This is another personal chapter in the long of the A’s leaving.
A story that predates John Fisher, but also, screw John Fisher.
A friend of mine said “tough to watch this game” yesterday, as I had forgotten the last game at the Collesium was to be a day game. I found a stream in the 5th inning and watched through to the end of the ceremony.
Since 1999 when I was in high school they’d talked about moving to Fremont and even toyed with Las Vegas way back then. It always felt like a thing that may happen eventually, so when the news of their actual departure happened it wasn’t too big of a shock for me.
Being an A’s fan over the last 30 years or so has been hard because, at least for the last 20 years, we’ve felt more like we were grinding out some sort of right-of-passage or some sort of paying our dues to eventually be rewarded with both an ownership group that desired a winning franchise and a ballpark either in place of the current Coliseum or something in Jack London Square.
We fans seemed to be in a sort of “all in it together” mode, rooting for “Who the hell is playing second this year?” because we likely traded away our best players in search of something more fitting of the budget.
Around the 7th inning it really started to sink in. I couldn’t tell why I was sad.
The ballpark sucked. The team sucked. The ownership definitely sucked.
Then in the 9th when it was a struggle to get through the inning with Miller on the mound to close the game out. There was a fan field invasion, trash thrown on the field, and a smoke bomb. It was kind of this somber moment when I realized it wasn’t that I was sad about the team leaving. When I watch them, I remember my youth, my childhood. The announcer voiced over a sponsor that I’d heard since I was 10 years old. Then they won and Cool & The Gang Played “Celebration” and I remember listening to that as my Father and I shuffled out of monolithic Coliseum. It wasn’t the A’s leaving. It was my youth dying once again. At 43 years old, reliving these visceral memories and then having to let them all go because I wouldn’t be returning to the stadium at 53, 63, or 73 years old.
Professional sports or not, it’s really intense for a team of 57 years to uproot and leave. Just having to let it happen. Thinking, “No one will even remember who John Fisher is.”
Just like the Supersonics, the Colts, and the Browns. The politics of it all lost to the sands of time.
Oakland loses 3 professional teams in 5 years.
14 Professional sports championships now with zero teams.
Goodbye Oakland Anthletics.
