Well, if there’s a fanbase I really feel for, it’s Oakland fans. The final Oakland franchise is at last being ripped away from the Oakland fanbase as the Athletics are getting shipped out to Las Vegas in 2024 after signing preliminary agreements with the city, leaving Oakland without any major sports franchise.
I really hate how this has all transpired for the Oakland fans.
The Oakland Athletics and the city of Oakland, California have seen their stadium lease negotiations “fall through” (you’ll see why I have this in quotes in a minute) as the Athletics ownership has agreed with Bally’s Corporation, a gambling, betting, interactive entertainment company with billions of dollars to spend, to build a 1.5B stadium in Tropicana, Las Vegas, thus ending the A’s 55-year stay in Oakland.
And, even though I understand the reasons behind the move, I can’t stand how this has gone down.
Greed and corporate selfishness have taken ahold of this franchise for the better part of the last three seasons as the A’s owner John Fisher, one of the heirs to the GAP fortune, has been actively trying to move this team to a more lucrative, wealthy market for as long as Fisher has been in control of the franchise (since 2005).
I mean, it’s not like Fisher has been secretive with his desire to leave Oakland as he already agreed a deal with the city of Las Vegas to move just a few days ago this very month, but it fell apart (briefly, evidently) due to high infrastructure demands.
Nevertheless, Fisher has been one of the worst stewards in all of the league as he oversaw the Athletics go from a divisional contender in the early 2000’s to a team that now sells off its best players to avoid paying high salaries, either drafting extremely raw high school talents (Maxwell Muncy, Tyler Soderstrom) or players that’d never play for the organization (Kyler Murray, Kevin Merrell, Austin Beck) in the 1st round, and charging some of the highest ticket prices to fans despite having some of the worst teams in the league.
Seriously, the Athletics currently are 8-30, last in the entire MLB, and have a payroll that is worth less than Max Scherzer’s Mets contract (Scherzer: $43.3M/year; Athletics payroll: $35.46M), but the average season ticket price for the Athletics is $100 (the 18th highest in the league).
Now, it’s not as high as their state-rivals Los Angeles Dodgers’ $209/ticket, but to charge $100 to watch the worst baseball in the league is arguably a crime against baseball.
Fisher has wanted to move the Athletics out of Oakland throughout his reign as owner, and now he’s about to finally get his wish.
However, I can’t fully blame Fisher for this move as I understand this move from California.
Why? It’s because the city of Oakland seems like one of the very worst cities in the US to deal with. In the last ten years, the NFL’s Raiders and the NBA’s Warriors both left their Oakland locations for greener pastures in Las Vegas and San Francisco, respectively, while Oakland Coliseum (where the A’s play) has sadly been degraded into one of the worst ballparks in the US.
Why else would this happen if the city officials of Oakland were fantastic, understanding, reasonable, and comprising people? Al Davis, who was one of the greatest NFL owners ever, had already left Oakland once before his son Mark did it again in 2020, while the current ownership group of the Warriors, Joe Lacob and Peter Guber is the best stewards in all of the NBA right now.
I’m not saying these city officials are evil or bad or anything like that, but these teams and respected owners all finding new places to relocate just seems a little fishy for this A’s move to be just on Fisher and his cronies.
Still, I feel bad for the Oakland fans as they are great and have been one of the best fanbases in the MLB these last 55 years, but their city officials seem like incompetent fools who have allowed THREE professional sports teams to leave in the last decade.
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