Dmitri Young has, unfortunately, seen this all before. The former MLB veteran had perhaps his best season while playing for the 2003 Tigers, a team that -- until the 2024 White Sox -- came the closest to breaking the 1962 Mets' record for the most losses in an MLB season.
“We were putting patents on ways of losing,” Young said with a laugh over the phone to MLB.com.
He remembers what it was like to show up at the park every day and still need to put on your best performance. He remembers what it was like to show respect to the game, to your teammates, to the fans out in the stands.
Though they were long out of the playoff race, that Tigers team won five of its last six games to finish with 119 losses, ever so narrowly avoiding history in the worst way possible.
Unfortunately, Young couldn’t avoid it this time. Now the manager for the RedPocket Mobiles in the Pioneer League, an MLB Partner League, he’s was at the helm on Wednesday night when the Mobiles lost their 39th consecutive game of the season to the Billings Mustangs, 23-5.
That broke the 1923 Muskogee Mets’ record for the longest losing streak in pro baseball history.
"Send that ball to Cooperstown," the TV broadcast said as the final out was recorded.
“We can hang our hat on the fact that we’re not going to finish with the worst professional record of all time,” Mobiles co-GM and Pioneer League director of operations Al Maulding said before the game. (He shares Mobiles GM duties with former Giants and MLB Network reporter Amy Gutierrez.) “We know that for a fact: Our 13 wins is already two times as many as the Empire State Grays had in 2022. So we’re still trudging along, we’re doing our best, and I’m really hopeful that we’re going to get a win this week.”
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Somehow, despite dropping 38 consecutive games, the Muskogee Mets didn’t finish in last place that year. That’s because they weren’t such a bad team until the end of the season. Two players -- Joe Rabbitt and Andy Rush -- even saw big league action (albeit for a combined total of six games).
But when August rolled around, Muskogee owner Ensley Barbour, a movie theater owner and manager of traveling stock companies, was either so fed up with his underachieving ballclub or had received an offer to move the team to Sioux City (or perhaps both), he began selling off any players he could to other ballclubs. The Mets replaced them with whatever sandlot players could then be found in the next town they arrived at.
“It is of no credit to a league certainly that it permits such a farce as Ensley Barbour has been making of things in his conduct of the Muskogee club,” The Sporting News wrote. “Barbour … sold or released most of his best players and filled their places with a lot of baseball junk, then transferred his home games.”
The Mobiles are a little different: They haven’t had a home game all season.
When the Colorado Springs Rocky Mountain Vibes folded before the 2026 season, the Pioneer League was left with just 11 teams. That would make scheduling a 96-game schedule for the league almost impossible, so, with help from RedPocket, who took on the naming rights, the league created a traveling team. The ballclub would play a series, hop on the bus and head for a new city and a new hotel. They would repeat that all summer long, with cameras coming along to capture it all for a YouTube series.
“We began by getting ourselves a coaching staff with Dmitri Young and started to recruit players. Along the way, we had a couple of guys that balked at the idea of being on a travel team and being on the road for 120 days, which, I mean, you can’t really fault them for that. That’s a big ask,” Maulding said.
Because the league plays Tuesday through Sunday, the Mobiles have had only one true day off this year when a weekend series in Oakland ended on Sunday before the team drove to Modesto, Calif., on Tuesday. Maulding said that the team has spent 160 hours on the bus alone – the equivalent of four full work weeks.
Despite the difficult nature of the job, this is still an opportunity to play baseball, one with a paycheck attached to it and a Major Leaguer in the dugout.
“We found a big group of guys that really wanted an opportunity to play baseball and prove that they belong and we’ve done that,” Maulding said. “It hasn’t been the easiest thing, but day by day, they keep going out there and playing their hearts out. That’s all we can really ask for.”
With a Kerouacian thirst for the road, the team headed out. The Mobiles finished in last place in the first half with a 12-36 record, but were just three games away from escaping the cellar.
The second half has been a different story: The team has gone 1-43. Injuries, that scourge of all ballclubs, reared its head, but -- like the 1923 Muskogee nine -- the team also began trading away many of its best players to other teams.
“We had a few players that were traded once we realized we were out of contention,” Maulding said. “There were some guys that we had been getting calls about all season and getting pressure to trade them to other clubs within the Pioneer League and it got to the point where we really wanted to give those guys an opportunity to go and play meaningful games at the end of the season and get themselves some playoff experience.”
There’s another side to that coin, too: The newly opened roster spots gave opportunities to players in the Pecos or Maverick Leagues, leagues where pay may be $20 at the end of the week and where the ballplayers report early to cut the grass before suiting up.
“You still get hungry players that sometimes just fall through the cracks, and they go down there and work their tails off to come up here to play for this last month,” Young said. “Like in the Pecos League, there's four to a room, so they're sharing beds.”
The Mobiles didn’t trade everyone, either: Shortstop Gianni Horvat has a .336 average, but was one of the players to miss time with injury. Captain and outfielder Jordan Harrison-Dudley is in the hunt for a 30-30 season.
“On the road since Spring Training, never being in your own home, never having the bottom of the ninth, sleeping in some hotel rooms that may not be the best, but we just try to make it the best as we can, man,” Harrison-Dudley said. “For me, it’s an opportunity to play baseball and just keep going. It’s tough, it weighs on you a little bit after a while, but you just gotta keep persevering, just keep going hard at it.”
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Young has five rules for the players on his team:
- Show up on time
- Respect the game
- Be a good teammate
- Be good with the fans
- Work hard and have fun
Young knows the importance of these rules better than most. This is his third time with a traveling team, having been on the road as a coach with the Oakland County Cruisers in 2010 and with the Northern Colorado Owlz, which transitioned into the Colorado Springs Sky Sox last season.
He also remembers the day he could have focused on an individual achievement and stopped at second base to complete the cycle with the Tigers in 2003. Instead, he put his head down and motored for third.
“Man, I ain't that old. Of course I remember,” Young said with a laugh when I asked him about the game. (The team may have lost its last 39 games, but Young certainly hasn’t lost his sense of humor.)
“I hit the ball. I ran out of the box. Melvin Mora somehow missed it. Hit off the wall, shot past Gary Matthews Jr. As I'm running, I already knew I had to double, but I needed to get in better scoring position,” Young said. “Those are the kind of players that I want. I want those guys that add the flair, but they also hustle. They respect the game.”
The Mobiles are certainly doing that -- no matter the results. The team leads the league in stolen bases, pushing for an extra base at every opportunity.
“That's my favorite stat in baseball,” Maulding said. “If you're going out there and you're stealing bases, it's because you're trying to win.”
And while the Mobiles have certainly had their share of lopsided losses, with scorelines reading like something out of a bizarre football games -- A 28-9 loss to the Idaho Falls Chukars, 21-4 to the Boise Hawks, 24-4 to the Glacier Range Riders -- the team has dropped plenty of heartbreakers, too.
Tuesday night’s contest to tie the all-time mark was one of those: The Mobiles tied the game in the seventh to force extra innings before losing in the “Knockout round,” a game-ending home run derby.
“You look at our record and it’s like, ‘Damn,’” Young said. “But those that are in the know, they know that there have been 13 walk-offs against us. We’re like 3-24 in one-run games. We have over 30 losses when we were winning in the sixth or seventh, so we’re very competitive.”
“Obviously, it's been tough,” Royce Clayton Jr., the son of former big league veteran Royce Clayton, said. “We've been in so many close games. It feels like we're about to win, and then we just get kicked in the teeth. But that's part of the game -- especially not being able to play any home games.”
Clayton has some good role models to look up to: In addition to his big leaguer father, his mother was a sprinter for Team Great Britain at the 2000 Summer Olympics.
“My mom always tells me to do my best, go out there, play hard,” Clayton said. “My dad's thing is just do one something to help the team win. So whether it's getting a hit, making a play, stealing a base, just gotta do my one something, and then you can go home happy after the game regardless of the outcome.”
The losses may be piling up, but Harrison-Dudley is wearing a baseball uniform. When you can do that for your job, it can’t be that bad.
“All I can say is, it's a blessing, man,” Harrison-Dudley said. “Just going in there and just trying to just be myself. The first thing Dmitri ever told me when we first got to Spring Training is just be yourself, and I have been myself through the whole season. It’s allowed me to be smooth and relaxed, just to enjoy the game like I'm 12 years old again.”
While that accomplishment would be nice, the team wants to win. They still love playing the game, but losing day after day, week after week, begins to take its toll.
“We've been very positive,” Clayton said. “Everyone comes to the field and says, ‘Today's the day,’ and then we go take BP. We're having a good time, and then during the game, we continue to have fun, pick each other up. It's honestly been a great environment considering all the losses.”
“Everybody knows [the record],” Harrison-Dudley said. “Really, everybody knows. So, we just have to keep going and keep playing baseball every day. That's been the mindset, and that's all we're going to keep doing: Just keep going and playing baseball.”
When they win, though -- and they feel like it is coming soon -- it’s going to be a relief.
“Winning feels good," Harrison-Dudley said. "You smile. That's really when your personality comes out. Just being goofy.”
And you better believe they’ll be hitting the town that evening.
“The guys are obviously going to celebrate like it's the seventh game of the World Series, and we won that bad boy,” Young said with a laugh. “I'll probably give the guys a little money to get some cold ones, some money for an Uber. They’ll definitely celebrate and then back to business tomorrow.”