Saying a sad goodbye to the Oakland A’s.

 After 57, loyal fan filled seasons at the Oakland Coliseum , the A’s played their final game as an Oakland baseball team, on September 26th.  This means, for the first time since 1960, Oakland has no major professional sports franchise. It’s a bummer for a lot of reasons. Sports teams are unifying, they bring people who live in one place together.  

A’s fans lived a lot of life over so many decades, felt so many strong feelings together. Sports fans go hard, they feel elation, they feel despair, they feel rage and heartbreak. All those big feelings, all that energy, all of that pride for Oakland personified in the loyalty to Oaklands baseball team, echoes around the empty coliseum. It feels hollow and it feels disappointing and like missed opportunity.

Teams aren’t just great because of the vibe, teams bring in some real money. 

Sports fans generate a lot of cash passed between hands. Tickets, merch, beer, burgers, it all adds up and it adds up every week. Tens of thousands of fans, paying to park, paying for the best seats, buying season passes. The coliseum staffed roughly 600 people for its baseball seasons. All of this generated income was good for the local community. 

It’s a hard loss, because the Warriors and the Raiders leaving in 2019 was a big blow, and the A’s became the last beacon of Oakland identity through sports team support. People need to gather, and celebrate and feel the bond built on shared hopes and fears. It’s just a big part of American hometown, community pride.

So look, acknowledging the sadness is the first part of letting go right? It is what it is. The future can always hold new Oakland sports teams. But we can’t deny, the robust history of the teams that we had, just can’t be replaced. 

So we take a minute this week, to just kind of accept the departure of the team, and feel the loss. It feels like a little chunk of Oaklands heart, broke off and floated away. It ain’t good. 

Now there’s a big coliseum sitting there, with all the cement, all the parking, a lot of empty space. What’s gonna happen with that? 

The A’s owner, John fisher, had announced the incoming move of the team to Las Vegas, nearly 18 months ago. There has been a lot going on behind the scenes since then, to reallocate the big space left empty after they go. City officials worked with a developer to sell the coliseum and for 230 million dollars the Africa American Sports and Entertainment Group now owns the former Oakland As stadium. 

They are not playing either, their plans are lofty. They are aiming to build the stadium into a new kind of entertainment, sports complex with a convention center. But that’s not all, they have announced they will also be building in new restaurants and housing… which is a lot of stuff. If it all goes as planned, if it pans out well, it could be an awesome thing for Oakland. It could provide lots more local jobs, become a destination for shows and games, and potentially provide more places to  live…these would all be net positives for the City of Oakland. 

We embark on a span of time now however, where we have to wait and see. A lot can go wrong before things can go right and that’s just the reality of taking on a huge project  like that.

The people of Oakland are nothing if not resilient, and as we move into October, we start to feel the trickle of excitement and joy for an upcoming holiday season of celebration and gratitude. We still have so much to be thankful for.