a tiebreaker, which ended their season.

One player who stood out and did his best to give the Eagles a chance was Eureka High’s Pope, who enjoyed an outstanding tournament to close out his summer season strong.

Pope hit an inside-the-park home run on opening day, had a base hit and two RBIs against the Siskiyous Spirit, and was 2-for-2 with a two-RBI double against Navy All Pro.

He was even more impressive in Saturday’s season finale against the Solano Mudcats, finishing 4-for-4 and scoring four runs.

For good measure, he also pitched three strong innings to close out Saturday’s game.

The strong finish to the summer for the soon-to-be high school junior is good news for the Loggers and will help prepare him for next spring’s high school season.

For more on his big weekend, see Saturday’s Baseball Roundup.