In baseball’s board game, Oakland A’s become the Sacramento A’s
So the Philadelphia-Kansas City-Oakland-Las Vegas Athletics are moving to Sacramento, another wicked maneuver for baseball, which was called America’s Pastime but is little more than a board game for bored rich Americans.
Wasn’t it Bud Selig during his occupancy of the commissioner’s office who told us the sport belongs to the fans while the club owners are merely caretakers? Yeah, we all make mistakes, even millionaires. Especially so many of them, excluding the revered Haas family — who left their fingerprints and sad legacies on the game.
It was one of the French generals in World War I who was trying to explain what went wrong, they said “Ah, they handed me a disaster.”
Which is what baseball on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay was destined to become. It all started with Charles Oscar Finley, a country bumpkin with money who was able to haul the financially staggering Philadelphia Athletics to K.C.
When Finley, a penurious sort, couldn’t get what he wanted in KC — a new ballpark — it was off to Californ-i-a. Missouri senator Stuart Symington called Oakland The luckiest city since Hiroshima. Pretty good foresight.
The A’s became Oakland’s response to the San Francisco Giants, “our team.” The little city was in the Big League. That Finley had no front office but it didn’t matter because he had Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter and Cap’n Sal Bando. And they also had 3 consecutive World Series Championships. Match that Giants.
What the A’s couldn’t match was a corporate backing or government backing for a new ballpark. Still, the fans cheered for their team. Still, the drums pounded in left centerfield. Still, Oakland was A’s territory.
But it also had been Raiders territory. Al Davis, loved/despised, had taken his teams — and some said the heart and soul of the region — to Southern California. He brought the team back. For a price, of course. He wanted the Coliseum not just improved but restyled, a huge section of seats built on the 50-yard line, which unfortunately also was for baseball, was the center field bleachers. Thus we had a new monument, Mt. Davis.
That distorted the baseball park. That, and overflowing toilets in the clubhouse and dugouts made it obvious the Coliseum needed to be replaced.
But talk is one thing. And in the East Bay, action is not just another thing, but rare. The line about Northern California is that it is easy to get issues voted down but virtually impossible to get them approved.
Where the owner, John Fisher, stood on all this was hard to determine. He wanted a new place to play but didn’t seem to want to get involved in how that would come about. He was oblivious and seemingly uninvolved.
The A’s have the worst team in baseball — one win through Wednesday — as they had the worst team, by far, in 2023.
The thought seems to be to let them fall apart and because it is Oakland, and not a city like San Francisco, Los Angeles, or New York. It is going to become a reality. The team with a roster that probably belongs in the Minor Leagues, is disgracefully undermanned. Major League Baseball is very much responsible for this. It has allowed the A’s to become what they are, a franchise now doomed to become the Sacramento A’s.