Oakland Athletics relocation to Las Vegas thread: Move to Vegas approved by MLB owners - Will play in Sacramento for 3-4 years

[GKJ]

 

[EpochLink]

Farewell Oakland

 

[Nogatco Rd]

Great eulogy in the local paper

Kurtenbach: Billionaire John Fisher stole Oakland’s major-league future and blamed A’s fans on his way out The Town

A’s fans didn’t quit on the team. They quit on John Fisher.

www.eastbaytimes.com

An excerpt:

On a quiet night in Alameda, when I open up the windows, walk the dog, or sit out on the porch, and if the wind is just right and the schedule aligns, I can hear it.

Bum nah nah nah.

Bum nah nah nah.

It’s the recorded organ undercurrent to the best chant in the world, echoing from five miles away, carrying over the estuary waters and serenading me at home. It’s the ever-so-often soundtrack of my summers, and every time I hear it, I can’t help but play along:

Let’s Go Oak-land.

Let’s Go Oak-land.

The A’s are not my childhood team. You can’t consider me a diehard Green and Gold fan. My relationship with the team is one born solely of proximity — it stems from a decade of living in and loving the East Bay.

But it still hit me like a ton of bricks as that dulcet bass line crept into my living room again and again these past few nights. Much like the organ music reverberating over the water, the truth was inescapable:

We’ll probably never hear that chant at a big-league game again.

As I write this, the digital photo frame in my office rotated to a picture of me, my wife, and our then six-month-old daughter at her first baseball game — April 16, 2023. The A’s played the Mets at the Coliseum that day, and Lottie was generally unamused.

Last Friday, we took out-of-town friends to see the A’s play the Yankees. As I carried her through the insane traffic of the Coliseum concourse, she pointed to the field below us and yelled, “Baseball!”

The A’s might not have been my team, but they were supposed to be her team.

And it angers me to no end that they’ll never end up being our team.

 

[Naych_PHX]

Baseball was my first sport I liked, and the A's were my first favorite team as a kid. Then hockey came along. It may not be equal but as a Coyotes fan I hate relocation so I can relate in a way. Oakland fans didn't deserve to lose two teams in such a short amount of time.

 

[These Are The Days]

This sucks to watch. I am gutted and I'm not an A's fan. I can't even begin to imagine how much it hurts for the diehards. I am so sorry this happened

 

[DoyleG]

The last major sporting event in Oakland for the foreseeable future.

and its tombstone will be Mount Davis.

 

[Shockmaster]

Considering 3 professional teams have left Oakland in the last decade, maybe the problem is with the city itself?

 

[Terry Yake]

Considering 3 professional teams have left Oakland in the last decade, maybe the problem is with the city itself?

the city hasn't been perfect through all of this, but they were willing to give fisher what he wanted for the howard terminal ballpark and he bailed to vegas once he realized oakland was actually being serious. fisher/MLB were never serious about staying in oakland

the raiders left because davis couldn't afford a new stadium without public funding and vegas was willing to provide that while oakland wasn't. if i recall, the raiders wanted to redevelop the coliseum site but weren't able to because the A's had signed a new lease

warriors have always been a bay area team, not specifically oakland's team. they went back to SF because there was simply more money to be made playing there

 

[EpochLink]

Back in the day, this team was hard to beat.