Will Someone Please Save The Oakland A's?
Growing up in San Rafael as the son of major league
baseball player Will Venable can’t remember ever attending an Oakland Athletics’
game at the Oakland Coliseum just 30 miles away.
However, as the Boston Red Sox bench coach stood by himself
in centerfield during the team’s batting practice on Friday, he probably got a
sense of what it would be like to be a fan at A’s game. You are pretty much alone
with your thoughts.
Given Venable was considered a candidate last year to become
the A’s new manager he probably is having second thoughts now. Why would a Princeton
educated man like Venable ever want a job working for an organization that has
gutted the team of its superstars and let its ballpark rot at the core, along
with its loyal fan base? Barring a miracle, the A’s, who have a slightly higher
inventory now than the Dollar Store, will eventually move to Las Vegas to a
shining new ballpark that offers a spectacular view of The Strip from home
plate as compared to their current view from home plate, Mt. Davis, the Berlin
Wall of Baseball that separates fact from fiction.
The fact is Oakland and Alameda County have become baseball’s
purgatory where the A’s have the worst home record and worst home attendance this
season in the major leagues averaging 7,547 fans per game through their first
27 games, slightly more than the Las Vegas Aviators, their Triple A team, which
is averaging about 6,800 per game. The A’s are just trying to remain formidable
on the field with a rebuilt roster that hands out “Hello, My Name Is -------” tags
at the clubhouse door.
“It’s a place that is tough to come and play because of
who you face and who you are playing,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said before
his team opened a three-game weekend series in Oakland. “But as a team you have
to block that stuff out and show up and play. Regardless, if it’s 50,000 people
here or 4,000 people here, you have a job to do.”
Friday night’s crowd was a respectable 17,852, drawn in great
part to the ballpark for the free post-game fireworks show. Of course, the patrons
had to pay $30 to park in the half empty parking lot to see them on top of a 40 percent increase in ticket prices this season. It was the A’s
largest crowd of the season, but the first time in the last 10 home games that
attendance has been more than 10, 000. On Wednesday, the announced crowd at the
A’s-Astros game was 5,189, but, to the naked eye, there must have been 4,000 fans
hiding in the bathrooms when they counted.
In past years a Red Sox-A’s game in Oakland would draw upwards
of 40,000 when both teams were loaded with talent and promise and competing for
pennants. Were that still the case if would have created a utopia of excitement
this Sunday with the Golden State Warriors hosting the Boston Celtics in the
NBA Finals across the plaza from the Oakland A’s-Boston Red Sox game. But the
Warriors no longer play in Oracle Arena, having moved to San Francisco, and the
A’s are bound for Las Vegas, which is willing and able to invest more in a
ballpark and a team than Oakland is.
Instead, the A’s and their fans on Sunday will likely be
subjected to another embarrassing event when the visiting team’s fans outnumber
the home team’s fans. This adds to a dirty laundry list of complaints coming
out of the Coliseum ranging from cat feces, moth infestation, cobwebs, broken seats,
and plumbing and water leaks. A possum snuck into the press box this season through
a ceiling panel. The Coliseum feels more like a wildlife refuge than a real major
league ballpark these days. A proposed $12 billion waterfront ballpark project
at the Howard Terminal is meeting public opposition.
What are the A’s to do? Their players are paid to show up and be professionals, but most of their fans are unwilling to pay to show up to see them and have become prognosticators and the future is bleak. Pyrotechnics are more of an attraction than their pitchers to come to the ballpark and A’s hitters have the lowest home batting average in the big leagues.
There is not a lot to like about the Oakland A’s. And
that’s a shame.
As one A's employee told me, "It's way more than a fire sale. It's complete dismantling of a franchise."