Posted on 06/12/2023 2:56:10 PM PDT by nickcarraway
“Tuesday night at the Oakland Coliseum” doesn’t sound like much, not for those who have followed the A’s in recent years. It sounds like the echo of plaintive voices in the gloom of desolation.
Not this coming Tuesday night, though. The Oakland Athletics’ “reverse boycott” night could produce some of the most memorable scenes in Bay Area sports history.
I didn’t think it was such a brilliant idea at first. The A’s seemed destined to leave town; would they really pack the stadium for a sort of maudlin farewell? It sounded to me like sadness, the kind that has swept over the fan base like an epidemic since ownership deliberately let the team — and the Coliseum — rot into irrelevance. It certainly didn’t sound like anything close to a sellout.
The way things look right now, Tuesday night could bring a fine, roaring madness, with hopes and spirits renewed. There’s still a chance the team stays in Oakland, and this is a fan’s chance to show A’s owner John Fisher, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and 29 other owners what “rooted in Oakland” really means.
It’s about people, not sports teams. It means heartbreak over losing the Raiders. It means disgust over the Warriors targeting San Francisco all along. It means following the A’s from a distance, wearing those green jackets and players’ jerseys in the backyard instead of the second deck. The soul of Oakland shines brightly in the face of incompetence, and if Fisher wants to make life so miserable as to eventually bail out of Oakland altogether, he won’t get paying customers pretending it’s OK.
My goodness, what a mess Fisher and team President Dave Kaval have made in Las Vegas. They arrived with a fleabag plan, flimsier than one-ply toilet paper, and got brutally exposed. I can’t imagine anyone in Las Vegas — fan, journalist, legislator, whoever you like — buying the A’s sickening load of contradictions and backtracks.
Maybe a few folks will be shamelessly bought off, enough to carry SB1 through the Nevada Senate and Assembly before reaching the governor’s office, but that seems a bit of a long shot now. There’s a very real possibility the A’s will be rejected in Vegas — which is pretty hard to do, incidentally. They love an old-fashioned sucker down there. But not when they are the suckers, asked to approve hundreds of millions in taxpayer money at a billionaire’s request.
Even if the A’s bill is approved — most likely made possible by old-fashioned graft and corruption — it won’t be a done deal by Tuesday night. That’s why the timing of this event is so perfect, not to mention that the owners’ meetings begin a three-day run on Tuesday. Manfred and his cronies will be watching carefully, undoubtedly shocked to realize that their deeply flawed rationale — A’s fans don’t care, so to hell with them — needs some work.
I urge the fans to pack the place. Make it the toughest Bay Area ticket all summer. Special T-shirts will be passed out, but just in case, bring some kind of sign, or just your vocal cords. Let’s have 40,000-plus people delivering the same forceful message to an owner who lost his way:
SELL!
40,000 eh? That would take at least five games to get there. Good luck.
Last I heard, over 17,000 tickets sold.
just bought two - Fisher needs to sell.
See you there.
Woukd be nice to sell the team to owners who will keep the team in Oakland.
But new owners might still want a new stadium.
Come back to Kansas City so we can send the Royals front office, scouting, and player development down the river on a barge.
As it happens, they’re doing this when the team is hot. They’ve been winning lately. Keep coming. It will drive the owner crazy.
There will be gunplay.
I’m pro- 2nd Amendment.
Remember how that turned out for her? A's fans ought to take that to heart.
“It’s about people...”
Oh God in that case there is no option....MOVE away from all those filthy democrats! Baseball is an American game!
Bingo. I said that to my friend.
John Fisher is a SF Giants fans, and used to be a part owner. Doesn’t the fact he was a Giants owner make it collusion.
We haven’t watched or been to a MLB game in decades. One of the last players strikes did it for me. That said, dad was born and raised in San Francisco. Candlestick Park was also named Where Home Runs Go To Die. The wind at Candlestick was not as bad as the Hawk in Chicago, but Willie Mays would have another 100 home runs, at least.
At one point, way after Mays had retired, there was talk of the SF Giants leaving. During that time, there were not many people in the stands. The great Herb Caen commented on the lack of fans in the stands, that if the fans were to move to another city, it would be less people than the actual total team players.
The new stadium should be somewhere safe, like in Sunnyvale.
The A’s are leaving Oakland because the City has dropped the ball for over twenty years. Oakland has lost two teams in the last five years and that is NOT coincidence, it is incompetence on the Government’s fault there. Who wants to spend their hard earned money in a crime riddled hell hole like Oakland.
I used to be very active in sports. After my military service the only “sport” I can do is sailing, barely.
I am not much of a sports fan and the amount of money involved in the industry is astoundingly stupid.
I’d rather watch a high school football team or a little
league baseball team than any professional multi-millionaires.
Awesome! And, so true!
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