What it Was Like to Witness the End of the Oakland A's
It didn't have to be this way
OAKLAND -- On Thursday afternoon under a bright blue Northern California sky I sat amongst 46,899 spectators and witnessed a preventable death.
For nine innings, the indefatigable crowd chanted “Let’s go Oakland!” as both a rallying cry and plea: surely someone, somewhere would step in and stop the madness of the city’s beloved baseball team being ripped away for no good reason by a billionaire villain before time ran out.
Rob Manfred, MLB’s aloof commissioner who once called the World Series trophy “a piece of metal” to downplay its significance, was nowhere to be found: save for a large MANFRAUD banner that A’s fans hung over the right field fence.
John Fisher—the A’s failson nepo baby owner who bought the team with money his parents earned from founding The Gap—also appeared to be in hiding. But it was understood by everyone in the building that his actions were responsible for every tear shed, every hug goodbye, every shrug, and everyone who sat stunned and stared off into the distance when it was all over.
The vibe at the Coliseum on Thursday was funereal.
When the A’s clubhouse opened to media, “American Pie” by Don McLean was blaring from an oversized boombox. Very few players were in the room. A basketball hoop hung from a pillar in the center of the locker room, and an autographed green A’s t-shirt signed by the “Hawk Tuah” girl hung from its rim.
I could not have invented a grimmer scene.
The playlist of sad songs continued until halfway through the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody” when someone finally had enough and changed it to the greatest hits of the Bay Area’s most famous rapper, Tupac Shakur.
My cell phone reception was terrible, so I connected to the clubhouse WiFi. Would you believe it if I told you that the password to the WiFi in the A’s clubhouse was “P1ayOff$’?
It should be noted here that the A’s announced in 2021 that they would honor their long time clubhouse equipment manager Steve Vucinich by renaming the locker room after him to commemorate his 54 years working for the team. They never did, because this ownership group loves nothing more than breaking its promises.
Players and employees scurried in and out with stadium mementos. Rookie Lawrence Butler had a cardboard cutout of the A’s 2024 schedule next to his locker that his teammates took turns signing. Except I learned that his name isn’t Lawrence, it’s Law. Everyone has called him Law his whole life. Ask for “Lawrence” and you will get a look like you are an out-of-town vulture in town to pick over the team’s carcass (Which, fair enough).
I asked an A’s staffer why, if the team’s young breakout star is being called by the wrong name, he hasn’t corrected anyone. I was told it’s probably because he’s a really polite kid who is just happy to be here. “You gotta remember that every player on this team is like twenty-three years old,” the employee told me.
The fact that every player on the team is either in his early 20’s or barely hanging on to a job in the big leagues or both definitely worked to the A’s benefit on the PR front during this mess. Every player knew what was happening was wrong, but nobody had the seniority or the standing to rip Fisher a new one to the press.
A’s legend Rickey Henderson—who had just told the great Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle that “I can’t be sad [about the A’s leaving], I have too much money,”—was walking around with his keepsake from the stadium where the field bears his name: a number 4 from the scoreboard. I had assumed he also grabbed the number “2,” since his number was 24, but with Rickey you never know. I later saw a clubbie carrying Rickey’s “4.” It had been signed by the A’s starting lineup that day, in order.
A’s manager Mark Kotsay held his scrum in the dugout and greeted the dozens of media members packed in by saying “welcome to the jungle” with a chuckle. He said he wanted to keep his sunglasses on because he knew he would start crying, but then he took them off because he’s a good sport.
Someone asked what Kotsay was taking from the Coliseum on his way out. He said he had asked for the bases. Realizing this seemed like quite a special haul, he clarified that the bases would be switched out after each inning, and that groundskeeper Clay Wood would receive the bases from the first inning because he deserved them. There would be 27 bases to divvy up at the end of the game.
Kotsay held it together until he started talking about the Coliseum workers, and then he began to cry when talking about Gus Dobbins, a 92-year-old doorman who Kotsay had known since he joined the A’s as a player in 2004. Kotsay said he took a photo with Dobbins, and it will go on the desk of “whatever office” he occupies next.
I spoke with a few dozen Coliseum workers and asked them if they were making the move with the team to Sacramento. Most of them were senior citizens who had worked for the team for decades. Most of them said they had not been invited, and did not know if they would be. Many said that even if they were asked to keep working for the team, that the commute was too far, too hard, too much.
An AP writer brought different employees of the month into the press box and we all cheered because there was nothing else to do. I’ve been in press boxes across America hundreds of times for every college and pro sport I can think of over the past two decades. It was the first time I’d ever cheered in one.
When the game ended, it was the first time I’d ever see people cry in one, either.
I loved that the Oakland faithful gave their team a standing ovation in the first inning, and that the Coliseum got playoff loud one last time. I loved that the crowd gave Marcus Semien a huge pop when he came up to bat in the third inning, and an even bigger roar when he grounded into a double play.
The first “F—k John Fisher!” chant broke out in the middle of the 4th, and the A’s entertainment people tried to drown it out by playing music even louder than they play music at Dodger home games.
Someone threw a big inflatable baseball onto the field in the bottom of the 4th. A groundskeeper faked like he was going to throw it back, to the crowd’s delight. Then stabbed it and deflated it like he was John Fisher in disguise.
A loud “Sell the team!” chant broke out in the 5th, but I didn’t have my phone ready in time to record it. So here’s a hearty “Sell the team!” chant from the night before:
After the chant subsided, a lone man from the upper deck screamed “Give us back our team!” with the pain and desperation of a person pleading for a cup of water in Death Valley.
As if trying to convince the world how dangerous and awful their own fanbase is, the A’s tried to warn everyone that Thursday would be violent and ugly. They seemed to use Fox News talking points on their own fanbase that Oakland thugs would rush the field and tear it apart and players, employees, and staff would get stabbed or shot.
None of that came to pass. Even if people wanted to riot, they were too stunned and sad to put up a fight. A couple of (probably drunk) kids in their 20s did rush the field in the bottom of the ninth, but they seemed to be having a good time and complied with security when they were corralled and escorted out.
As Mason Miller took the mound in the ninth to try to secure the the last Oakland A’s win in history, I thought back to when I was a broke college kid 20 years ago at Stanford. None of us could afford tickets at the fancy new Giants stadium in San Francisco, so my friend Srinivas and I made it a tradition to go to dollar Wednesdays at the Oakland Coliseum and sneak down behind the A’s dugout to watch the games. I ordered Strawberry daquiries because they were cheaper than beer and also I was 21 and did not yet know how to enjoy beer. This was during the Moneyball era when the team was quite good. The ushers never cared because the seats were empty and we always respectfully cheered our hearts out for the green and gold.
One game we got a giveaway that was a plush baseball with an A’s hat. We wedged it on to the dashboard of Srini’s car and named it “Miguel” for Miguel Tejada. We got bored the summer before our senior year so we drove that car from Stanford to Cooperstown. Srini texted me this week that in retrospect, it was the closest Miguel ever got to the Hall of Fame. When he sold that car in 2015, Miguel was still stuck to the dash.
Marcus Semien was at those games, too. “I used to look forward to dollar hot dog days, ten dollar bleacher tickets, or whatever it was, Semien told the San Francisco Chronicle. “That’s how we got in there as kids.” Maybe if the A’s hadn’t been affordable for families, Semien wouldn’t have grown up to be one of the best players of his generation.
I could write another 10,000 words about how we got here, but I don’t need to because Fisher simply followed the plot of the movie Major League—except he got away with it.
In an effort to drive fans away so he could say “I need to move this team because we don’t have fans!!” Fisher spent as little money as possible on player payroll and the decaying Oakland Coliseum. Then, he refused to pay every good player the A’s front office managed to draft or develop, forcing Billy Beane and co. to either trade them away for young prospects and start the whole process over again or let them walk in free agency. The team’s infield on Thursday could and should have consisted of Semien, Sean Murphy, Matt Chapman, and Matt Olson. Semien was there. But he was, of course, playing for the other team that was willing to pay him what he was worth.
Fisher tried to extort taxpayers into giving him money for a new stadium, knowing that California voters don’t believe in welfare for billionaires. (The owners of the Rams, Clippers, 49ers, and Warriors each built themselves new stadiums and arenas in the last decade with their own money).
And perhaps worst of all, Fisher decided to rip the A’s away from the community without any clear idea of where the team is headed next. Sure, the “plan” is to play in a minor league stadium in Sacramento for the next three to four years while the team tries to convince Las Vegas taxpayers to build them a permanent home, but that feels like a pipe dream. And not just any pipe, but one of the busted Oakland Coliseum sewage pipes Fisher was too cheap to fix.
I doubt they’ll ever make it to Vegas.
So where does this leave us? Outraged that another billionaire took a storied civic jewel, gutted it for parts, then ripped it away? Incensed that the other MLB owners didn’t step in and force Fisher to sell to another billionaire who wanted to keep the team in Oakland and build a new stadium? Sad and paralyzed that there’s nothing any of us can do about what disgusting corporate greed does to the bottom 99%?
Oakland has now lost the Raiders, the Warriors, and the A’s in short order. I can’t imagine how those fans must feel. But what I witnessed Thursday was an abomination that MLB and the rest of its owners should have stepped in to stop. That they did not will be a black eye on the sport for generations.
After the obscene amount Las Vegas spent on the Raiders stadium, another stadium proposal would undoubtedly inspire a riot or two.
👏 well written, could feel the passion & vitriol. Few tragedy in pro sports but this is certainly one.