The A's Will Always Be in Oakland for Me

I read recently that the Oakland A’s are on their way to Las Vegas. This bums me out.

I’m not the baseball guy on this site, but the MLB was a big part of my childhood and the A’s happened to be very good back then. They were a World Series threat every year. I remember watching players like Dennis Eckersley, Dave Stewart, Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco and Rickey Henderson, among many others. I used to watch Dave Stewart a ton when I became a pitcher. He was my guy for a minute. I LOVED Rickey Henderson. He was so fast and so powerful. I remember watching them play in the World Series when an earthquake hit. That was nuts. I was at a friends house. I remember it so vividly. I remember when Henderson broke the stolen base record. Seeing him pickup the base in triumph was dope. The Canseco and McGwire bash bro era, while riddled with steroids, was fun. I remember Kirk Gibson hitting the homer on one leg against Eckersley and thinking that Tony La Russa may be an idiot for putting his dominant team in that bad situation. I went out at this time and bought myself an A’s fitted cap with my allowance. This team was one that was never my favorite, but I rooted for them from time to time. Even during the whole “money ball” era I found them fun. They were a great regular season team, but then they’d face the Yankees in the playoffs and get smoked. But they were still decent and watchable.

The past few seasons have been terrible though. They’re not a competitive team. Every time they get a good player it seems they are eager to trade them. This is making attendance go down. I heard someone say they had a crowd last season of under 2500 people. That’s bad, especially considering how big the Coliseum is and how many fans it can hold. And the stadium is old and needs work. All of the recent issues is what is making this move to Vegas more likely with every passing day.

This is what frustrates me. They can update the stadium. Every team has. The Cardinals have a fully new ish Busch Stadium. I’m sure Wrigley has had some upgrades. Fenway Park is historic. The Yankees have a state of the art stadium. Even the Twins got a new stadium. The A’s are more historic than the Twins and they’ve had similar trajectories as franchises.

I don’t want to see this team move to Vegas. This is like the movie “Major League” come to life. The city can’t just give up on this team. What else will Oakland have? The Warriors moved out. So did the Raiders. What’s left if the A’s leave? They can get back to the good old days if they keep some young talent. They could even get back to the perennial post season threat if they play their cards right. Fans will come back and they could print money. I hope something changes and the A’s stay. But it seems like they’re as good as gone. That’s not cool.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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