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Article by Benjamin Lonicer (21.11.2024)
“Celebration” bellowed through the stadium speakers in the Colosseum. The players and fans. All celebrating one last time. A bittersweet celebration. In actuality, there is nothing to celebrate. It is the last time the Athletics will suit up in Oakland in Major League Baseball. Failing miserably to reach the playoffs, after two more games on the road in Seattle to finish off the season, the Oakland Athletics will be history. A relic of the past. The next sports franchise, abandoning its fans for the next bigger and sexier market.
As of the 2025 season, the Oakland Athletics will leave Oakland to play their home games in the stadium of their rivals development team. Further down the line, the team will relocate and attempt to strike roots in Las Vegas, gracing the surface of a new multi billion dollar stadium. Leaving Oakland fans behind with nothing, but memories, broken promises and a baseball team shaped hole in their heart.
The Golden Age
In the recent past, Oakland has not been good. The eventual season with a win percentage above 50 percent seems like an exception to the reality of bottom-table dwelling. This wasn’t always so. After moving to Oakland, the athletics almost immediately found footing. After year six in their new home, they had been the only team besides the Yankees to three-peat (Three championships in a row). The “Swingin’ A’s” boasted lineups with legends like Reggie “Mr. October” Jackson who has his number retired (One of the highest honors in US Pro sports) in Oakland and in New York with the Yankees. With the A’s he was a 6-time all-star and in 1973 the American League Most Valuable Player. He and fellow teammates Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers, and Dick Fielder all have their likeness in Cooperstown, the MLB Hall of Fame, and shaped what can be only described as the golden era in Oakland baseball.
Bash Brother Era
The team would top the headlines again in the Bash Brother era. Whatever the splash brothers of Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson were in the NBA of the 2010s, electrifying an entire generation with an exciting new way to score and play the game, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire were in the 1980s. Out was the careful safe approach and in came pure unadulterated power. They were the talk of the American sports realm and featured everywhere from Sports Illustrated to Sports Centre to the evening news. If you look at the two next to each other no one would blame you if you think they look inhuman. Inhuman because, both would end up confessing to “juicing” or playing under the influence of steroids. Many claim the legacy of the two, like Mark McGwire’s eventual beating of the single-season Homerun record, should be remembered with an asterisk as they frankly didn’t play fair. While it is true that others, who did play fair should be held to higher praise, absolutely demonizing the two should come only after thinking about the fact they faced pitchers who were also using performance-enhancing drugs to gain an edge, and as Canseco claimed 80% of the league at the time was on the juice. The two headlined the team's 1989 World Series title along with fellow Hall of Famer and notorious base stealer Rickey Henderson who would call Oakland his home three separate times and whose #24 is retired by the A‘s.
Moneyball Era
„Because he gets on base.“ The room, filled with baseball analysts employed by the Oakland A's, looks confused at Billy Beane, portrayed by Brad Pitt, and his finger still pointing at Jonah Hill‘s nerdy character. “Why are we looking for these washed and mediocre players?” the experienced baseball analysts in the room ask themselves. But the answer is exactly that. Because they get on base. „Moneyball“, nominated for 6 Academy Awards, highlighted the “Moneyball Era” of Oakland Athletics Baseball. The era is synonymous with the spread of analytics. The movie and the book it's based on follows the team through the 2002 season. After being successful the previous, the stars that brought them there are stripped away by more high-profile teams offering more money. Bean realizes you can't beat them at their own game, so he goes out to look for undervalued players with his newly acquired assistant Peter Brand who is loosely based on the real analyst Paul DePodesta. Instead of replacing players one-to-one, the pair attempts to replicate the outgoing players by aggregate. Cumulating multiple player’s stats, so that the value they add to the team is equal to the value of the players they lost. It seems to work and the A’s reach the playoffs while breaking the AL 20 straight win records in the process. While a lot of the movie was fictionalized, the overarching story is true. Beane would reject a Job offer from the Boston Red Socks to become the highest-paid general manager ever in favor of staying in Oakland. In 2004, Boston would go on to win with Beane’s analytical approach. The A’s would continue to be competitive with their Moneyball style (throughout the 2000s) however they would never reach the pinnacle. Win the big one. Bring another World Series title to Oakland. As one lifelong A’s fan and active member in the community put it in a CBS interview, "Obviously we never won the big one, but it was really exciting," he said. "A lot of great games, a lot of great memories."
John Fisher vs. the People
The way and reason Moneyball started is the way and reason the entire team would ultimately end. Because of a cheap owner. John Fisher bought the team in 2005. That year the team would place second in their division just falling short of a wildcard, which would have secured a playoff berth. Any fan who hoped that with new ownership a new era would be introduced would be disappointed. Since 2005, the A’s had only one season outside of the bottom 10 in terms of payroll. For most seasons the team would place in the bottom five. In the following years, the team would rarely finish outside of the bottom five. It accumulated this year when Fisher was only paying one-sixth of what the highest payroll was in MLB. While the Mets paid 300 million on players, the A’s were paying less than 50. 50 MILLION! That's the salary of a single player in other professional sports leagues and even in the MLB. Even worse during the covid years, it was 40 million. Their gap to the nearest team was 30 million dollars. This is Fisher’s doing. He doesn't care about the team anymore. He may care about the franchise. The well-known asset of which he also continues to collect the 60 million in MLB revenue sharing. What he doesn’t care about is the literal athletics and their home city itself it seems, as he wanted apparel sellers to exclusively push jerseys and shirts with the “Athletics” print and hide away the “Oakland” branded items.
This decision by ownership is one last middle finger from the ownership towards the fans. Las Vegas as a city is growing more and more. It’s starting to develop from the ultimate pleasure hub to an actually functioning society. One of the ways this shows is in the plethora of sports franchises that have made Sin City their home. The livability boom of the desert city doesn't change the fact that Vegas will always be and stay a tourist attraction. The fact that he wants to grab up those juicy tourist and gambler dollars is evident by the Fisher's preferred location for the new ballpark. It shall be the new silhouette in the skyline. Next to the Bellagio and MGM Casino; In the shadow of its soon-to-be older brother in the Allegiant stadium where the Raiders now play; Fisher wants to be there too. On the Strip. He wants a big, sparkling market. Oakland isn’t that. He wants to maximize the value of his assets. Oakland won’t give him that. That's why he has to move. To maximize his personal gain. Ironic when you think back to that he got into baseball ownership by buying a minority sale in the San Francisco Giants to ensure they wouldn’t be moved to Tampa Bay. It’s funny what getting older can do to you. And what money can do. Mostly Money.
The move was not the fan's fault though. When push came to shove, the fans were there. They started organizing. Even if there were only a handful of guests at the stadium, in most games you could still hear “Sell the team” chants. Green T-shirts with “SELL” written on them were a common occurrence in the stadium. Fans organized reverse boycotts. Instead of not coming in protest, they sold out the entire stadium. “Sell the team chants” echoed through the night. They showed Fisher they cared and that baseball in Oakland could work. During the season players were benched or traded mysteriously. This included some of the team's best. It left fans puzzled. Coincidentally, the players that were treated weirdly were also spotted wearing bracelets from the “Last Dive Bar”, a group that organized many of the efforts to keep the team in Oakland and was hyper-critical towards Fisher.
It is bitter. It is so bitter. Bitter because thousands of fans will now not have a team to go to see on a Friday evening. On a Sunday afternoon after church. You have these beautiful stories of how children fell in love with a sport because they went to see a game with their grandpa or father when they were young. Bitter because these stories won’t come from Oakland anymore which used to be a bustling sports metropolis. It is bitter because now the final team that was once in the lower Bay Area has left. While it is true that over the last decade, the attendance was abysmal, this is not the fan's fault. If the owner sells all the pieces that can play baseball and cost the slightest amount of money, the team is doomed. And you can judge no fan ever for not going to the stadium on a Saturday morning if the team only wins ⅕ of its games to start the year. Especially if the venue of the spectacle they would be watching is a dump.
The Colosseum
The main reason for the team leaving is the Colosseum. Unlike its Roman counterpart which was named after a statue close to the arena, Oakland’s Colosseum was named for its enormous size. It was a multi-purpose stadium that opened in 1966 to be the home of the Athletics and the then still in Oakland situated Raiders of the National Football League. The Raiders left town for Las Vegas in 2020 because the stadium was inadequate. Even after two renovations. The Colosseum is a relic of a time where grand, but practical was the hot stuff. Like many of its dome counterparts built around the same time it has run its course after 60 years of use. This was already clear 20 years ago. “Moneyball” references it as being a dump. So why didn’t ownership do anything? They say they did everything they could. In 2017 there was a renovation. They were in multiple talks with the city to build a new stadium. This all failed. In part, because the attempts probably were half-hearted to act like they tried. But also because the city didn’t help. American sports owners do this often. To a city, a professional sports team is gold. There are only about 120 across the major American sports of Football, Basketball, Hockey, and Baseball to go around. So a smaller city is lucky if they have one. And if a new arena needs building there are always suitors in different cities willing to help fund the project with tax dollars so the billionaire owners don't have to use as much of their hard-earned money. With the promise of government funding, you can hold your city hostage and threaten to leave if they don't also pay up. And the city of Oakland fell victim to this; they were not able to pay the big bucks for a new stadium. It is an economically struggling area. Couple that with a lot of gang violence-related problems, you have yourself a bleak future. The city didn't want to pay the costs it would take for the new stadium. The money would be better spent invested into the school system which was also notoriously bad. You cannot blame the city for not being capable of paying for the new stadium. Sadly this meant the team would have to leave.
Hypocarcies
This article is one big hypocrisy. The Athletics didn’t originate in Oakland. They themselves were relocated from Kansas City and Philadelphia before that. On the East Coast, they originally won multiple championships. Only in ‘68 would they find their eventual home in Oakland. They were also ripped away from those cities, searching for more glory. Hypnotized by the sparkling lights of California in order to capitalize on newer, more lucrative markets. The same as now in Oakland. However, this article is not Oakland-specific. This article and this outcry would be there and was there for any other organization in American pro sports. The Expos were the last to suffer this fate in the MLB. Fans still miss the team with their fun and unique branding. Basketball fans in Seattle are still hurting after the SuperSonics became the Thunder in Oklahoma. The phenomenon even spread across the pond where in 2003 the Wimbledon Football Club “Wombles” were moved to Milton Keyes, leaving a football team-shaped hole in the heart of many committed fans. To truly judge relocation, you have to take a step back. One has to look at professional sports as a whole. Who are these massive events for? It’s for the fans. For those in the stadium. For those watching in a pub down the road. For those reading everything there is to read on the internet about their favorite group of people they have never and will never meet in their life. The people see it as an escape, so much so that the mood of their entire weekend is dependent on how rich men and women in funny, colorful costumes chase a ball. They are the ones who buy the hotdogs. They are the ones who rush the box office. Because they watch the games and especially the commercials which the networks use to pay for the rights, which then is used to pay the players. Without the fans, there would be no MLB. No sports as a whole. So it’s not fair to the fans when stuff like this happens. When their undying love is taken advantage of the next closest buck.
If it is this or the Super League in European soccer, the chasm between the fans and the owners and decision-makers at the top is growing. The move is away from passion and increasingly towards monetization. How can we make more money? Oftentimes at the cost of the fans. This is a danger. When will greed become too much and damage the institutions that bring the fans joy? The reason “Moneyball” is an amazing movie is because it embraces the life of a sports fan. There is hardship, a period of hope and joy that comes through watching the success and the eventual disappointment. The beauty of the movie and sports in general is that after the disappointment, there is a longing for more. It’s like a drug that keeps you in its grips. All of the hard times make the eventual success all the more sweet. All of these emotions and memories will not have the chance to be created in the future because the team is leaving their home. It’s ruthless and cruel. It’s a slap in the face to all sports romantics there are. John Fisher, you should be ashamed of yourself. Oakland deserved better than you.
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