R.I.P. Oakland A's — Part 1 of 3
Part 1 of 3 about the heartbreak of being an A's fan
I wrote a series of pieces last year about the both wonderful and crummy parts of loving a particular baseball team. As ever, I recognize that there's a lot of way worse stuff going on out there in the world (see: fascism), but I haven't had the time to sit down and write anything meaningful about that. So meanwhile, I'll share this series at the beginning of my first season of Major League Baseball without a home team.
Part one: The past
I don’t remember the first A’s game I went to. But as I sat at the last, I had a flashback from the Oakland Coliseum in the late 1980s, during the heyday that led to their 1989 World Series victory over the San Francisco Giants.
Sitting in a second-tier seat along the first base line eating a Carnation Ice Cream Malt Cup with a wooden spoon, looking down at legends like Rickey Henderson, Dennis Eckersley, Dave Henderson, Dave Parker, Carney Lansford, Terry Steinbach, Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, and many more, I thought, “Well this place is magical.”
Though I lived a mere 20 miles from the Coliseum, I didn’t go to a ton of A’s games as a kid. Didn’t matter, though: I was a super fan. The timing was right. The 87–90 team was star-studded and on a tear (did I mention they won the ‘89 World Series?) My mom was born in Oakland, and my dad became a fan by default after living in the Bay a number of years. My Nana and Papa lived in Oakland, and I have fond memories of watching games on TV with Nana.
My best friends Adam and Brian were hardcore fans, too. My older brothers eventually switched their affinity to the Giants (somehow, I still find it in my heart to love them), but you couldn’t tear me away from the green and gold.
I had so much gear.
Even as a kid, I got a bit disillusioned with the MLB during the ‘90s with the 1990 lockout and 1994–95 strike. I understand why both happened, but as someone who just wanted to watch my team play, both felt like slights at the expense of the fans. Fans who give up their time and money for the privilege and joy of watching and repping their teams and players.
By the time the early 2000s rolled around, though, I was an adult, and the A’s were pretty damn good again. The likes of Jason Giambi, Miguel Tejada, Barry Zito, and Eric Chavez helped them start off the 21st century strong. I moved next door to Oakland in 2009, and started paying even more attention as it became easier to attend games (and I had lots more couch time with the birth of our first child in 2010).
Dallas Braden threw a no-hitter (hung over, apparently 😂) in 2010, only the 19th in MLB history. Then players like Coco Crisp, Yoenis Cespedes, and Josh Donaldson started smacking home runs and it seemed like the team regained some of the character that it had in the early ‘70s and late ‘80s.
We took our oldest kid to his first game when he was 2, (accompanied by the aforementioned childhood friend Adam and his soon-to-be-wife Erin) and I’ll never forget him looking out at the field with wide eyes from the concourse and saying, “That’s where the players play?!” He was witnessing the same kind of magic I had for the first time, and that rekindled even more of the magic for me.
We painfully witnessed two consecutive game 5 playoff losses to the same team. We started going to games with preschool friends and then eventually my daughters. All my kids played for endowment-funded A’s little league teams. A good friend started working for the A’s and hooked us up with discounted tickets and field-level viewing for a fireworks game. My kids were in an A’s commercial! It all seemed like the perfect situation.
To be continued…
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