😔 : The Oakland Athletics reach a land deal in Las Vegas; all signs pointing towards officially moving the franchise after years of failing to secure any sort of stadium deal to remain in Oakland
It’s funny, the speculation that the Oakland A’s were moving has been going on for so long, it got to a point where people just stopped believing it was going to happen. But much like the Washington Redskins finally changing their name after eons of dodging it, it appears that the Oakland A’s are officially going to be departing Oakland, and heading into the desert.
The sports fan in me reacts because it’s change and a lot of sports fans don’t like change. But it also elicits a little bit of sadness for me as a baseball fan, because I’m a low-key fan of the A’s, in the sense that I love Moneyball, underdogs, and teams that operate like they’re small-market and have to rely on brains and guile to survive in a league where the Mets are literally spending $300 million more than they are.
Plus, in spite of all the flack and criticism the Oakland Coliseum or whatever corporate-sponsor-of-the-month-Stadium gets for being on the wrong side of the tracks, adorned with barbed wire, and dated like an original mid-century modern home, I actually really liked my experience visiting the place, and have fond memories of the ballpark as a whole.
So I’m sad to hear that the A’s are finally getting the nails lined up on their coffin, with the hammering supposedly to be finished by the start of the 2027 season. There’s still time for those out in Oakland to soak up a few more years of Athletics baseball, but it’ll be with the underlining sadness that there are still a finite number of games left before the team packs their shit and heads to Las Vegas.
It’s actually rich that of all the parties to come out and express sadness and condolences for the eventual demise of baseball in Oakland, the fucking San Francisco Giants emerged to make their comments. Because on at least one instance, it was the Giants themselves that pitched a fit and effectively blocked the A’s from getting a new ballpark in San Jose, because they felt it encroached on their geographic territory, despite the fact that the city is kind of equidistant from both cities. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say again, fuck the Giants.
Speaking of rich, of all the dirty laundry to start hitting the waves in light of the news of the team’s eventual departure, one thing I was unaware of is the fact that the owner of the Athletics is basically the richest singular owner in all of MLB, which is extra sad since the A’s have basically been bottom-3 payrolls in the league since pretty much, the existence of time. MLB as a whole declared jihad on the Marlins’ former owner Jeffrey Loria until he sold the franchise, and even in “being forced out,” he still made a gargantuan profit in the process. It makes me wonder if anything of the sort has been remotely considered for John Fisher?
All the same, I just wanted to write some words to express my general disappointment over the impending death of baseball in Oakland. Not because it’s a layup of a topic for me to write about, on the contrary, I drug my feet because I didn’t want to phone in something phony, but because I really did care about the Oakland A’s. Even though my fandom has wavered throughout the years, I always took enjoyment of seeing whenever the A’s defeated any of the rich blue bloods of baseball, and remained a low-key fan of a team that embodied success almost as an act of defiance.
I’m sure baseball in Las Vegas will be enjoyable, but inevitably when I visit whatever stadium will be there, it’ll be a hard time not comparing it to the dated charm and the place that made the most out of the nothing they had, of the Oakland Mausoleum.
