Image: Kelley L Cox – USA TODAY Sports

“Look at these steps…such an easy exit…what a nice stadium!” 

A man wistfully said this to his wife in the middle of an excited crowd leaving the Oakland A’s game on June 13th. Behind them, the peeling paint, poor design, scarce vendors, and general weariness of Oakland Coliseum took a breath, shaken back to life by a passionate crowd of 27,000 fans attending the Reverse Boycott, a final protest against a future with no professional baseball in Oakland, their beloved A’s shipped off to glitzy Las Vegas. 

In between the worn down confines of the Coliseum and the glamorous future in Las Vegas lay an immeasurable amount of love. This fan, walking out towards a jam-packed and disorganized parking lot, could only focus on his fondness for a place, an atmosphere that will almost inevitably be gone in a couple years. He loves his team. He loves the Oakland A’s.    

Nearly everyone there shared those same feelings. In a conflict mired by politics, statistics, and technicalities, Oakland fans made it tangible. In a conflict fought publicly by billionaires, government officials, and MLB suits, Oakland fans brought it back to everyday people. In a conflict defined by greed and impatience, Oakland fans reminded us all of love. 

As with any relationship, the A’s and Oakland have had their share of difficulties, but the shared baseball history in Oakland remains stronger than most other MLB franchises can claim. 

1968 saw the first A’s games in Oakland, averaging over 10,000 attending each game. While at the time their attendance ranked a modest 8th out of 10 in the American League, the organization has averaged below 10,000 since 2021. 

They arrived in a shifting Oakland. Between 1960 and 1970, the Black population of Oakland increased by 11.7%, increasing tensions first ignited over the influx of Black families filling the wartime need for industrial labor. The Black Panther Party was formed in 1966, preaching Black empowerment to Oakland’s large Black populations, while also clashing with a city that was still largely white. By 1970, the city was 59.1% white, and 34.5% Black. 

As the city boiled underneath them, the A’s bloomed, building three successive World Series champion teams from 1972-1974. Young, exciting, and the often arrogant Reggie Jackson, quiet and humble Catfish Hunter, and the eccentric Rollie Fingers won their way into Oakland lore. With autocratic owner Charlie Finley as the biggest personality of them all, these teams lit up imaginations, baseball writer Jason Turbow dubbing them as “Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic.” 

As Oakland continued changing, population declining from 1970 to 1980 and African Americans becoming the largest racial demographic in the city, those early 70’s teams ingrained the A’s into the fabric of Oakland.

Throughout the rest of the 1970s and 1980s, widespread urban underdevelopment and discriminatory allocation of resources, predominantly in the large Black communities of West Oakland, led to increases in crime, and an outsized impact of the ‘80s crack epidemic. The flight of white Oaklanders continued, while new minorities began fissuring in. The population became nearly half African American, and the Hispanic population reached 13.2% in 1990. Oakland gained both a reputation of violence and squalor, and an original and beautiful cultural landscape. 

Buoyed by that cultural vibrancy, a new local ownership group, and excitement on the field with new figures like Billy Martin and his exciting bat-first teams or Oakland-raised Ricky Henderson and his flying fast legs, attendance at the Coliseum shot up throughout the 80’s, reaching far above 30,000 per game by the end of the decade. 

The crowning memory of that period is the 1989 World Series. Rickey Henderson, an Oakland Technical HS graduate fully in his prime and one season before his overpowering MVP season, led the team. Dave Stewart, the intimidating ace of the pitching staff, was born to dockworkers in Oakland. And Dennis Eckersley, their colorful yet controlled closer, grew up in nearby Fremont. Together, these local kids, with the help of young guns Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, swept the cross-bay Giants to add a fourth World Series to their Oakland trophy cabinet. Along with reaching and losing the fall classic on either side of that 1989 win, love for the Oakland A’s soared. 

In the sixth inning, a father and son made a round along the front row of the whole entire third deck. The father, in his early forties and dressed sportily, with fresh white shoes, crisp yet athletic gray pants, and an A’s jersey, held a sign blaring the words “Fishy Fisher” high in the air. His son, around 10 years old, tooted on a big, green vuvuzela. They didn’t say anything or acknowledge many people, but rather just walked, a silent reminder of the generational aspect of sports fandom, and the power of a team’s consistent presence in one city. 

The father probably grew up with the exciting 80’s teams, passing on tales to his son of rookie of the year Walt Weiss and the 1989 Championship. What will the son have to pass on to his kids? 

Their walk represented almost a last stand, a last acknowledgment of Oakland, knowing they might soon only have memories of the A’s to share. They love their team. They love the Oakland A’s.   

As the echoes of the 1989 triumph faded, Oakland kept changing. The silicon valley boom of the dot-com era drove rent prices up and quickened the gentrification process, driving out the Black families so integral to Oakland’s cultural fabric. By 2010, the Black and Hispanic population of Oakland made up about equal quarters of the population, while the white population once again became the largest demographic group. 

Yet despite these continuing changes, fandom of the A’s remained strong throughout the 2000s, the endearing peak Moneyball-era teams capturing hearts. They lost in the division series of the playoffs four years straight from 2000-2003, but the captivation and love for those teams remained strong, peaking with Scott Hatteberg’s legendary 2002 home run that pushed the A’s to a then-record 20-game win streak. 

The man sitting directly on my left led every chant in our section. I don’t know if he ever realized that we all followed the cadence of his piercing tenor. He never turned around to the section, looked to his sides, or talked to me or anyone else around, but simply watched intently, cycling endlessly through his chants. He started with “Stay in Oakland” then moved to “Sell the Team” before leading a rousing chorus of “Fuck John Fisher.” When A’s center fielder Estuery Ruiz was called out on a close play at second in the bottom of the fifth, he launched into “Fisher is the ump! Fisher is the ump! Fisher is the ump!”

He wore far too big jeans, the bottoms dirty and wet from curling under the heels of his black worn down shoes. A shabby sweatshirt colored with small splotches of dirt sagged far below his waistline. Above his scraggly beard and determined eyes, a well-fitted A’s hat proudly sat. 

As this exuberant age of Oakland baseball waned, a new character entered the scene. John Fisher, along with former managing partner Lew Wolff, bought the A’s in 2005. Fisher, the heir to the Gap fortune, has since ruthlessly applied the business mindset that made him successful to running the A’s. He stubbornly keeps payroll low, forcing out young players Oakland comes to love, refusing to pay them their due. Losing key players is a part of managing a baseball team, but the cyclic purge of talent overseen by a penny-pinching Fisher has understandably disillusioned the faithful Oakland fans. 

There has been success in his reign, with different waves of young players pushing the team to the playoffs, but never enough continuity to reach past the division series. Cheering on those teams, whether led by Josh Donaldson and Sonny Gray or Marcus Semien and Matt Chapman, became bittersweet, knowing that those players would soon be shipped away for another batch of young prospects. 

But independent of disillusionment with a selfish, business-minded ownership is the deep love for the boys in Kelly Green and gold, fostered through decades of shared history with the city of Oakland. The city has continued changing, African Americans now making up less than a quarter of the population, and new money and technology infiltrating the spaces where culture once oozed from every street corner. Yet the reverse boycott showed that the love remains as strong as ever.

For love reaches far deeper than money ever can. Generational memory trumps an ideal commercial location. 66 years of baseball accompanying long summers in The Town connects people more than an increased market for visiting fans. And a city fully united behind one historic team remains far more powerful than one rich man, and the cronies that support him. 

At some point the man sitting to my left got up and ambled down the tunnel, bearing a multi inning long wait at one of the few open vendors for a basket of ballpark chicken tenders and barbecue sauce. He returned in the 8th inning with his food, yet it grew increasingly cold in one hand as he became fixed back on the game, willing the A’s to knock in the winning run in the bottom of the eighth and close out the game in the ninth. His yells and chants were a visceral, almost raging expression. 

After the final out, closer Trevor May and catcher Shea Langeliers both pumping their fists far more than a mid June game for a last place team might suggest, he stayed standing with his box of cold chicken tenders in one hand. I waited a while too, breathing in the scenes of the Coliseum as bottles started raining down on the outfield in a last show of frustration, yet eventually walked past him and out of the stadium. He remained standing. He loves his team. He loves the Oakland A’s.

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