By Giuseppe Palmer, staff writer
The Athletics baseball team has been in Oakland since 1968, and they’ve been in the hearts of all Bay Area natives ever since they arrived. That is, until last week, when the team announced that they had reached a deal to relocate the team to Las Vegas, abandoning their home in Oakland and their die hard fans. As a Bay Area baseball fan who grew up watching A’s baseball, this was heartbreaking news to me.
A’s ownership has been letting the team and its fans down for decades, refusing to put money into the team to invest in better facilities and players, and the team has become a joke.
In 2019, the A’s were the best team in the American League and even made a postseason appearance. They lost in the playoffs, and over the offseason the team allowed all of their star players to leave for next to nothing in return. The A’s have done this every season, progressively getting worse, until now, in 2023, they’re left with the worst record in all of baseball, 4-18, the worst run differential through 21 games in MLB history with -100, and a fanbase who refuses to back an organization that won’t back the team.
The A’s average attendance last season was less than 10,000, meaning that during any given home game less than 1/6th of the Oakland Coliseum was filled by fans. On top of that, the stadium is a dump. It’s widely considered one of the worst stadiums in MLB, with outdated bathrooms and facilities and poor seating.
Although the #1 team for me has always been the Giants Growing up a baseball fan in the Bay Area, I’ve also always had love the A’s, because just like many other Bay Area baseball fans I’ve seen countless A’s games at the Coliseum and I’ve made some great memories there. For Example, There was the time l when I told an A’s stadium attendant that I was a Giants fan, so she gave the game ball that had just been hit by Coco Crisp to my friend, who has taunted me about that moment for nearly a decade now.
For a sports fan, even a fan of another team, it’s really sad to see a local team leave an area. Sports teams create something unique in a community even for those who don’t follow the team that brings people together and forms a common ground for people in the community. To have that suddenly torn away is a very difficult thing, and it leaves a community feeling as though something is missing.
And for us in the Bay Area, though many of us are Giants fans and many of us see the A’s as the metaphorical little brother to the Giants, we’ve always rooted for the A’s as the underdogs. Everybody loves to see the A’s doing well, but now that they’re leaving their absence will create a void in the Bay that many among our community will feel. Nowhere else can you go watch a professional sporting event for as little as a dollar like you can with the A’s. The affordable fun of going to Oakland and watching a game will be something that everyone around the area will sorely miss.
With that being said, I can’t even imagine how my Uncle Cliff, a die-hard fan who will never be caught without his A’s jacket and visor, feels about his beloved team abandoning him. Or all my friends who grew up in the East Bay watching the A’s who are now left without a local team to root for. But I do know that for me, it’s a sad goodbye to a team that I love and a bitter first hello to the disgusting, greedy, money hungry culture that is modern sports.
