Today was the last Oakland A’s game in Oakland, ever. That’s, man…that is a weird, very messed up thing to be typing.
The Oakland A’s have been a thing my entire life. They’ve been MY thing since…1989, or thereabouts, the year they won the World Series against the San Francisco Giants and became the biggest thing in NorCal sports aside only from the 49ers. I fell in love with them utterly and completely in 1992, the year I turned 10 years old, and Dennis Eckersley broke the all-time saves record, Mark MacGuire hit over 50 home runs, and we traded Jose Canseco just before the playoffs. We fizzled out in the postseason that year, but it was a great regular season. I listened to every night and weekend game on the radio, all summer.
I lost touch with the team in the mid to late nineties, but I picked them back up again in 2000 when we were good again, and that time it stuck. I watched them on cable TV, and then the internet after that. I subscribed to their out of market games when I moved down to Southern California, and I watched the team get blown up and put back together again more times than I can count. It finally took its toll on me back two or three years ago when we traded away our amazing young team—the greatest group of homegrown talent I’d seen since that 2000 team; it was the young core that was supposed to open our new stadium in Oakland. That stadium was never built. It will never be built. And that young core was traded away.
I guess I knew the end was coming back then, well before they officially announced earlier this year they were officially moving the team from Oakland to Las Vegas. I’d already stopped watching. Being a Warriors fan over the last decade really put into perspective just how terrible of an owner John Fisher was, to let all those players go, to never spend a fucking dime on anything to last, to break a fanbase’s hearts over and over again. The Billionaire is in it for the real estate. He always has been. He’s never been in it for the team. And after twenty+ years of running the franchise into the ground, he’s put the final nail in the coffin…
And today the A’s played their last game in Oakland.
Well…fuck you John Fisher. That’s pretty much all I have to say about it, when it’s all said and done. Thank you to the A’s, of course, the players, coaches, workers, etc. for all the memories. You were an incredible part of my life. But mostly, fuck you John Fisher. I hope you go absolutely broke.
Sigh.
It’s not fun being angry. But, I am. Maybe that will change with time, but I sincerely doubt it.
The good news is that I’ve moved on. I have other sports to fill my summers, now. And I enjoy them. They even have upsides in that they don’t take up quite as much time. A baseball game is three hours, and they happen every day of the week, almost. That’s quite the commitment when you’re a fanatic, and I was. Still am, for any sport I pick up. But, you know, those sports aren’t baseball. They’re something else, which I enjoy in its own right, but it IS different. Maybe baseball will come back into my life, somehow. I don’t know. We’ll see. But it will never be Fisher’s A’s, I’ll tell you that much.
Night night. And adios A’s. I’ll always love you.