{"id":2325,"date":"2024-06-25T16:21:39","date_gmt":"2024-06-25T20:21:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/?p=2325"},"modified":"2024-06-25T16:21:39","modified_gmt":"2024-06-25T20:21:39","slug":"2325","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/?p=2325","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Described as a \u201cdump\u201d by critics who expect a gameday experience far different than me, the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum will get knocked down at some point after the 2024 baseball season.\u00a0 The A\u2019s franchise is divorcing Oakland.\u00a0 Athletics owner John Fisher (a billionaire heir to the Gap clothing retailer) is bolting from a deep-rooted relationship with the East Bay region to get what he hopes will be a new stadium on the Las Vegas strip.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uprooting the A\u2019s from what is perhaps this country\u2019s most interesting metro area by a lot of measurements to a soulless desert town reliant on gambling is a dastardly double-cross that will prove to be regrettable when sports historians look back on it.  The commissioner of baseball is fully complicit as are the rest of the baseball owners and members of the media who use the dump word with a skybox\/suite-skewed revenue-at-all-costs frame of reference.      <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many urban centers that staggered badly to recover from the pandemic, the city of Oakland and Alameda County are in no position to offer substantive public subsidies or land grab deals to an owner who doesn\u2019t want to put a hand deep in his own pocket.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just look out the window of either side of the Bart train traveling between Lake Merritt, Fruitvale and the Coliseum to see why big public money for a new stadium in the East Bay would betray basic social justice tenets.  Also negatively contributing to this outcome are actions by the San Francisco Giants, the A\u2019s cross-Bay interleague rival.  The Giants invoked or threatened to exercise territorial rights when new stadium discussions involved other Bay area communities.  The Giants effectively blocked the A\u2019s from engaging with locales in their sphere of influence out of the misguided fear baseball fan allegiances could shift away from the more-established and sturdier franchise on the west side of the Bay.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the real blame lies with Fisher, the billionaire A\u2019s owner.  The agenda from the start of his short tenure in control of the franchise has been to keep a U-Haul truck at the ready so he can pack the team up for whatever place will build him a new stadium.  He just needed a few years to pit community against community (a form of extortion) all the while making Oakland look like it wasn\u2019t doing its part.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even the Vegas stadium deal that both Fisher and MLB claim sets the stage for a full Sin City sked in 2028 or thereabouts is less than three cherries on the pay line.  The financing puzzle there is not clear.  Not settled. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since Oakland and its fan base are so tired of Fisher and his shtick, average attendance at the Coliseum has fallen to 7460 through 40 home dates this season.  For that reason mostly – and because it\u2019s a really awkward set of circumstances in Oakland – Fisher has struck a deal to temporarily play home games in a minor league venue in Sacramento starting next season until the Vegas building is ready.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was at the Coliseum last week for the A\u2019s \/ Royals series.  Attendance for the Tuesday night, Wednesday night and Thursday afternoon games was 7013, 4557 and 8753 respectively.  Fans who I spoke to say they were there to enjoy what\u2019s left of this final season.  There\u2019s no real fight at the moment to stop the steal (a real form of steal in this case). Fans seemed stoic.  Resigned.  A few hung banners or wore t-shirts that simply said \u201cSELL\u201d but the fans and stadium staffers I interacted with are not under any illusion an eleventh hour miracle will rescue the team from Fisher.  Now that MLB has unanimously blessed rather than blocked the theft of what should be theirs, they accept the end of the A\u2019s in Oakland is a done deal.  Those same fans all told me most A\u2019s fan friends have already quit going to games outright to protest what Fisher is doing.  Understandable.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each of the three games I went to at the Coliseum were really fun nonetheless.  It felt important to be there to say goodbye.  I bought a $16 ticket at the box office before each contest, watched the visitors take BP, sipped on Juicy Hoot (brewed by Drake\u2019s in San Leandro and sold at concession stand down the left field line) and roved the mostly empty confines before settling in section 149 in right field.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s been in section 149 that I\u2019ve sat with my Dad and friends many times over the last 25 years.  It\u2019s where the fun is.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year I met 75-year-old Bob (originally from Newark, NJ) loosely patrolling 149 and 150 as an A\u2019s usher.  Bob moved to the Bay area in 1972.  During the seventh inning stretch, Bob linked arms with a long line of fans in 150 to sing Take Me Out.  They\u2019re my friends, he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bob introduced me to Barry from the Bronx on the last day I was there.  Barry works for the security company that monitors fan behavior.  He doesn\u2019t check tickets.  He looks for trouble-makers.  He\u2019s 82 years old and like Bob he came West in the 70\u2019s.  When I told Barry I was a Met fan, he mocked Casey Stengel\u2019s tendency to snooze on the bench late in his tenure as manager in Queens in the mid-60\u2019s.  Among several funny moments I enjoyed in my brief visit with Barry before the game was when a \u201csupervisor\u201d who was probably 60 years younger than him told him it was his turn in the staff rotation to \u201ctake a break.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTake a break?  I just got here,\u201d  protested Barry.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On and on the argument went with Barry holding his ground just long enough to where it felt like he\u2019d face a reprimand.  At that point Barry told his supervisor:  \u201cOK.  I\u2019ll stand on my head if you want me to.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two women sitting across the aisle from each other in 149 and 150 played snare drums.  They tapped sticks when the opponent made an out.  Men in the front row of 150 waved flags.  Bob chit-chatted with fans and openly rooted for the home team.  The A\u2019s are 23 games below .500.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What drew me to the Coliseum over two decades was the crowd and the atmosphere.  The fans played music, hung hand-painted banners and were welcoming to the fan from the outside.  Even fans of the other team.  The tickets are cheap.  The crowd is diverse.  A little eccentric.  The weather was always perfect.  Night games started with sun then turned chilly.  Hooded sweatshirt weather.  Day games were sunny and 70 consistently.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The BART train drops you at the doorstep.  After the game, the train gets you back to the hotel in San Fran in less than a half hour.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll really miss the Coliseum.  It wasn\u2019t the dump everyone\u2019s telling you it is.  It wasn\u2019t the cookie cutter the A\u2019s will get at their next permanent home.  The Coliseum to me was the perfect place to see a ball game.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Described as a \u201cdump\u201d by critics who expect a gameday experience far different than me, the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum will get knocked down at some point after the 2024 baseball season.\u00a0 The A\u2019s franchise is divorcing Oakland.\u00a0 Athletics owner John Fisher … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s28tEv-2325","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2325"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2325"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2326,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2325\/revisions\/2326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}