Takeaways From John Fisher's Letter to Oakland A's Fans

Jason Burke | Sep 24, 2024

May 6, 2023; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Jose Earthquakes and Oakland Athletics owner John Fisher looks towards the pitch after a match against the Los Angeles FC at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images / Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images

When the Oakland Athletics announced that they would be fleeing for Sacramento in 2025, team president Dave Kaval promised that the club would celebrate the A's history in Oakland throughout the course of the season. With three games to go, the fans have not felt celebrated at all, with recent reports painting the fans as up to no good as the final game in Oakland approaches.

On Monday, A's fans received a letter in their inboxes from A's owner John Fisher. It reads:

"To our Oakland Athletics Fans:

This upcoming series with the Texas Rangers will be the final games of the A's storied 57 years in Oakland. And while the A's previously played in Philadelphia and Kansas City, Oakland has been home for the greatest era in the franchise's more than 123-year history.

Four World Series Championships. Six pennants and 17 division titles. Seven Baseball Hall of Famers. Charlie Finley and his mule. Billy Ball. Reggie and his incomparable swagger. Rollie and his handlebar mustache. Dave Stewart and the stare. Bill King's "Holy Toledo." Rickey, the greatest leadoff hitter in baseball history. The list goes on and on.

Triumphs, near misses, the 1989 Loma Preita earthquake in Game 3 of the Bay Bridge Series, the 20-game win streak, a Hollywood movie, and an unmatched cast of players, coaches, and fans. We've had it all.

And that, I know, is what makes our departure so very hard.

The A's are part of the fabric of Oakland, the East Bay, and the entire Bay Area. When Lew Wolff and I bought the team in 2005, 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.

Only in 2021, after 16 years of working exclusively on developing a home in the Bay Area and faced with a binding MLB agreement to find a new home by 2024, did we begin to explore taking the team to Las Vegas.

There are millions of dedicated and passionate A's fans, in Oakland and around the world. Countless dedicated staff members and Oakland Coliseum employees have poured their hearts into this team, and their efforts have meant so much to our community. 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.

John Fisher"

Now, we're not going to go in and pick apart everything he said in this letter, like misspelling "Loma Prieta," but we did want to offer a couple of big takeaways.

In the paragraph that begins, "The A's are part of the fabric of Oakland" he says that the dream when he bought the team was to win world championships and build a new ballpark in Oakland. Those are great goals! He then says that over the next 18 years, he pursued five other locations within the Bay Area. In November of 2006, the A's announced plans to buy land and move the team to Fremont. He bought the team in 2005, so the immediate plan was to move them out of Oakland, not to actually keep them there. In fact, he spent more time looking outside of The Town than within it for a new home.

A little later, he mentions that the team was "faced with a binding MLB agreement to find a new home by 2024" which has been a common talking point from the club since the move was announced in 2023. Dave Kaval just kept saying "we ran out of time."

Yet, there is still no binding agreement with Las Vegas. In fact, there are still quite a few hoops to jump through, not the least of which is showing how Fisher will be financing this proposed ballpark. So did they really run out of time, or was this an artificial deadline meant to get the A's out of Oakland?

Not meeting the deadline would have meant that the A's would be kicked off of revenue sharing, the team's lifeblood, and yet the team still doesn't have a binding agreement and MLB has already said that the A's can continue receiving their billionaire welfare checks. If the deadline didn't matter that much, then how were the A's running out of time?

The final piece that really stands out in Fisher's letter is towards the end when he says he wishes he could speak to each fan individually. Yet, Fisher has done no local media since buying the team, taking zero questions across his 18 years as the steward of the franchise.

The one time he talked to a fan happened last year at the owner's meetings, and he told Jorge Leon of the Oakland 68's, "It's been worse for me than it has for you. Believe me."

The only times that A's fans have heard him talk has been at events when he's promoting the team's departure from Oakland. If he really cared about saving face, he would have spoken with the fans immediately after the announcement last April. He also would have helped himself a little by releasing this statement after the A's final game instead of before the final series.

The emotions are raw right now, and the fans are just seeking closure. This kind of stuff just doesn't help.