Major League Baseball wants you to believe in its fairy tale. It wants you to see the talented players at Tuesday’s All-Star Game – Shohei Ohtani, Bo Bichette, Ronald Acuña Jr. – and becomes mesmerized by the forgetting.
Among the many talents on display will be a first roster: Oakland Athletics outfielder Brent Rooker, the team’s lone representative. Perhaps during an at-bat or a break in play, an announcer will mention the near-closed future relocation of the Athletics to Las Vegas, then return to the game’s wishful marketing and competitive fireworks.
None of it will ease the pain inflicted on baseball by the franchise’s imminent move, a pockmark on the sport that shouldn’t be set aside for the convenience of a mid-season celebration of its best players.
How fitting that the All-Star festivities are in Seattle this week. Much of the citizens of this technology-driven port city still feel the pang of betrayal after an uphill battle for a new arena was used as a pretext to transport the NBA’s SuperSonics to Oklahoma City in 2008.
The A’s have followed a similar blueprint. The team’s skinflint owner, John Fisher, heir to the Gap clothing empire, who has an estimated net worth of more than $2 billion, claimed to be serious about building a new stadium that would replace the monolith where the A’s have played since 1968.
Fisher set his sights on a sprawling waterfront next to a bustling harbor in 2018. He added plans to build a jumble of housing units and entertainment venues next to the ballpark, making the development one of the largest in California history.
Negotiations with the City of Oakland were as difficult as you’d expect for such a complicated project, but continued as Fisher pressed the financially struggling city to come up with at least $320 million in government grants. A deal seemed close, but suddenly it wasn’t. In April, the A’s cut off dialogue and announced an agreement to build a new stadium in Las Vegas that could be completed by 2027.
No wonder there are some A’s fans who have clicked to a monologue by Rebecca Welton, the owner of AFC Richmond, the plucky fictional British football team at the center of the Apple TV+ series ‘Ted Lasso’.
“Just stop it! I mean, how much more money do you really need? Welton barked at her fellow team owners as they considered leaving their tradition-laden league for a lavish new football association.
“Just because we own these teams doesn’t mean they belong to us,” she continued.
In the ethereal, almost mystical way in which sports bind teams to their communities, fans can lay claim to a hold on their beloved franchises equal to that of team owners.
In this way, the A’s are as much Oakland’s team as Fisher’s.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred denigratesd the nearly 30,000 A’s fans who showed up at the Coliseum for a recent game to protest the move and urge Fisher to sell.
“It’s great to see what — this year — almost an average Major League Baseball audience is in the facility for one night,” said Manfred.
In a passive-aggressive manner, the commissioner berated Oakland fans for recent years reacting to Fisher selling stars for spare parts by turning the once rowdy Coliseum into a mostly empty morgue.
Has the Commissioner forgotten that Oakland fans were considered some of the best baseball players for decades? Doesn’t he somehow remember that the team’s devotees stood fervently behind their franchise when ownership, through all its iterations, fielded a viable team?
Success has become less common in the 2000s – although the A’s have made the playoffs 11 times in this century. Taking a longer look, going back to 1970, Oakland marched to the World Series six times and won it four times. That’s more World Series titles in the same period than the Los Angeles Dodgers. More than the Chicago Cubs. More than Atlanta. As much as the Boston Red Sox.
If any of those teams had announced their departure to Las Vegas in the weeks leading up to the All-Star Game, the midsummer classic, as it’s called, would be played under Seattle’s darkest clouds.
The A’s of the past were at the forefront of the game. Remember the 1970s teams. Reggie Jackson, Rollie Fingers, Catfish Hunter, Sal Bando, Vida Blue. Their white pants and white shoes and mustachioed rashness gave a new flavor to a steady game. The way they eventually challenged their team owner, Charlie O. Finley, sparked player empowerment.
Think of the equally confident teams of the 1980s and early 1990s and how they captured baseball perfectly during that period. Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire helped usher in the era of the long home run – while we should also remember that they relied on the crutch of steroids that blew up the game in those days.
Do you remember the early 2000s? Money ball. Barry Zito. Tim Hudson. Jason Giambi. The drive to quantify every part of the game. Winning (for the A’s, cheaply) through analysis has now been adopted by teams in virtually every professional sport.
All of these teams have left a lasting impression. They all played to crowds that turned the old Colosseum into a carnival of madhouse fun.
Now the city and many longtime fans of the team feel betrayed. Rightly so. The billionaire owner excitedly announced that his team would be leaving Oakland for the Nevada casino life and dust. The Commissioner of Baseball was so supportive of the move that he denigrated A’s fans and said he would waive the league’s relocation costs.
Go ahead and watch the All-Star Game. Try to enjoy it. Just don’t get so caught up in the fairy tale that you forget about the scar that baseball has left on itself.