The Last Week of the Oakland A's

Jason Burke | Sep 19, 2024

Sep 24, 2023; Oakland, California, USA; A general view of third base at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum before the game between the Detroit Tigers and the Oakland Athletics. Mandatory Credit: Robert Edwards-Imagn Images / Robert Edwards-Imagn Images

Every baseball game begins with a blank scorecard. The plays on the field help fill in that card and in the process create memories for those in attendance or watching at home. Since 1968, the Oakland A's have helped fill our scorecards, and our hearts, building connections that span generations. When the final out is recorded at the Coliseum in a week, those memories will stop being made, and that connection with future generations will officially be severed.

The A's are just a sports team, and they'e hardly the first one to ever relocate. Heck, this franchise has moved two times already, and they're the third team to leave the city of Oakland in recent years. The move itself is not groundbreaking. That doesn't make it any less heartbreaking.

The A's are a sports team, yes. But they are also woven into the lives of so many Oakland and East Bay residents. Some will say that the fans didn't show up, so of course the team is leaving. Yet, back in college I had to give a speech in class on a topic of my choosing, and I chose the A's proposed Fremont ballpark. This was around 2007. That is how long A's ownership has been trying to move the team, and why the fans just stopped coming.

Each and every A's fan has their own core memories from attending games at the Oakland Colisuem. Here are some of mine.

One of my earliest memories in life was being taken out of school early for my birthday and my parents taking me to a game at the Coliseum to watch Cal Ripken Jr. and the Baltimore Orioles. I don't remember much of the game at all, but that was a special memory because I was made to feel special, and it happened at the Coliseum. That is where the connection with the team began.

Over the years, my grandpa would take me to games all the time, and we built some special memories at the concrete palace. No matter where we were sitting, he would point directly across the ballpark to some smattering of fans and say, "hey, that girl just smiled at you!" Grandpa was a jokester, and this is a core memory of not only the Coliseum and the A's, but of him. On the way to the ballpark one time, he looked up to the sky and said, "oh wow you see that? It's going to get dark tonight." Being young, it took me a few minutes to realize he was messing with me. These are stories I retold at his celebration of life after he passed, which is how meaningful they have been to me, and they happened because of our love of baseball.

He passed his love of baseball on to my dad and I, and because of that passion for the game, we were able to witness the walk-off bunt, Game 162, Jeremy Giambi's no-slide, and so much more. Actually, we didn't see the walk-off bunt. Dad liked to beat the traffic, and with a packed house and the Boston Red Sox in town, we had to get moving before the event actually occurred. But, we did see Tim Hudson and Pedro Martínez face off in that game, and it led to another core Coliseum memory.

Now, I don't know the specifics of how Derek Jeter ended up on the video board, but my best recollection is that he was doing a PSA for all of the ballparks. Something along the lines of "don't do drugs." Yet, this crowd at the Coliseum, filled with A's and Red Sox fans, saw his face and booed him mercilessly. It was hilarious, and arguably my favorite non-protest memory.

In college, dollar hot dogs were not only a great deal, but also served as a challenge for hungry students. We would drop $10 and see just how many we could actually finish (spoiler: it was all of them). You see, the trick was to eat a few before the game began, and then one an inning. Back in the days before the pitch clock, this was roughly one every 20 minutes. I believe the record among our group was 13 dogs.

I brought friends to the Coliseum because it was my way to share my passion, baseball, and more specifically this team, with others. It always felt difficult for me to find common ground with people growing up, and the A's were one of the ways that I was able to share a part of myself with others and not feel so alone in the world. Being a baseball dork, I could field any questions they had, and it typically left with my friends having a deeper appreciation of the game itself because of all of the action going on between pitches.

One year I even drove down to Anaheim to see the A's play at the beginning of the year because I couldn't wait for their home opener. I called out sick at the restaurant I was working at, drove down with a friend, saw Dan Haren and John Lackey toss gems, then drove up through the night to make it to work at six a.m. I slept for about 45 minutes before work that morning, but man that was a fun experience.

Another year the A's played a long extra-innings game on the Saturday before Mother's Day, with the game seemingly lasting until midnight. I again went to work a six a.m., and when we opened at seven, Ray Fosse was the first person that came in that morning after I had just listened to him well past when I should have been asleep. I was working in the coffee shop area of the restaurant and he provided us with our first tip of the day, saying "gotta get that primed." In other words, placing money in the tip jar would help others contribute throughout the day. An empty tip jar doesn't have the same effect. Since that day we always threw a dollar into the tip jar at the beginning of the day, and it helped us earned just a little more each day.

I even met my wife, who is from Oakland, because I had a Jerry Blevins shirsey on one day. Apparently that is a conversation piece, and we got to talking. She later said that she knew I was a real fan becuase who else had a Blevins shirsey? It was a Christmas present from my sister, who fell in love with the A's during the magical 2012 season. My wife and I have now been together for over a decade.

Some on social media have said that A's fans should just choose another team. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred eluded to the fact that the Giants are right across the bay, so really there shouldn't be any issue here. But they also miss the point. The A's are a sports team, yes. But for the fans that have stuck around through all of the rebuilds, the poor treatment from ownership, the lack of stability on the roster, being told from MLB themselves that we're not good enough, for those people to still be around and supporting the green and gold, the A's are a way of life. It's not as simple as rooting for different laundry. Those memories don't just go away.

Other fanbases will complain because their team hasn't won a World Series in a few years, but they miss the point of being a baseball fan. Titles are nice and all, but it's the day-in, day-out action that really brings the lasting memories.

Back in 2012 the A's played what was their most memorable season for a large portion of the fan base. Picked to finish last in the AL West, the Oakland A's used a new group of rookies and cast-offs to ultimately clinch the West in the final game of the regular season, game 162, after sweeping the Texas Rangers in the final series. Texas had been to two straight World Series in 2010 and 2011, losing both, so to take them down was no small feat.

That win led to the A's playing in the ALDS against the Detroit Tigers, and in an odd twist, the A's had to begin the postseason on the road thanks to a scheduling issue with the newly formed Wild Card Game. The cold weather in Detroit led to the A's coming back home down 0-2 in the series, but they still came back to tie it up and force a game five. While the season didn't have the storybook ending that those in the stands were expecting, when the final out was recorded, those of us in the stands began chanting, "Let's go Oak-land!" to show our appreciation for this club.

There is a part of me that hopes that after the final out is recorded next Thursday, that the 40,000+ fans in attendance will fill the Coliseum with one last "let's go Oak-land!" chant before the A's pack up and leave town for good.

The A's are a sports team, but their brand is rooted in Oakland. They'll keep the colors and the history, but they'll be losing the soul of the team. The people of Oakland are what have made this franchise special. The scrappy underdogs that don't have the best facilities or the biggest names to cheer on the roster, but with their voices (and some drums), they can make sure they're heard. They've made 10,000 fans sound like a playoff game. Over the past two seasons, since the A's announced their plans to relocate, players have talked about the noise levels at the Coliseum being among the best in baseball, including in New York. The fans are the ones responsible for that, and they're the ones being left behind so the A's can be just another baseball team.