Ventura Oilers

The Ventura Oilers, based in Ventura, California, played the 1953 season in the Class C California League, the final identity of the city's own franchise before a regional merger. Ventura had joined the league in 1947 as the Ventura Yankees, becoming the Ventura Braves in 1950, and took the Oilers name for 1953 in honor of the industry that built the town; the Ventura Avenue oil field just north of downtown was one of the richest in California, and derricks defined the city's skyline and payrolls for half a century.

The Oilers name proved to be Ventura's last stand as a solo baseball market. After the 1953 season the operation combined with Santa Barbara's to form the Channel Cities Oilers, a two-city experiment representing the whole coastal stretch, which itself lasted less than two seasons before the franchise departed for Reno in mid-1955 to become the Silver Sox.

Professional baseball returned to Ventura just once more, when the Ventura County Gulls played the 1986 season at Ventura College, giving the city a baseball history that spans four names, two eras, and one of the California League's more distinctive local identities in the Oilers.