2024-09-27 07:50:05
Over the last few decades I’ve seen a ton of different kinds of Oakland Athletics’ games at the Coliseum.
There have been short ones, like the time I saw Mark Mulder carve up the Tigers in 2003 to the tune of just three hits in a game that lasted less than two hours.
I’ve seen long ones with loads of offense, like the May game of this year where Oakland scored five times in the 11th inning for a walkoff victory over the Colorado Rockies.
And then there were the games I went to on Tuesday and Wednesday nights — the final ones.
Like so many more, I was a fan in mourning seeing my last Oakland Athletics game ever this week. The Athletics will play their last game under the Oakland moniker this weekend in Seattle, but I’ll never see the team play another game at the old Coliseum.
I kind of feel like my friend Ben who grew up in the Bay Area and watched games since the 1980s at the venue. “It feels like we’re closing the lid on the casket of a beloved friend or family member,” he told me.
I’ll admit, having grown up near Los Angeles, the Oakland Athletics are not my team. Like Jerry Seinfeld once said, we all really just root for the laundry. Most of the time you grow up loving the first team you see, the team that plays where you were born and grew up. I grew up as a kid going to Dodger and Angel games and loving it.
My third ballpark I ever visited, however, was the Oakland Coliseum.
My family used to stop by the Bay Area every summer to break up the long car trip to Lake Tahoe. In 1990 my dad and myself decided to go to an Athletics game where ace Dave Stewart was going up against Boston’s No. 1 guy — Roger Clemens.
The crowd was friendly, energetic and into the game as my dad and I sat in basically the last row down the first base line in the nosebleeds. I was having fun, but as a 12-year-old at the time, I was also freezing when the wind would come in. “How can people watch baseball in this weather?” I wondered.
Little did I know that about 10 years later I would start watching games there on a regular basis.
In 2000 I started studies at San Francisco State, and occasionally myself and friends would go to A’s games. It maybe wasn’t as nice as the newly built Pacific Bell Park for the Giants across the Bay, but I loved the enthusiasm and character of Athletic fans there a little more. They had all these cool, odd traditions such as forearm bashing to the tune of sluggers like Jason Giambi and Miguel Tejada (I’ve now mentioned the 2002 MVP more than the book “Moneyball” did) and the Bernie Lean dance about a decade later anytime outfielder Coco Crisp did anything well.
I remember thinking about a decade later in 2012 when I had been living full time in San Francisco for a new job that, “Wait, the A’s have a pitcher named Balfour? And he has a dance/tradition where fans banged their heads in a rage to the tune of Metallica’s ‘One’”?
Yeah I digged this place. They weren’t my team and never claimed them to be, but I dug the fans.
Over the years, as work became more difficult, the place for my refuge where all my problems would go away, even if just for three hours or so, was the Coliseum. I didn’t really care if the team won or not — the place was somewhere with positive thoughts for me.
And nobody can take those memories away from me. Nobody.
I loved sitting in the 215 section near home plate and talking to fans about their favorite players and games over the years. I listened to their stories and smiled, because as James Earl Jones said in “Field of Dreams”, it was (some … well … some) money I had, and peace that I craved.
Over the years, the Athletics kind of became to me like Tom Hagen of “The Godfather” — it was the adopted one I came to love. I seemed to love them even more when they weren’t quite as good, because I knew these players were out there more than ever for their love of the game.
It sure as shit wasn’t about the money.
If there was ever a walkup song that defined an era of a team better than A’s catcher Shea Langeliers’ tune every time he walked to the plate, I haven’t heard it yet. Nelly’s “Ride with Me” tune tells the crowd each time, “Hey, must be the money.”
Look, it’s no secret these days that Athletics owner John Fisher, noted by Forbes Magazine two years ago as being worth $2.4 billion, has put in as much effort to helping the ball club as an overweight guy helps out diet plans near an all-you-can-eat buffet. If Fisher had a walkup song, it might be “Cheapskates” by the Clash.
So when people decided not to come to games anymore in Oakland because they didn’t want to give money to Fisher, I understood. Everyone grieves in different ways, and although it wasn’t what I was going to do, I understood … to an extent. I wonder if those same people line up to buy the new pair of sneakers at Nike or head straight to Amazon.com in the holidays. But I get it.
Me? I was still going to go to games, because I absolutely love watching MLB games and my situation is different — the A’s aren’t my team.
I think the ticket person at the gate started figuring out my ruse early on when I attended games.
“I’ll take one of the cheapest one you have,” I would say.
“Okay, we got some in the 300 sect..” the employee would reply before I cut them off by replying, “Uh sure, yeah that’s good,” knowing that there was basically no chance of me even looking for that seat.
I’d usually sit in the 200 section looking for a place that wasn’t crowded because I didn’t want to take anyone’s seat. In the event I’d actually catch a foul ball, I’d look for the nearest child to give it to. Often that person was five sections away, because let’s face it, Oakland’s ballpark has been more empty than a summer school the past few years.
Although there is a lot of blame to go to Fisher for the A’s leaving (the majority of it), he’s not alone. The notion that Athletic fans always came to games when they had a good team, well, look, it’s just inaccurate, no matter how much of a die-hard fan wants to hear otherwise.
Oh sure, the A’s had a sell-out crowd in 2019 for a wild care game. Okay, fair enough, but who doesn’t sell out playoff games? Besides Tampa Bay?
Yes, it’s tough to hear, but fans didn’t always show up for big games in Oakland. In 1979, just five years after the A’s won their third straight World Series title, a crowd of 653 (not a typo) showed up. In Dale Tafoya’s book, “Billy Ball” he quotes then A’s catcher Jeff Newman as saying, “I probably knew everybody sitting in the stands.”
According to Jason Turbow’s fantastic book, “Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic” on the 1972-74 A’s, the club finished seventh out of 12 AL teams in attendance even though they had a playoff team and the league’s biggest draw that year — Vida Blue.
In 1972 the A’s won the World Series and still couldn’t crack seven figures in attendance. In the first game of the 1973 World Series, there were 5,000 empty seats. Game 2 of that same series also didn’t sell out. Here was arguably the best dynasty since the 1927-28 New York Yankees, but people still didn’t come.
Finally they started coming again in the late 1980s as a World Series champion drew 2,667,225, the second most in the American League to Toronto with its then-new Skydome ballpark. Nothing solves problems like winning.
But as I sat in the stands Tuesday, I wasn’t thinking about the fans that didn’t come. I was thinking of the fans that did. The fans that came who, although hating Fisher like Superman hates kryptonite, wanted to root for the team on the front of the jersey.
Tuesday night I high-fived my friends and people I met for the first time as we discussed what we’ll miss the most. I sat next to another veteran reporter from the San Francisco Examiner and discussed days we used to occasionally cover the A’s from the pressbox right above us.
Myself and other fans went even a little crazier at the end of the game when Jacob Wilson hit a walkoff, RBI single to win the game 5-4 against Texas. The moment made me smile wider than the Grand Canyon — Wilson was the son of Jack, a guy I knew in high school and played ball with at Thousand Oaks.
With that perfect ending, I debated coming again on Wednesday. There was no way I could come on Thursday with work to do, and I didn’t want to take a sold-out seat from a more die-hard fan other than myself. But I knew I would regret it years from now if I didn’t go.
I decided to sit high in the nose bleeds once again down the first base line, right where I was 34 years earlier with my dad. My die-hard A’s fan and friend Ben joined me as I took in the action one last time. I watched as a family near me had a few kids doing the Bernie lean and screaming, “Hey batter, batter, batter” every time a Texas Ranger came to the plate.
I think that’s what hit me the most — the kids. Look, us old fans, we had a chance to see the A’s. We had a choice we could each make — whether or not to come. But I saw these young fans that had no idea what was going on with the town and ownership, just having complete joy being at a baseball game. That’s who was really robbed, the kids that haven’t yet had the chance to have the memorable experiences that I and millions of others have already experienced.
I’ve seen a lot of fans with excellent, witty, intelligent signs this weekend, but the one that hit me the hardest last year was a kid with a sign saying, “Is Stomper (the elephant mascot) leaving too?”
Even though the A’s have never been my team, I still teared up a little sitting in the last row at the end of Wednesday night’s game. I didn’t want to leave, but then I remembered that some times, the ride home on BART was just as pleasant, with fans from all over the nation talking about the game we all love, and the ballpark that we were soon saying goodbye to.
Because, let’s face it, we’ve been to short games, long games, high-scoring games, pitching duels, games with homers, games that were perfect (nod to Dallas Braden and Domingo German), games where nobody showed up, games that were sold out, games that had walkoff hits and games that were in the postseason or World Series.
The games I’ll miss the most?
All of them. All of them with a capital A.
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