My love for the Oakland Athletics is almost as dead as their chances of staying in the city.
Last Wednesday, the team announced an agreement to purchase 49-acres of land in Nevada with the intention of opening a new dome baseball stadium, according to an April 20 New York Times article.
As a fan of the A’s for the last 12 seasons, my heart broke to hear that the third Oakland professional sports team is set to leave the city in the span of just five years.
The team’s reputation today is the laughing stock of baseball, but it’s hard for newer Bay Area sports fans to remember that the A’s were in the World Series six times in 19 seasons throughout the early '70s and late '80s.
What makes everything worse are people, such as that jabroni Rob Manfred, the MLB commissioner, who refuses to acknowledge the history of baseball in Oakland.
"I feel sorry for the fans in Oakland. I really do. But for the city of Oakland to point fingers at John Fisher, it's not fair,” Manfred said in a Monday ESPN article.
To blame the city for not trying is completely irrelevant and not true, especially when the actual problem lies at the desk of A’s owner, John Fisher.
Initially, I grew up a Giants fan as it was hard to avoid the success they had when I was a kid, winning the World Series in 2010, 2012 and 2014.
But there was just something different about the 2012 Oakland Athletics team that included players, such as Coco Crisp and Cuban rookie Yoénis Cespedes, that really made me switch sides of the bay.
I even attended the last A’s game that year, a game where the club battled back from a 5-1 deficit to beat the Texas Rangers and win the division.
That was the first time I ever skipped school to go to a baseball game, and even though it was just a division win, the chants of “Let’s Go Oakland” leaving the coliseum almost felt like a World Series championship.
But those glory days of being an A’s fan are clearly over as the team have done about everything they can to push fans away.
After a fire sale of the team's best players, which included fan favorites such as Matt Olson, Matt Chapman and Chris Bassit following the 2021 season, fans showed their outrage by not showing up to games, causing the A’s to have the lowest average home attendance of 9,973 fans per game in 2022, according to an ESPN article.
Articles started popping up, criticizing the lack of attendance on fans’ behalf, such as the New York Time’s “The Loneliest Team in Baseball.”
There’s definitely some comedy in seeing a virtually empty baseball stadium, but it definitely rubs me the wrong way when people begin to blame the fans for the A’s ultimately deciding to leave.
Fisher has done nothing to ever keep fans loyal to the team.
The A’s have been in the bottom ten teams in player payroll for the last ten seasons, according to spotrac.com.
With an estimated net worth of $2.2 billion, according to Forbes.com, Fisher never wanted to open his wallet to upgrade the team to get them over the hump.
It’s a shame that MLB stands idly and allows Fisher to not only destroy the team on the field, but then to rip them away from Oakland.
The A’s have killed the fans' experience at the Coliseum by eliminating A’s access, a membership that I had that gave fans access to all 81 home games and other amenities, such as 50% off concessions and $10 parking.
But the team also went away with free parking on Tuesdays and giving out bobbleheads of current and former players.
Promotions like those were a big reason why fans kept coming back to the Coliseum but taking away those little things made it hard to get excited about coming to games.
As a baseball fan, it’s going to be hard to see my team move away, but I don’t think I can completely give up watching the sport.
Despite the Giants being a contributor to the A’s not getting a new stadium by blocking their plans to relocate to San Jose during the previous decade, I think I would ultimately have to root for the local Bay Area team.
But before the team can make the transition to the hot, unwelcoming Las Vegas summer sun, there are still hurdles in their path.
The team is asking for $500 million in public money for the stadium from the city of Las Vegas, which has already been met with blowback from the Nevada community.
“Asking for and getting are two very different things,” Clark County Commissioner Michael Naft tweeted shortly following the A’s announcement to buy the land in Vegas.
I don’t feel like the city of Las Vegas is ready or even wants to pay $500 million for a team held hostage by a cheap billionaire owner who never likes to spend money to put good players on the field.
Manfred said that he would waive the relocation fee, which would be split amongst the 29 other team owners, for the A’s if they ultimately decided to leave to Las Vegas.
I find it incredibly difficult to see a future in which the other owners do not mind losing out on millions of dollars.
If the deal falls through with Las Vegas, then I will gladly accept the team back with open arms, even if Fisher is still the owner.
Despite the bad product on the field, I still love the A’s and what they represent to the Bay Area sports culture as a whole.
Oakland’s chances of keeping its last professional sports team is getting slimmer by the day, but if there’s anything notable about the Oakland A’s, it’s that they always come back when you least expect it.
