Oakland Athletics, Loneest Team in Baseball


OAKLAND — Less than 3,000 fans attended an Oakland Athletic game on a quiet night earlier this month. The large, old coliseum was so empty and serene that visiting Tampa Bay Rays players could hear the clear expression of every taunt that came their way.

Rays outfielder Brett Phillips said one of his teammates told him he heard a fan taunting his low batting average in the stands while he was at bat. Phillips missed that thorn, but was asked what he heard from the barren stands that night.

“I heard a pin drop,” Phillips joked. “Does that count?”

A new baseball season is a time of hope in many baseball towns, including Oakland, but the first few weeks of the 2022 campaign have served to pull back the veil of longstanding problems for Athletics. Things may have reached a crisis level.

The May 2 game between a pair of teams with worrying attendance issues had just 2,488 fans, making it the season-lowest score for majors and the lowest number for A’s in over 40 years. The team’s once loyal fans seem to have given up all together.

Why shouldn’t they?

Their favorite players are routinely traded for more affordable alternatives. Cavernous, concrete stadiums, stubborn charm For some, it’s worn and grossly outdated. Meanwhile, the organization openly talks about his long-distance romance with Las Vegas.

The A’s have been searching for a sparkly new stadium or a vibrant new city for years, creating an uncertainty that almost drives fans to stay away.

“It feels like the last days of the Montreal Expos before they move to Washington,” said Jorge Lopez, 36, restoration manager at construction. A former season ticket holder who now plays nearly 10 games a year, Lopez sat in a lone section of the stands with partner Megan Harter for a game in the Rays franchise.

“I want to suck it all in before they leave,” Lopez said.

For the first five and a half weeks of the season, A’s are last in Major League Baseball attendance, averaging just 8,421 fans per game through Saturday in a stadium with a capacity of nearly 57,000. In 2019, the year before the pandemic, the average was 20,521. It was at the bottom of the league that year, but still respectable. At the end of that season, Oakland hosted the American League wild card game – again against the Rays – and came in at 54,005, causing the Coliseum to vibrate.

Now, as turnout dwindles, A’s fans face seemingly three possible outcomes: The team gets a coveted new stadium on the quayside in downtown Oakland (a venture that faces many hurdles); move to Las Vegas or another city; or reverting to the same old solution of the last half century – to stay in a park older than all MLB stadiums except Wrigley Field, Fenway Park and Dodger Stadium. And none of the historical significance of those beloved cathedrals.

A’s president Dave Kaval argues that the last option is no longer viable, with the nearby San Francisco Giants dominating the market with a beautiful park next to San Francisco Bay that opened in 2000.

“Having a visionary basketball court on the waterfront in Oakland is particularly important because we’re a two-team market,” Kaval said. “I have to compete with the giants and I can’t have a substandard product or people will go to their game.”

Kaval has become a lightning rod for disgruntled fans and offended civic leaders, but argues that at least the A’s are fighting to stay in Oakland and spending $2 million a month on the waterfront project. That’s more than they spend annually on short centre-back Elvis Andrus, excluding one of his players.

“I actually think that’s true,” said Kevin Peters, 33, a fan of the A’s from Oakland. “Raiders and Warriors are separated. I think the A’s are cheap, but at least they’re trying to stay in Oakland.”

Despite his protests, Kaval is clear that the team is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a month exploring the Las Vegas option as well.

Athletics is the last of the trio that once co-existed on the vast concrete terrain alongside Interstate 880 in Oakland. The NFL’s Raiders, who also played in the Colosseum in two separate periods, moved to Las Vegas forever in 2020. Golden State Warriors playing in the NBA An arena just steps from the Colosseum For 51 years, it moved to a sparkling new palace in San Francisco in 2019, not far from the Giants ballpark.

Only the A’s remained standing, giving the stadium a ghost town feel with its louvered concession stands, darkened halls and chipped concrete. Beyond midfield sits Mount Davis, the massive seating structure blocking the view that was built when Al Davis brought the team back from Los Angeles—a beast that may be the only stadium section visible from space.

Fans would have put up with anything, but this year feels different.

“It’s unfortunate for everyone,” said home player Jed Lowrie, who has played for the first team for seven years, including three years into the team’s final season. “As a pro, you have to do your job as a major league player. We understand there are complaints, but this is above my pay grade. Hopefully it can be resolved. Let’s put it this way: It must be resolved.”

Over the last 22 years, A’s have made it a science to maximize modest resources to pitch competitive teams, a process referred to in the book “Moneyball.” They were playoffs regulars, but the heart-wrenching process of trading top players before they reach the free roster seems to have come to a tipping point after two Matts – Chapman and Olson – were traded to Toronto and Atlanta this spring, leaving fans behind. the only commemorative jerseys to remember them.

“They’re trading all of our players,” said 18-year-old Drew Hernandez, a student at Las Positas College in Livermore, speaking in an empty, echoing tunnel under the stands during one of the last games between the A’s and the Rays. “It has to stop.”

A’s players, coaches, and mid-level management are in a difficult position, as Lowrie says, caught between the dedicated but angry fans who support them and the wishes of owner John J. Fisher.

It’s not easy to watch loved and talented teammates go.

“Our model is one where we switch between players, and there are times during this cycle that fans don’t understand and appreciate what we’re doing here,” said Mark Kotsay, new manager of the A and a former Oakland player. “But we have a loyal fan base and that’s all that really matters.”

Tested and stretched for decades, this loyalty is starting to erode. Ticket and parking prices have soared this year, and for some skeptical fans, there’s a feeling that the team has deliberately put an ordinary product into a decaying stadium to change attendance numbers and increase A’s leverage to move the team or get a permit – and tax breaks — Building a new stadium in Oakland.

“Have you ever seen the Major League movie?” ‘ Harry asked. “That’s it. They don’t want the fans to show up, so they can act.”

The idea of ​​a new stadium in Oakland is not a new concept. The current plan will place an ostentatious new park at the center of a $12 billion development at the Howard Terminal in the Port of Oakland, close to downtown. Of course, all kinds of public permissions and grants will be required for this to happen.

A final vote by key committee He recommended moving forward from the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, arguing that there was no need for space as part of future port development.

This vote changed Kaval’s perspective, but more hurdles are looming on the Oakland City Council, including a key vote on the deal’s base budget.

Kaval said, “If they vote no, we’re done, the project is over.” His attention would then be turned to Las Vegas, an option that also depended on the outcome of the vote there.

Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf strongly supports the Howard Terminal plan, praising the economic benefit for the entire district. In an interview, he said the Raiders had learned a lot from the “giant lie” he perpetrated in Oakland, and that the experience would ensure the bodyguards were in place to protect public finances.

He is optimistic that the project will move forward and said it will be costly if not continued.

“It would be a huge loss, not just for fans of the Oakland A, but for generations of Oaklanders to come,” he said. “This is much, much bigger than baseball. It’s about taking this valuable asset on the coast and making the best use of it for future generations.”

If the stadium is built, the Athletics, an original American League franchise dating back to 1901 in Philadelphia before moving to Kansas City in 1955 and then Oakland in 1968, would have a stadium built specifically for them since the Shibe. Will have. The park opened in 1909. This stadium opened to much fanfare as baseball’s first concrete-and-steel facility, but as a sign of things to come, the team eventually had to share it with the Phillies.

Kaval says the Howard Terminal park will add “hundreds of millions” to the team’s revenue stream, putting an end to the frustrating roster turnover cycle that stretches back to the early days of Connie Mack for the franchise.

All the while, the A’s are hanging out at the Coliseum, and the few fans that show up – most wearing Chapman and Olson jerseys – may be living through the final days or years of Oakland Athletics.

After this last game with just 2,488 fans, Rays outfielder Phillips spoke to some on a railing near the bunker as he left the pitch.

“I thanked four people,” Phillips said. “I said to them, ‘I know the guys from the other bunker are really glad you’re here. Thanks to the fans, the sport is popular and exciting. They are the most important part of the game.”



Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *