Say It Ain't So, Joe. Loyal A's Fans Bid Farewell To Oakland In Final Homestand

OAKLAND — The father was taking his 14-year-old son to his first ever baseball game at the Oakland Coliseum in April of 1968 and he wanted to film it with his 8 mm camera while driving his car. The dad, who had retired from the U.S. Navy at Treasure Island and moved his family from Lemoore to Oakland, had the day all planned out for his son and, to document it, he wanted his home movie to begin with footage of the brand new “Oakland Alameda County Coliseum” highway sign.

Unfortunately, he realized he had just passed it. The green Ford Maverick he was driving had gone too far on the 66th Avenue exit ramp off southbound Interstate 880 to capture the moment.

“What happened next defied logic,” his son, Joe Wolfcale, recalled, “We backed up on the off ramp until the sign came into view and my dad recorded it for posterity … That was my introduction to the ballpark and the Oakland Athletics.”

Joe will always remember his first A’s game in the team’s first season in Oakland because it began with him going in reverse. If only he could turn back time now.

This coming Thursday, September 26, will be the last A’s game — and Joe’s last day now as a  21-year A’s employee — at the Oakland Coliseum. It will be a day he will want to forget. There’s no going back.

A sellout crowd is expected for that final game and the A’s organization, led by team majority owner Darth Fisher, likely will beef up security so A’s fans won’t break or steal anything during or after the A’s 4,493rd and last game in the Oakland Coliseum. If only the organization paid more attention to their fans for breaking their hearts and stealing their team.

While the New York Yankees are in Oaktown this weekend and their fans are counting down the Magic Number for winning another division title, Oakland A’s fans are dreading their Tragic Number. This is the A’s farewell homestand and their fans are getting their last look at a franchise that won four World Series in their time playing in this ballpark.

Joe Wolfcale will be watching from his work day location in the luxury field box next to the visitor’s dugout. To his right stands the so-called Mt. Davis — the monstrosity of the steel-and-concrete grandstand that the City of Oakland and County of Alameda built for Raiders owner Al Davis to lure him back from LA and lead them into debt. The erection of Mt. Davis signaled the beginning of the end of the Oakland A’s.  When Joe first became an A’s fan he sat in the wooden bleachers in the right field with a view of the Oakland hills.

“It was Dodgers Stadium without the palm trees,” he fondly says.

Joe sat in the Oakland Coliseum with his family and friends, wishing for the best. They waited for Reggie Jackson to hit a home run in their direction.

“He never did, but we always had the hope that he might,” Joe muses.

It was easy to like the A’s back then. They had white cleats and colorful uniforms and they were on the verge of winning three consecutive World Series with an owner who made demands, but never gave ultimatums. 

“I just liked the team and the story about the team,” Joe says, “I liked the characters they had.”

One of them was Vida Blue. He was a left-handed pitcher and Joe, also a left-handed pitcher, idolized him. Joe would always get his dad to come outside and play ball with him. Joe’s dad hit him flyballs until it was dark and he would crouch down like a catcher when Joe pitched.

“He sacrificed his knees to catch me,” Joe says.

Joe eventually came to cover the A’s. When he worked as sportswriter at the Contra Costa Times, Joe wrote about the 1987 All-Star Game in the Oakland Coliseum. Joe later became the assistant sports editor at the Marin Independent Journal where he worked with me from 2002-2008.

At the same time, Joe worked as an attendant at A’s games in the Oakland Coliseum. He started in 2003 when a friend, Earl Patrick Nichols — a.k.a. Nick — told him there was a job opening in the ballpark. Joe turned it into an ambassadorship.

“It’s called `Field Box Attendant’ but I tell people I’m a glorified usher. I make 10-year-old boys’ and 40-year-old women’s dreams come true. Take that how you want. Sometimes. Not all the times.”

From his workplace in the luxury field box next to the visiting team’s dugout, Joe will do his best to please A’s fans, be it passing out bubble gum or helping position fans for a possible autograph or a selfie next to the field.  One time he helped local TV weather forecaster Roberta Gonzales and a girlfriend get on the field after a Sunday game to run the bases. He held their high heels for them at home plate as they circled the bases barefoot.

Not all is rainbows and unicorns in the field box, though. Joe one time was verbally assaulted by an obnoxious fouled-mouthed drunk who was holding a sign blocking the view of fans behind him. Joe asked that he be ejected from the ballpark.

The A’s, as it turns out, were not far behind him. Joe held out hope the A’s and Darth Fisher would find a new home in Oakland. The plan in 2019 for waterfront ballpark in Jack London Square piqued his interest until he learned the plan included building a gondola to transport A’s fans from downtown Oakland to the new ballpark, a gondola that would literally fly over the I-880 freeway.

“This ain’t fuckin’ Disneyland,” Joe snarled.

Reality hit the fan earlier this year when the A’s could not reach an agreement with city and county officials to extend the team’s lease at the Oakland Coliseum. The next day the A’s announced they were moving to Las Vegas to a new ballpark that has yet to break ground with a layover in Sacramento to share a minor league Sutter Field with the San Francisco Giant's AAA team for an undetermined period of time.

That announcement became an anchor for attendance at A’s games in the Oakland Coliseum. They sank as low as they could. Going into Friday night’s game against the Yankees, the A’s were last in the major leagues in home attendance with an average of 9,843 fans per game. Joe says the crowds have been so small and quiet that there have been times from the first base field box he could hear the leftfielder calling off the shortstop on shallow flyballs to left.

The sad part is the young A’s have developed this season into a competitive and exciting bunch. They have the third best record in the American League since July 1 and they are seventh overall in the major leagues in home runs, not far behind Shohei Ohtani and the moneybag Dodgers.

“We’re right behind the Dodgers with a McDonald’s Big Mac budget,” Joe says.“It’s really fun. We used to have Matt Chapman. We had Matt Olson. We had Marcus Semien. We had Liam Hendriks. Now we’ve got Brett Rooker, Shea Langeliers, Lawrence Butler, Mason Miller. We’ve got the next row of stars.”

Unfortunately they will be stars in Las Vegas or Sacramento. For Joe, all he can do is sit by and do his job until they leave.

“I still live by my motto: If there is a some way I can enhance a game day experience for one of our fans I’ll do it, as long as it’s not illegal," Joe says with a laugh.

This is not the happily-ever-after ending Joe envisioned when he became an A’s fan. His favorite moment in the Oakland Coliseum occurred in Game 162 of the 2012 season when the A’s swept a season-ending series against the Rangers to win the division. The A’s, who trailed the Rangers by 13 games on June 30, overtook them on the final day of the regular season.

“I still have video of that. It was nuts,” Joe says, “I’ve never seen the stadium like that. People running down the aisles high-fiving each other.”

Not so much these days. A’s fans are raising their hands now to wave goodbye.

On Wednesday, the day before the A’s final game in the Oakland Coliseum, Joe will be honored as the A’s Employer of the Month for the third time in a pregame ceremony. He first won the award in 2016 and gave it to Bruce Kalfus, now an executive at ESPN in Marketing and Sales. Bruce was the longest tenure fan in Joe’s field box so Joe passed the award to him.

That’s a testament to Joe’s job and character. Always looking out for the A’s fan. His employee of the month award on Wednesday will be the last one the A’s will hand out in Oakland.

My A’s memories in the Oakland Coliseum are professional. I was there for an All-Star Game. I was there when Rickey Henderson set the all-time record for stolen bases. I was there when Jose Canseco became baseball’s first 40/40 player. I was there when Mark McGwire hit the game-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth in Game 3 of the 1988 World Series and when the A’s won Game 2 of the World Series the next year which turned out to be the last World Series game they won in Oakland. I was there during the record 20-game winning streak when Moneyball  happened.

Joe Wolfcale’s memories in Oakland Coliseum are personal. The 8 mm film his father took that day 56 years ago has disappeared, and it’s too bad. It’s the proverbial fairy tale of a father taking his son to his very first baseball game that won’t go away.

“He was my Little League coach and best friend,” Joe says. “He died of a massive heart attack in 1971, one month shy of his 50th birthday. He introduced me to baseball and what would begin my more than 55 year-old fandom of the green and gold.”

On September 26 the Oakland Coliseum will fade to black for the Oakland A’s. Joe will take one last look around. He will think of his dad and the first game he attended.

“I’ll probably cry. In fact I will shed a tear,” Joe said. “The thing I always regretted was that he didn’t see what I became. He would have been right here with me.”

Joe Wolfcale’s dad, unlike the A’s, will forever be rooted in Oakland.