Sports provide many great opportunities, core moments, and most importantly, threads our lifetime (and sometimes generations) in a manner that we just can't sometimes explain. It's in our blood! And often, that very much feels like scientific truth.
However, it's specific periods like this where sports can be the opposite - cold, unfair, dishonest, and heartbreaking. What happened to the Oakland Athletics is just that. It's all of those adjectives and more. At the very base level, it's infuriating and depressing.
I felt the same when I watched the Seattle Supersonics get jettisoned to Oklahoma City. I still can't believe that was an actual move! I had similar feelings when the Chargers and Rams were ripped from cities that adorned them for the hopeful dreams of Los Angeles. And now, those feelings are here again for the city of Oakland - who now watch their Athletics leave town after losing their Warriors and their Raiders in previous years.
It's the ugliness of chasing a large stadium, bright lights, and yes, increased revenue. In a world where we're ever becoming more unfastened from any kind of common core, moral, or thread in life for the chase of the next dopamine hit, sound-byte, or grandeur, it feels like one more step where fans lose that "thread" that made them fans.
The (whatever they'll be called) Athletics will eventually be fine (or remain status quo) in their move. We haven't seen any of these manipulated moves by owners completely crash out. I guess we'll see...
However, what we've seen are the voids and memories left behind in cities like Seattle, San Diego, St. Louis, and now Oakland, where those departing teams are spoken about with folklore and aging myth amongst fans - an identity lost for so many.
As a native of Brooklyn, New York, even with the privilege of two professional teams in every major sport and league at its disposal and almost 60 years since the "betrayal", there is still reverence, memories, nostalgia, and juuuuuuuuussssst a little bit of annoyance (and pain, anger, and every other emotion) that the Dodgers left town.
Oakland is left with nothing.
Besides the dedicated fans, there are people more deeply connected to this loss - the people who gave years of employment and hard work at the stadium; the same for owners and employees of small businesses around the stadium; or, the personnel in the offices who won't be transferred with the team. It's especially hard for them who based many hours per day, of their lives, centralized around this one entity - Oakland Athletics baseball.
My favorite play (or moment) in sports actually happened at the Oakland Coliseum - The Flip Play. I don't have many other memories of it other than one mere weekend where for a work trip, I stayed in a hotel across the highway from it (as well as the now also-useless Oracle Area - former home of the Golden State Warriors).
"Wow, that really is unattractive!", I thought, as I stared at it every morning among the Northern California air and the Oakland hills beyond it that further enhanced its unsightly presence. It was indeed a massive concrete block.
However, beauty in ballparks are not about aesthetics, but about the combination of those looks with culture, presence, character, and...memories. That last part comes over time and equity. That concrete block in Oakland had memories dating back to 1968!
The people of Oakland know that. And felt it. And appreciated it.
I really do feel for Oakland. I believe Seattle will one day get its basketball team back. There is a slight expectation for the same for San Diego and/or St. Louis, if the NFL ever wants to expand its mega dominance. However, I'm not too sure Oakland is rising to anyone's list of cities for expansion or relocation. This feels like forever. And this feels like the further deterioration and likely a massive chapter in the history of the City of Oakland for a later read in the future.
So Fisher, who for years has traded away the best of the A’s talent pool, fielded some of the lowest payrolls in the game, raised season ticket prices and alienated every baseball fan in the area, is moving to Las Vegas with government stadium funding amounting to $300m less than Oakland was attempting to offer. They will move into the smallest stadium in MLB, in the smallest television market in MLB, on a site of just nine acres of land which comes with absolutely no development rights and may not be large enough to occupy the desired dome.
Oakland deserved better.
So did its people and fans who were thought to be given a chance to hold on to the Oakland Athletics, but used for leverage for a possible gamble in Las Vegas and hitting it "big".
While sports continue to grow in every way imaginable, it's moments like this where you stop and realize, it's also lost its way just a bit.