On September 4, 2026, in Billings, Montana, the RedPocket Mobiles won a baseball game 14–5. In most seasons, in most leagues, a September win by a last-place team would not be news. This one made national headlines, because it ended the longest losing streak in the recorded history of professional baseball (40 consecutive games) and because the team that finally won it had spent the entire summer without a home.
This is the story of the RedPocket Mobiles, why we put our name on a barnstorming baseball team, and what a season like this one has to do with a cell phone service company in the first place.
Last winter, the Colorado Springs Rocky Mountain Vibes unfortunately folded, leaving the Pioneer Baseball League — an MLB Partner League stretching from Northern California through Utah, Idaho, and Montana — with eleven teams. Eleven is a hard number in baseball, one that you cannot build a balanced 96-game schedule around, and an unbalanced schedule means fewer games in Missoula, fewer in Ogden, fewer in Great Falls and Idaho Falls and Billings...fewer summer nights at the ballpark in the communities where the American ballpark is the summer.
The league's answer was one baseball hadn't seriously attempted in a century: a barnstorming team. A twelfth club with no home stadium, playing all 96 games on the road, traveling town to town by bus so that every other community in the league got its full slate of home games. The league needed a partner to make it real, and we said yes. The RedPocket Mobiles became the first professional baseball team to carry a corporate sponsor's name in over a hundred years, and the first barnstorming team in Pioneer League history.
We want to be honest about what we knew going in. We knew this team would never bat in the bottom of the ninth. We knew every walk-off would happen against them. We knew the bus rides would be long (they ended up totaling roughly 160 hours, the equivalent of four full work weeks spent on the highway) and that a schedule with essentially one true off day all summer would test anyone. But we signed up anyway, because the alternative was a league with a hole in it and eleven communities with less baseball to look forward to.
The Mobiles were built to compete, not just to fill dates. The dugout belonged to Dmitri Young, a 13-year MLB veteran and two-time All-Star, with 10-year big-league pitcher Ray King coaching the staff. The front office paired GM Al Maulding with co-GM Amy Gutierrez, formerly of the Giants and MLB Network. And in the first half, the team held its own — 12–36 isn't a banner season, but they took series in Great Falls and elsewhere, and sat just a few games out of escaping the cellar at the halfway mark.
The second half is the part that made history, and not the kind anyone hopes for. Injuries arrived. Contending clubs came calling for the Mobiles' best players, and once the team was out of the race, the front office made the very difficult decision to trade several of them so they could chase playoff experience elsewhere, and then filled those roster spots with hungry players from leagues like the Pecos League, where guys share hotel beds four to a room and sometimes cut the outfield grass before suiting up. For some of those players, a Mobiles jersey was the best opportunity of their baseball careers.
However, the losses mounted anyway. On September 2, the streak reached 39 straight, breaking a record held since 1923 by the Muskogee Mets. But the record obscures how the games actually went. The Mobiles lost 13 games by walk-off (the most in the league) every one of them on someone else's field, because a team with no home never gets the last at-bat. They went 3–24 in one-run games. More than 30 of their losses came in games they were leading in the sixth or seventh inning. And through all of it, they led the entire league in stolen bases, which their GM called his favorite stat in baseball for a simple reason — you only steal bases when you're trying to win.
The people carried it. Manager Young ran the club on five rules: show up on time, respect the game, be a good teammate, be good with the fans, work hard and have fun. Captain Jordan Harrison-Dudley chased a 30–30 season while living out of hotel rooms since spring training. Shortstop Gianni Horvat hit .336. Royce Clayton Jr., son of a big leaguer and an Olympic sprinter, showed up every day trying to do, in his father's words, one something to help the team win.
Then, on September 4 in Billings, the same team the streak-breaking loss had come against two nights earlier, the Mobiles won 14–5. Forty games of showing up finally paid off, and the celebration, by all accounts, was worthy of our own World Series.
RedPocket Mobile in the connectivity business. We have been since 2006. And the reason we do what we do is a belief that being connected to your people (your family, your town, your team) is the most important thing a phone actually does. Being connected to one another is everything. It's how a kid in Idaho Falls texts his dad about the game, how a player on his fourth city in two weeks calls home, how a fan in Missoula finds out the Mobiles finally broke the streak.
Sponsoring this team was the same idea in physical form. Eleven communities kept their full summer of baseball because one team agreed to always be the visitor. That's what showing up for a community looks like, and it's the standard we try to hold ourselves to as a carrier. We don't own towers; we bring you the 3 major 5G networks that do, and we try to be the company that's there for the unglamorous, every-single-day part of staying connected, the same way this team was there, on time, in uniform, in somebody else's ballpark, 96 times.
The Mobiles never got to bat last. They showed up anyway. And that's why we show up as RedPocket Mobile.
If you want to see the season for yourself, the team's journey was documented in the Chasing Baseball series on YouTube, and you can find the team at redpocketmobiles.com.
Is RedPocket Mobile a real phone carrier or just a baseball sponsor? A real carrier, and we've been one since 2006. RedPocket Mobile is an independently owned wireless provider providing you a choice of 5G coverage on 3 major, nationwide networks, ~2-minute customer care, and a locked-in price that never creeps up.
How does RedPocket work if you don't own the towers? We partner with the three major nationwide 5G networks, and you choose which one your plan runs on. If one network covers your town, your commute, or your ballpark better than another, you pick that one. Same phone number, your choice of network.
What do plans cost? Our plans start at just $10 per month, with annual plans that bring the effective monthly cost down further. Current pricing and promotions are always at redpocket.com/plans.
Will my price go up after a year like it does everywhere else? No. We don't raise the base price of your plan: no bill creep, no year-two surprises. The rate you sign up at is your rate (aside from when we make the price even lower during promotional windows like Black Friday)!
Do I need a new phone? Almost certainly not. Most unlocked phones work on RedPocket, and you can bring your own device and keep your number. If you do want a new phone, every device we sell is unlocked and can be purchased standalone or with a plan.
What about customer service? You'll reach a human quickly by phone or chat; our customer care hold times average about two minutes.
Why should I switch from a big carrier? RedPocket offers you the choice of 5G coverage on any one of the same 3 5G networks, without the big-carrier price. You get your choice of the major networks, a rate that stays put, and a company built for you that gets you support on time. That's what we mean when we call ourselves your new ultimate cell carrier.
Where can I learn more or switch? Visit redpocket.com to compare plans, check phone compatibility, and bring your number over in a few minutes.