ONCE A LOVELY VIEW, THE COLISEUM IN OAKLAND IS OFFICIALLY A MAUSOLEUM
The Athletics have left town, off to Sacramento and Las Vegas, and it’s the latest case of an ill-mannered owner who ignored 57 years of passion and thinks he can succeed elsewhere without spending
Just beyond the outfield were staggering hills, winding with houses and trees, some sand at the top. This was another version of California for a young writer who worked in Midwestern cities and kind of liked hanging in Oakland, of all habitats. Who didn’t think the Coliseum would last forever, off a freeway and Hegenberger Road, somewhere east of San Francisco with hallmark baseball teams?
But stadiums became 21st-century destinations and masterpieces, no longer home as much as a place to whet the wallets of billionaire sports owners. John Fisher bought the Athletics in 2005 and treated the team like another Gap store, his family’s clothing outlet. Reluctantly, he looked for a new ballpark. He wanted public help in a city that didn’t trust him. When I arrived years later, after taking a column job across the bay, I was concerned about law and order.
I departed a BART train over a rickety bridge, which passed over dump trucks and included people selling cold sausages off portable stoves. The decaying concrete was the only hint that a ballgame would be played, inside a ramshackle park. An adjoining arena soon would be departed by the Golden State Warriors, who moved beside the tech riches 15.9 miles away. They were joined by the Raiders, who would leave the Coliseum — the Black Hole! — and head to Las Vegas, where franchise value soared from $1.4 billion to $6.7 billion. Nothing was special about Oakland, where the hills were blocked by Mount Davis, thanks to an ancient football owner who demanded a gigantic and steep section of seats that ended the beautiful show as we knew it.
Thursday, while wearing green and gold with shirts that flashed “Oakland” one last time, the A’s played their final game at the Coliseum. Sadness blew out all attempts to find joy, even when infield dirt was served into fans’ cups. A massive crowd of 46,889 was the largest to trash-bag an abandoning MLB franchise, which might make Fisher wonder about long-term prosperity if he’d produced more finances. His egress to Vegas won’t be as tidy as that of the NFL team, as he hopes for locals in a $1.5 billion project called a “spherical armadillo” while we wonder about June-through-September heat on the Strip. Tears and sobs overcame all the cat feces, moths and cobwebs.
The Coliseum, at last, is officially a mausoleum.
No longer did the East Bay have a team, losing three in five years, and the 4,493rd home game was more a national goodbye to a city than the withdrawal of the A’s. Will Oakland ever host another for any reason? Never. “They ain’t going to bring one,” said Rickey Henderson, the local native and base-stealing wizard, whose name is on the damned field. “Basically, baseball won’t get one here ever again, I’m telling you, I talked to the commissioner. He said all along they won’t come out here, I don’t care who buys the team or whatever happens.
“We just messed up. We did a whole lot of damage. What can you say?”
A 3-2 victory over Texas didn’t end the day. Fifty-seven years requires more time. A few kooks tried to jump onto the field and brought smoke bombs, but players stuck around and thousands remained in the stands. “For all the past players and coaches, everyone who has worn the green and gold, there are no better fans than you guys,” manager Mark Kotsay said. “Thank you for your lifelong support of the Oakland A’s. We should pay homage to this amazing stadium that we’ve had a pleasure of enjoying. One more time, let’s start the greatest cheer in baseball.”
“Let’s Go Oakland!” the fans chanted, for minutes and hours and who knows how long, perhaps until opening day in Sacramento.
Henderson stood in the mix. He spoke to the San Francisco Chronicle and made the same remarks of every former Athletic. Has an owner ever handled a departure worse than Fisher? He toyed with spirits and hopped around town with potential sites, all of which died. Finally, he gave up, which prompted Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong to sing for the lost souls last week: “We don’t take no s— from people like John f—— Fisher, who sold out the Oakland A’s to Las f—— Vegas. I f—— hate Las Vegas. It’s the worst s—hole in America.”
Is that too strong? The A’s were the franchise that won three straight World Series in the 1970s, featuring Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue and Rollie Fingers. They were known for Billy Ball. They won again in 1989 behind the steroids fiends, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire, while manager Tony La Russa let it happen. They became the “Moneyball” sages with Billy Beane, an icon played by Brad Pitt in the movie. They had surprise seasons, but Fisher routinely dumped stars before paying them top dollar. This is not how the game is played in New York, Philadelphia and at Dodger Stadium and other stops. Unmerrily, with football firmly on top in America, too many baseball teams try to slide by with dinkiness. Fisher won’t survive in Vegas without spending, even if his ballpark is compared to the Sydney Opera House.
In a letter to fans, he wrote: “The A's are part of the fabric of Oakland, the East Bay, and the entire Bay Area. Our dream was to win world championships and build a new ballpark in Oakland. Over the next 18 years, we did our very best to make that happen. We proposed and pursued five different locations in the Bay Area. And despite mutual and ongoing efforts to get a deal done for the Howard Terminal project, we came up short. … I know there is great disappointment, even bitterness. Though I wish I could speak to each one of you individually, I can tell you this from the heart: we tried.
“Staying in Oakland was our goal, it was our mission, and we failed to achieve it. And for that I am genuinely sorry. Looking ahead, I hope you will join our beloved A's as we move forward on this amazing journey. I hope I will see you again sporting the Green and Gold. And I hope we will make you proud.”
He should have added himself to the Coliseum’s sewage mess. Wrote ex-pitcher Trevor May: “Dear John. With all due respect, which is more than you likely deserve, save it. Be an adult. Get in front of a camera and say it with your chest. Releasing a letter, clearly written by someone else, and including names you DEFINITELY do not know, is just disrespectful to those that love the team.”
Oh, and Fisher misspelled “Loma Preita” when referring to the 1989 earthquake. Now I think of Oakland as a place to see human fallout during the tragedy, where I stayed for days after covering the World Series. That’s not what Tom Hanks saw when he was growing up in those hills. “When the A’s were in the World Series, the world came to Oakland,” the actor told The Athletic. “Not San Francisco. Oakland.”
Or former pitcher Dave Stewart, another Oakland native. “It's a tough morning. I can't imagine how we're in this position,” he said. “There's no better city than Oakland to play baseball in. I’ve witnessed it. I was there in the great days, and this is a great baseball city. Nobody can ever say this isn't a great baseball town.”
It’s now a place where a two-team market can’t exist, where only New York and Los Angeles are safe. Think the White Sox will be in Chicago in 2030? The owner of the second team must have guts, which Fisher didn’t have. At least the A’s won the game.
Kool & the Gang was played on the loudest speakers in the sport. “Celebration!” the fans sang. They cried one last time.
And then they did something else with their lives.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.