It is well known that many famous obituaries are written in advance. Back in April before the #SummerOfSell I began writing my obituary of my 35 year fandom of the Oakland Athletics. I wrote about 1988-2012 before I stopped. It was all too painful to consider losing the team that I cheered for from 3000 miles away when almost nobody I knew personally cheered with me. Pre-internet, pre-social media, it was just me and my friend Trevor. Us vs the world locally. Oakland baseball was the same, except it was usually with the city of Oakland and then eventually their owner John Fisher. All the fans ever wanted was a new stadium, an acceptable payroll and the want to keep young, homegrown stars around for their prime years. Was that too much to ask? It was always the fans vs the world. The stadium was a punchline. The lack of attendance became a national finger pointing explanation. Meanwhile the team continued to have magical seasons and runs into the postseason on a shoestring budget. My last post on here captured my joy of the 2018 season. 2019 was better and 2020 was supposed to be THE YEAR! It was going to save the franchise financially. Oakland had their best top to bottom roster since 2001 and were one of the favorites to win it all. Fan support was at an all time high as the hated Astros had just been caught cheating from their title in 2017. Oakland was set to open the season at home vs those cheating bastards. Plans for trash can banging and heckling were sweeping the socials. Not only could Oakland now beat them on the field, but they could mock them while doing it.
I don't have to remind you what happened next. COVID hit the world in March and the season appeared to be lost. MLB was able to produce a shortened season, but without fans in the stand. Oakland was dominant in the shortened season and got to face Houston in the ALDS. The series went poorly. Oakland lost the revenue, the series and the writing was now on the wall. Like the Montreal Expos in 1994 when they lost out on their magical season due to the strike, this was the tipping point for John Fisher and his finances with the Athletics. The Expos were in Washington by 2005 and now Oakland will apparently be in Las Vegas by 2028.
Now with that announcement, the feelings of despair, anger and sadness have returned. It's been 20+ years of hoping for a new stadium in or around Oakland. I wanted this for the local fans, the rowdy fans, the true fans. Those who banged the drums, waved the flags, hung the signs while watching their favorite players get shipped off to bigger markets with owners that weren't afraid to spend. From Hudson, Mulder, Zito, Giambi, Swisher to Olson, Murphy, Bassitt, Semien hell even our coach Bob Melvin. They were all sold for pennies on the dollar or not retained because they were too good and too expensive for our slumlord owner to want.
Today is a dark day for Oakland, a bad precedent for Major League Baseball and the beginning of my boycott of the sport I love more than anything else. The game I played from age 6 to 34. Six months a year, day in and day out of pouring over box scores and watching/listening/talking about this game. I have already told my fantasy leagues I will not return until Fisher is ousted. I am done. I am too old to cheer on a new team and while I do have the Washington Nationals nearby, its not the same. They have done the same thing with their players to a lesser extent as their owner has had thoughts about selling. At least they got a title before stripping the team for parts.
Feel free to keep reading about my history as an Oakland Athletics fan - we all have our stories, this was mine. It was a good run. RIP my fandom 1988-2023.
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October 15, 1988 is my first memory of being a fan of the Oakland Athletics. I was 10 years old and Kirk Gibson had just finished limping around the bases while I sobbed. Earlier in the year, my grandfather had included in my birthday card, clippings of how my local team, the Baltimore Orioles were the worst team in baseball as they began 0-21. I decided at that moment to not be an Orioles fan anymore and switched allegiances to my Little League team that spring, the Athletics. I probably did not even know they were in Oakland or in California or just how far that was away from Northern Virginia. They weren't an embarrassment. In fact, they went to the World Series for three straight years, winning once as I continued to play for the A's those same three seasons. We lost our only trip to the title game in 1990. By the end of my time playing for the Athletics I had become as die hard a fan as a 12 year old could be on the east coast in the pre-internet era.
Each morning I would read the Washington Post and look for the box score of the A's game and 75% of the time it was a 'late game' so would not even know if they had won or not. There would be the previous game from two nights ago and I would study the names but have no visual proof of what had happened. Soon enough, though, the Post created a toll-free number that one could call for updated reports/stories that did not make the early editions. I now woke up and if the game wasn't in the paper, I would hastily (it was called Post Haste after all) call to hear the fifteen second recap of the game and score. Each recap would begin with the star of the game so if the name wasn't a player from Oakland, I immediately hung up in disgust. The beginning of a super fan. As middle school began and I could stay up later, ESPN and Headline News became my life blood. With most games beginning at 10pm local, I would try and watch the 10pm Baseball Tonight for a rare glimpse of Oakland. An update here and there with video!!! While they were at commercial I would flip over to CNN's Headline News which ran a ticker of sports scores at the bottom. I could see how the game was progressing in real time. It was fantastic. Still, I never made it to the end of the games and would revert back to the Post via paper and hotline.
The A's made the playoffs in 1992 and I had a single friend who also cheered for them. We would talk about the series vs Toronto all the time. It felt good to have somebody else care the way I did about Oakland. I was at home watching Game 4 as Oakland blew a 6-1 lead to lose falling behind 3-1 in the series. Little did I know that this game would basically mark the end for their current core of players and usher in a half dozen years of incompetence going forward. I had really only known the Athletics to be World Series contenders over my first four years of fandom.
I would spend hours throwing a tennis ball against a wall and fielding the caroms. As the thrower, I would be Dave Stewart or Dennis Eckersley. I would face the lineup of Rickey Henderson, Carney Lansford, Mark McGwire, Dave Henderson, Jose Canseco, Terry Steinbach and Tony Phillips. These were the players I idolized. I would try and pitch side-armed emulating Eck or use a pigeon-toed stance like McGwire while hitting.
I did get to go to a few games here and there in Baltimore, beginning at Memorial Stadium and then at brand new Camden Yards. My aunt and uncle got Sunday Season tickets so if Oakland ever played there on a Sunday, we would get those games. I would dress in the green and gold and sit about 20 rows up from first base and cheer as loud as possible, then go home and watch the replay of the game that night to try and hear myself or see if the television cameras would pan to me. The game I remember hearing myself most was in 1994 when Mark McGwire hit a go ahead 2-run home run off Lee Smith in the 9th inning. Camden Yards went silent but I screamed like they had just won the World Series. I told anyone and everyone around me that now we would see a real closer come in and Eck did just that, securing the save in just six pitches. **Two fun facts from that game, A's starter, Ron Darling threw 137 pitches which we never see anymore, while O's starter Jamie Moyer was 31 years old and pitched 18 more seasons until he was 49!!!**
After the strike shortened season of 1994, McGwire came back from two injury plagued seasons to hit 39 home runs over 104 games played in '95. He then upped that to 52 home runs in just 130 games in 1996 and all of a sudden talk of breaking the magical mark of 61 home runs in a season began. There wasn't much other reason to watch Oakland during those seasons. From '93-'96, Oakland did not finish over .500, but at least they had McGwire in 1997 he had the chance to be a record setter. I had gone off to college and now had the most basic version of the internet. I would click on the live tracking of games on ESPN.com and watch each pitch signified by a dot color. For hours and hours, day by day I would watch dots appear as Oakland would continue to lose and McGwire would continue to hit home runs and chase Roger Maris. He wasn't on the same pace in '97 and Oakland decided to trade him to St. Louis where former Athletics manager, Tony LaRussa was now managing. Also there, was Dennis Eckersley so it didn't hurt as much because it was like having the A's back together again in St. Louis. I easily cheered for them on the side. McGwire got to St. Louis and suddenly became a force. He hit 24 home runs in just 51 games, finishing with 58 and setting up his magical run at history in 1998.
Meanwhile back in Oakland, 1997 and 1998 were years five and six of sub .500 play. In 1999, though, the tide began to turn. Behind a solid offense and a new rookie, Tim Hudson on the mound, Oakland toyed with postseason dreams winning 87 games, finishing just short. It was their best season in a long time and it appeared they had even more in the tank coming back the next season. I graduated college as the 2000 season had began and Oakland stood just a game over .500 at the end of May. June was a great month, but they faltered in July and August and it appeared that another season was going to be wasted without the postseason. But, in September, they found an extra gear going 21-7 and needing a win on October 1st to clinch the playoffs and the division. Tim Hudson threw 8 scoreless innings and Jason Isringhausen slammed the door shut in a 3-0 playoff clinching party.
Hudson finished 2nd in the Cy Young awards and Jason Giambi won the AL MVP for Oakland and I was so excited to finally watch my Athletics in the playoffs as an adult. Oakland played the hated New York Yankees and took them to five games before losing, but the season was a success. 2001 proved to be more of the same for Oakland as they again started slow, but caught fire in the second half of the season, winning 102 games, which in most seasons would be the best record in baseball, or at least their league, but in this season, they didn't even win their division as Seattle won 116 games, forcing Oakland in the Wild Card and having to once again play the New York Yankees. This time though, Oakland was seen as the favorite even with New York being the 3-time defending World Series Champions. The A's went to New York and won both games 1 & 2 of the five game series and headed back to Oakland where they had won 17 games in a row. I was visiting my sister at school for Game 3 wearing my green and gold and talking all the trash to her Yankee loving friends. It did not end well. Game 3 will always be remembered for the non-slide by the late-Jeremy Giambi (Jason's brother) as Oakland lost 1-0. Game 4 was a blowout and Jermaine Dye broke his leg on a foul ball. Game 5 was their last hope. Jason Giambi was set to be a free agent and everyone assumed he would not be back. He went 4-4 in Game 5, but Oakland lost. Misery. The lowest of the low.
2002 began with much lower expectations as Giambi left and nobody knew if Oakland could still compete without their best hitter. As June arrived, Oakland was just under .500 and it appeared everyone was right. But as they had done before, they warmed up with the weather. After a loss on August 12th, they stood at 68-51, in 3rd place in the AL West, but just 4.5 games out and only 2 games out of the Wild Card. They won on the 13th which was the first of 20 wins in a row.
20.
20!!!!!
Win 18 was a walk-off home run by Miguel Tejada - I was watching the dots online from my room in a house I split with a two other guys. When it said, 'in-play, Runs' and the score went from 5-4 for the Minnesota Twins to 7-5 for Oakland I screamed and ran through the house like I was on fire. They did it again the next day as I escaped out of work mid-shift to watch the game. It was 5-0 for the KC Royals when I got there, but Oakland scored six times over the next two innings and won in behind another Miguel Tejada hit. I went back to work bouncing off clouds.
Win 20 was nationally televised and later turned into the pivotal scene in 'Moneyball' the story of the 2002 Athletics and their general manager Billy Beane. Oakland ran out to a 10-0 lead only to squander it all just so they could hit a walk-off home run in true Hollywood fashion. They would go on to win the division and once again lose in five games. This time to the Twins. It was becoming increasingly frustrating - six months of pleasure was being ruined by one week of pain. Oakland did their thing again in 2003, making the playoffs and again losing in five gut-wrenching games, this time to the Boston Red Sox. They started to sell off some of their players the next year and missed the playoffs in both 2004 and 2005. It appeared their run of having a chance to win a World Series was over.
By this point in my life I could not go to sleep without knowing how the A's had fared that day. Games routinely ended after 1am local time - if I didn't watch the dots on my computer screen, I would go to the local sports bar and sit there watching the game alone. One of my friends also cheered for Oakland at the time. We both worked for Hollywood Video and he ran a different store. We saw each other occasionally and it again was nice to have someone to talk about the team, the good and the bad, the joy and the sad. Still, being in VA and being an A's fan was isolating. I needed them to win it all to earn some semblance of respect for being a fan of theirs. It would have been easy to be a Yankees/Red Sox/Dodgers type fan. They had all the money and were always on television. But nobody seemed to care about Oakland unless they were winning 20 games in a row.
By now the stadium they played in was falling apart and unsightly. The Raiders of the NFL had moved back to Oakland from Los Angeles and had renovated the Oakland Coliseum to make it look and feel more like a football stadium. It was ugly and added empty seats during the baseball year. The Athletics had begun their request for a new, baseball only, stadium. A new stadium was the key to new revenue and keeping players. In the 70's Oakland sold off their core after winning three straight World Series, in the early 90's after three World Series appearances, the band was broken up. Now again, 15 years later a new crop of talented players were being sprinkled around to the teams with money. Jason Giambi went to the Yankees, Johnny Damon to Boston, Miguel Tejada to Baltimore, Tim Hudson was traded to Atlanta, and Mark Mulder to St. Louis. Oakland kept just Eric Chavez and signed him to a 6-year $66 million dollar contract which is still the highest contract in terms of money Oakland has ever giving out. Some players currently make $30+ million a year. Chavez played almost a year and half of that six-year deal healthy before his back and other injuries derailed his promising career.
I wanted a new stadium, even if they had to relocate to San Jose. This idea was one of a few options over the next fifteen years that were floated around. I would hear a rumor of a possible location/option only for it to be dismissed months later for one reason or another. I always assumed it was the city of Oakland that wouldn't get it done and since I wasn't from California and had no ties to the region, moving was okay with me. The Montreal Expos relocated to Washington DC in 2005 so I had a new local team to root for in the National League. With this move, it appeared that Oakland was next to move.
As the 2006 season began, hopes for glory had waned for me and this version of Oakland. They still had Barry Zito who the last of the 'Big Three' with Hudson and Mulder and had brought in former MVP Frank Thomas, but his best seemed behind him. Band-aids and super glue to try and be decent. Again they were sub-.500 entering June and again they took off in the summer going 26 games over .500 from June 1st-August 31st. Frank Thomas was rejuvenated leading the team with 39 home runs and Barry Zito led the team with 16 wins. Oakland won their division and re-entered the playoffs as an underdog with the fewest wins of any of the playoff teams. If their best teams couldn't win, how would this one be able to do it?
Of course, they went on to sweep the first round series against Minnesota and the Wild Card Detroit Tigers upset the vaunted Yankees. Oakland now had home field advantage for their first ALDS since 1992. We were back, baby!!! The joys were very short lived and Detroit swept Oakland in four games. Barry Zito left in free agency across the Bay to the San Francisco Giants. Frank Thomas went to Toronto and Eric Chavez began his string of injuries, playing just 90 games in 2007 and a total of 64 for the A's over his final three years of the contract he signed.
The next five years (2007-11), Oakland would top out at 81 wins, missing the playoffs each season as nothing seemed to work. The only good thing during that time frame was that Twitter became a social media tool for me. I joined in mid-2009 so I could follow beat reporters of my favorite teams. Now I would get real time reporting of what was happening for Oakland year round. The information I gained was invaluable to me being so far away. I could see fan reactions to same games I was watching. While I couldn't be at the games, I could see other people having the same emotions that I did. It was cathartic in a sense. No longer was I tied to the national narrative for my news. I could learn the why behind the moves they made rather than just what happened.
By the time the 2012 season started, I felt more a part of the fanbase than ever before. Now I just needed some on the field success to share with my fellow fans. It did not appear that 2012 would bring that joy, though. By June 1st, Oakland was 22-29 and on their way to another mediocre finish. Already 9 games out of first and in third place of four teams. At least in my personal life, things were looking up. My wife and I were expecting our first child, due in December.
... this is where I stopped. The season ended in pain. It always did. Now there will be no more pain as I am officially dead inside.
