Crier Cries Foul! er… Fowl? Whatever it is, the A’s Leaving Oakland Stinks
The Athletics leaving Oakland is the most gut wrenching aspect of sports. Losses are losses, but the team always returns the next season for redemption or more heartbreak. There is no next season at the Oakland Coliseum.
And it all falls on the weak shoulders of A’s owner John Fisher. A Bay Area billionaire heir needed more money. A man estimated to be worth $3 billion, who inherited his fortune from his Gap-founding parents, and who didn’t invest a dime in the team or stadium they called home his entire tenure had to move the team. He said he tried and failed. But there really isn’t much proof of trying.
A not-so-deep dive into his political ties and working background would give one the right to safely assume Fisher loves capitalism and decries anything resembling a slightly socialist approach to business dealings and the economy. But he sure never practiced that when it came to accepting the tens of millions a year handout from MLB’s revenue sharing amongst owners or asking for public funds to build a new ballpark. The hypocrisy is staggering.
Their payroll this season was north of $62 million. Eric Chavez’s 6-year, $66 million contract signed with the team in 2004 is the largest in franchise history. Fisher bought the team in 2005. And why didn’t he ever sell the team to the Warriors owners, a Silicon Valley tech tycoon, or any group committed to stay in the East Bay and make it work? Does he really love the team? He doesn’t even go to the games. He treats it like a business, instead of the community enterprise that a team truly is for the fans and area.
The recent proof is there. Fisher paid $180 million for the A’s and today’s valuation of the team is $1.2 billion. The precedent for a pretty return on investment is not theory. Go the way of David Glass, who also cut the Royals’ payroll by tens of millions as CEO and was perfectly content pocketing profit on a budget while owner. Glass bought Kansas City’s American League team, which coincidentally replaced the transient A’s, for $96 million in 2000. In 2019, he sold the Royals for over $1 billion. Instead, the A’s join the vagabond Kings as Sacramento’s two professional teams in the four major sports (even if the A’s will just be called the Athletics).
The irony is after the Golden State Warriors (who moved back across the bay to San Francisco) and then-Oakland Raiders (who reached the A’s slated eventual destination of Las Vegas) announced their intentions to leave town, the Athletics wisely adopted the motto “Rooted in Oakland.” The roots didn’t hold. Fisher, the man who didn’t want to pay his minor league players a $400-a-week stipend during the COVID pandemic, saw a 2020 playoff team and let go of the starting lineup while raising ticket prices. It was calculated- in 2022, season ticket prices were doubled after stars were traded or allowed to walk in free agency. Mention recent attendance all you want, but how can you expect blue collar, middle class fans to invest thousands when the multi-billionaire owner barely invests tens of millions comparatively speaking? In 2019, 54,005 people were in the Oakland Coliseum for the A’s Wild Card game. Almost 47,000 watched the Athletics win their last home game on Thursday after Fisher refused to move the tarp covering the upper deck known as Mt. Davis. Those numbers reflect a passionate fan base that was priced out of a poor product.
Let’s continue paraphrasing the parade of commentators who provided such great talking points and holes in the supposed logic of Fisher, MLB owners, and feeble MLB commissioner Rob Manfred. Starting next season, MLB road teams will visit a minor league ballpark in Sacramento summer heat for three years? How is that better than where they are? And the Las Vegas plan isn’t a home run- it’s a bloop single at best. The shoddy planning and changes, from rendering to the site, isn’t even pleasing the Sin City mayor.
Fisher wasn’t forced to do this- he owns the team- no one held a gun to his head and said move a team from the area where you grew up. Just as no one told Rams owner and Missouri native Stan Kroenke to move his hometown team to Los Angeles. But this is what happens when self-made, or in Fisher’s case, a not-so-self-made owner who inherited everything he has, yet have never been told no and always get what they wanted their whole life does- they whine and cry when they don’t get their way.
Then they make a shrewd move that rips a team away from an area, ripping out the hearts of entrenched fans in the process. In Oakland, where the A’s called home since 1968, it was generational. And it’d be great to have a word with Fisher and tell him this, but you can’t find the guy. He’s hiding because a move that somehow couldn’t be stopped isn’t being well received. If it was such a great idea, a savvy move, then why is he hiding?
That doesn’t matter to Fisher. It’s always about more with these types. Our culture and society reflect it, sometimes, if not most of the time. The issue with the idea of “more” is that it means there’s never enough. Greed is the pursuit of more. That’s what a team moving is mostly always about. Greed and the pursuit of more. Chase the money even if you’ve already got enough of it. Always go for more. More, more, more. Chase every last dime, dollar, and penny, even if you have billions already (and consistently spend the bare minimum on the team yourself). Do this all at the expense of those who care most. Rip their hearts out, move their team, and continue this pursuit of more. And don’t stop for a second to care that baseball in Oakland is no more.
