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A wave of sadness washed over the Oakland Coliseum and the A’s fan base Thursday afternoon as the team played its final game in the Bay Area after 57 seasons, an occasion that was well-known and has been approaching for months but still carried a massive emotional punch.
The A’s beat the Rangers 3-2 in front of a sellout crowd of 46,889 on a bright, sunny day in the Bay Area. But the on-field outcome or the local conditions hardly mattered as A’s fans still are coming to grips with the club’s move to Sacramento for a three-year interim stop before ultimately relocating to Las Vegas. The turnout marked the largest home crowd in Oakland in more than five years, and by far the highest attendance figure for an MLB team playing its final home game in a city.
Regional coverage Thursday on NBC Sports California redistributed to large parts of the U.S. through the MLB Network, used the word “funeral” multiple times, and the game broadcast and shoulder programming indeed carried an overtly downbeat vibe.
A’s legends and memories of four World Series-winning seasons in Oakland were a prominent part of the team’s final series at the Coliseum, including former star pitcher Dave Stewart and franchise icon and Baseball Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson taking part in pregame ceremonies Thursday. But again, the presence of the stars and Oakland natives was hardly a heroic homecoming.
“It’s kind of like you go to the wake, view the body, talk about memories, and then have the actual breakdown,” Stewart said during pregame coverage on NBC Sports California. Stewart and Henderson, however, were quick to absolve the fans in any of this, calling them “the greatest fans in baseball, and don’t let anybody tell you anything different.”
Coliseum security and local police presence were heightened for the entire final home series. During the game, there were a few minor disturbances including a fan running onto the field and some thrown objects. Following the game, A’s players, coaches, and on-field staff saluted the fans as manager Mark Kotsay gave a brief address to a crowd that stayed in the ballpark well after the final out.
“I think we should all pay homage to this amazing stadium that we’ve had the privilege and pleasure of enjoying for 57 years,” he said.
All About the Owner
A’s owner John Fisher, though not publicly part of any of the on-field ceremonies, was a central figure in the final game. Fisher was the one who struck the deals to move the franchise, the one who chronically underspent on the club relative to its market size, and the one who helped drive A’s attendance to by far the worst in the league. An open letter to fans posted by Fisher earlier this week did little to quell any of that fan anger.
Others, including former A’s managing partner and longtime Fisher partner Lew Wolff, have instead pointed their anger toward the neighboring Giants, who engaged in a long-running territorial dispute that ultimately precluded the A’s from pursuing a stadium deal in the San Jose area.
As has been the case for much of the past two years and particularly this week, T-shirts and signs reading “SELL” were a common sight at the Coliseum on Thursday. Fan chants of “sell the team” rang out repeatedly as well.
“There’s a lot of people here who invested their lives and their souls into this organization and into this stadium and into the game of baseball,” Kotsay said.
Despite fan requests to open up “Mount Davis”—the Coliseum’s large outfield seating section built in the 1990s for the NFL’s Raiders—for additional capacity, the A’s ultimately declined to do so.
