On April 4, the Oakland Athletics Major League Baseball team announced that they would relocate to Sacramento for the 2025 through 2027 baseball seasons. The announcement has been met with mostly negative feelings from A’s fans.
A’s fan Brady Nemes ’24 said, “You know, it’s unfortunate, but the A’s haven’t been hot lately and the team has kind of been disintegrating the fan base as well.”
However, a common theme among fans is that they knew this was coming and thought relocating to Sacramento is better than the A’s moving to Las Vegas
“I mean, it’s better than them going to Las Vegas,” said science teacher Colleen O’Rourke. “I feel like Sacramento being close to the Bay Area, we have a lot of you know . . . cultural ties and familiarities.”
The ripples of this announcement have not only affected A’s fans, but has also had an effect across the bay on San Francisco Giants fans.
“I really feel for all the Oakland fans. I’m a huge Giants fan and I can only imagine how hard that would be to see the Giants leave,” English teacher and track and field coach Brian Kosewic ’16 said. “I was in attendance at the A’s boycott, reverse boycott game back in June and it was really awesome seeing how many people came out for that and it was sort of beautiful and frustrating at the same time to see how vibrant and engaged that A’s fan base still wants to be.”
One thing is very clear however, workers and staff from the Oakland Coliseum and the businesses that rely on the A’s for income will be deeply affected.
Ronaldo Vezzali ’85, who currently works as a merchandise salesman for the Oakland Coliseum, said, “I feel terrible for staff, and all the concession workers, security staff, and all the vendors who rely on the A’s home games for income. In the last five years, the city of Oakland has lost the Warriors, Raiders, and now the A’s. These employees all are union workers, and used to work for all three teams at the Oakland Coliseum, as well as all the concerts and other sporting events in the arena. Now the Bay Area will suffer even more from this loss and will be a crushing blow to the very fabric and culture of the city of Oakland.”
Even though people are disappointed about the move to Sacramento, a common theme around A’s fans is that they are glad they aren’t going to Las Vegas right away.
As O’Rourke put it, “If they go to Vegas, they’re dead to me.”
This story was originally published on The Crusader on May 16, 2024.