It’s not a concept lost on even the most bitter of fans, that it has been some time since the Coliseum was anywhere close to Major League standards. “They need a new stadium when you’re holding things together with wire.” “One example was a restroom that I used, all the fixtures were held together by wire,” said Michael Heinze, an A’s fan since the 1970s. To days this season when 11 of 13 minor league teams outdrew the A’s for attendance. Of bleachers miles from the action, of empty team stores to closed concession stands to upper decks covered with tarps to plumbing issues.

Of possums coming through the ceiling of a press box and feral cats multiplying over the pandemic. The home of Reggie Jackson and Rickey Henderson and Dennis Eckersley and Dave Stewart and Rollie Fingers and Catfish Hunter, of a franchise with nine world championships, of a dynasty in the early 1970s, is a giant eyesore in the most dramatic of ways. The stadium itself, which has housed the A’s for 55 years. Speaking of messy surroundings, there is another side to all this. I might come to Las Vegas for games if they move, but only to cause havoc and throw toilet paper on the field.” “We have bigger problems than building a stadium for a billionaire. “We’re Oakland and don’t have a ton of money,” said the other John Fisher. That they didn’t blame Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao for ending talks with the A’s once the land deal in Las Vegas was made public. Most interviewed said the city of Oakland had negotiated in good faith with the team on a proposed $12 billion Howard Terminal project, which centered around a $1 billion ballpark. “And we’re the die-hards, even when you don’t know most of the players on the team because they wouldn’t pay for all our good ones to stay.” I understand Las Vegas always had like a 60-40 chance, but we thought we were in the game until the slap in the face with a land purchase. “We want our team,” said 46-year-old Mike Davis-Adams - not the other John Fisher. There was also the guy - who (jokingly?) said behind dark sunglasses his name was John Fisher - wearing a “LAS VEGAS SUCKS” T-shirt. There was a small protest of A’s fans before first pitch outside the stadium, complete with signs that implored Fisher to sell the team. It didn’t hit the team’s average attendance of more than 11,000 this season - still worst in the majors, just like last year - but did produce some passionate responses about the proposed Las Vegas move.Īnd most were aimed directly at A’s owner John Fisher. Oakland fell to the Reds 11-7 before an announced gathering of 6,423 in the 56,000-seat monstrosity that is the Oakland Coliseum. The Athletics on Friday night played their first home game since it was announced the franchise had signed a binding purchase agreement for land west of the Las Vegas Strip, where a $1.5 billion partially retractable-roof ballpark would be raised. Their team is a sharp single to center away from calling Las Vegas home, from packing its bats and balls and gloves and all that green and yellow gear for a move to Southern Nevada. They are sad and angry and feeling left out. That they have been a displaced part of the narrative, a middle chapter of a long novel, a sidebar to binding agreements for land purchases and public-private partnerships and proposed plans for a beautiful new Major League Baseball ballpark elsewhere. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal) Calif. The Oakland A's fans protest at the Oakland Coliseum during a baseball game between the A’s and the Cincinnati Reds, on Friday, April 28, 2023, in Oakland, Calif.

Angry giant fans