Everyone loses as the Athletics finally leave the Oakland Coliseum with a win | Oakland Athletics

AFans stayed long after the third of their 3-2 win over the Texas Rangers, enjoying the final minute one last time in the massive concrete Oakland Coliseum. Now the club, one of Major League Baseball’s most storied franchises – founded in Philadelphia before operating in Kansas City – is ready to leave the city of Oakland and its diverse fan base after 56 seasons. Athletics are not leaving for greener pastures, but perhaps – and we still don’t know for sure – for a desert area that didn’t ask for them. Oakland native Dave Stewart, an All-Star hurler in the city’s last World Series champion in 1989, asked the question of the day on the A’s pregame broadcast.

“What happened?” Stewart said. “There is no real explanation for it. And any explanation you give doesn’t cover the impact, and it doesn’t cover all the details of what really happened that caused the Oakland A’s to leave this city and play (at the minor league ballpark) for three years in Sacramento and then ended up in Las Vegas.”

Effects is the word that stands out, especially when you consider the emotional investment fans make in ballclubs and what it means to lose a franchise to another city. Kristin Young was not among the 46,000-plus award-winning fans who sat through cliched, insincere “tributes” before the game, imploring fans not to be “sad it’s over” but to be “glad it’s over.” happened”, and that also “celebrate and have a good time”. She had already made the decision to stay away for the final game and the season leading up to it.

“Everyone says, ‘Kristin, you’re going to do it, right? “Don’t regret it.” I literally went back and forth until last week. And even (my friend) Tara was like, “I’m going to ask my husband to put a TV outside.” So you don’t have to go to the stadium. Just come after us.’ I thought to myself: No, it’s going to get worse for me… I got over the anger. Now I’m just sad.”

Like so many baseball fans in the East Bay, the club has been a part of their makeup since the beginning. Her grandmother, Eva Young, bought season tickets in 1988 and took her grandchildren to games as soon as they could walk. Memories were built over decades, including learning to read by sounding out the players’ names on the back of their jerseys. Section 216 was a home away from home for a busy family who always found time to socialize through baseball.

After Eva passed away in 2018, the family gathered every year to honor her on “Family Suite Day” at one of the few MLB parks with affordable luxury boxes. On Thursday, the misty-eyed A’s fan, clad in a green Mark McGwire T-shirt, lamented the end of traditions and the recent void in professional sports on the “good side of the bay.”

“You get used to seeing the same concession people and the same ticket sellers,” Kristin Young said. “I will miss knowing the shortcuts, the strange entrance to the B parking lot that looks like a terrible war zone… and I won’t have the same experience as I did with my children or even my nieces and nephews when I took them there take with you.” Games. I know all the stories can be told later, but I will miss telling these stories like in the stadium. I will miss being able to share these experiences with other people in the places where they happened.”

There’s only one reason Oakland is leaving, and it’s because owner John Fisher, who inherited his family’s Gap fortune, has decided to make a logical leap east in what seems like a lose-lose deal for almost everyone involved appears: the owner, Oakland fans, future Vegas A’s fans, the City of Oakland, the City of Las Vegas, Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association.

So it’s no wonder that former owner Walter Haas Jr., under whom the Athletics enjoyed their greatest success in the Bay by winning a World Series title while setting a franchise attendance record, called the move “frankly unforgivable.” designated.

The A’s high-profile, agonizing search for a new ballpark to replace the aging and infamous Coliseum, “baseball’s last dive bar,” is a long-running, complex saga involving multiple owners, mayors and even the Cross-Bay Giants includes. That search appeared to finally be nearing completion, however, as the team received $774.5 million in tax-subsidized infrastructure improvements and other grants to move to a 55-acre former shipyard site called Howard Terminal. The project, considered the latest mixed-use development plan to become popular with North American sports team owners, featured sweeping views of the San Francisco waterfront, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Oakland Bay Bridge. And was close to the city center. It made sense for a city still reeling from the loss of the NFL’s Raiders and the NBA’s Warriors, and for Fisher, who had a chance to build something unique in the East Bay.

“And then suddenly John Fisher switched gears and said, ‘No, we’re looking at buying land in Las Vegas,'” Neil deMause, a journalist and co-author of the book “Field of Schemes,” told The Guardian. “And no one is really sure if that was because he felt like Oakland wasn’t showing him enough love or because he thought he could use it as leverage to try to get something else from Oakland .”

The city of Oakland didn’t take the bait, and the A’s, who had threatened to move to Las Vegas to pressure city officials to make the best deal possible, went ahead and moved forward with Sin City.

“And now he’s a dog who got the car and has to figure out what he’s going to do with it,” deMause said.

That’s why Fisher, who for years has been giving away the best talent from the senior national team, fielding some of the lowest payrolls in the industry, raising season ticket prices and angering every baseball fan in the area, is moving to Las Vegas, for which he has secured state stadium funding from $3.5 million to $300 million, less than Oakland wanted to offer. They will be moving to the smallest stadium in the MLB, to the smallest television market in the MLB, on just nine acres of land that has no development rights and may not be large enough to accommodate the desired dome.

Despite all of these factors, MLB owners, who would never punish anyone among their ranks for bad business decisions (lest they one day want to make bad business decisions themselves), voted 30-0 in favor of the move. There is currently no announced funding for the remaining portion of the stadium, so the situation could well get worse. The A’s players will now have the pleasure of playing at a minor league park in Sacramento while their new stadium is built. If it is built. And if the team does end up in Las Vegas, there’s every chance the low-budget A’s are still a revenue-sharing team that’s struggling to sign free-agent players, which is sure to delight their new fans.

In theory, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred could have reversed the owners’ vote under the Best Interest in Baseball clause and forced a sale to an investor like Warriors owner Joe Lacob, who was willing to keep the A’s in Oakland. But apparently baseball’s best interests weren’t enough.

And so the A’s saga will continue for some time to come, as Oakland fans must once again ponder the question of the day and their lives: What happened?