New in PJ Media:
After proclaiming for years that they were “Rooted In Oakland” and repeatedly declaring their commitment to the city, the Oakland Athletics abruptly announced last April that they were cutting those roots and moving to Las Vegas. Then in November, Major League Baseball owners unanimously approved the move, and that was that. Or at least it seemed to be. Far from welcoming MLB to Sin City, Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman said Tuesday that the A’s should stay in Oakland. As the Athletics face the prospect of becoming baseball’s first homeless franchise, it is beginning to look as if contempt for the fans comes with a price.
The New York Post reported Tuesday that Goodman, instead of uttering the expected boilerplate about how thrilled she was to see her city get what is ostensibly a major league baseball team, declared her sympathies for the city that the Athletics pretended to woo and then jilted when it came to crunch time. “I love the people of Oakland,” she declared. “I think they deserve to have their team.” She added that the A’s self-serving, skinflint owner John Fisher “in my opinion, needs to listen to the people that are up there. It’s their team.”
Oakland fans tried their best to make the point that the Athletics were indeed their team last June, staging a fan-organized “Reverse Boycott” to send a message to those who are intent on getting the team out of town: “We’re still here.” The Reverse Boycott was the brainchild of A’s fan Stu Clary, who wanted to show Fisher, and the world, that despite the team’s dismal performance and cynical practice of repeatedly developing a contending team only to let the best players leave town via free agency, Oakland fans actually did exist: “I just thought we should do this outrageous thing and go on a night when nobody else typically would go, and let’s see if we can get some attention out of it and raise awareness to our plight.”
After fans of many other teams joined in, Clary exclaimed, “I totally get the other teams’ (fans’) reactions, too, because I remember when the Expos left Montreal just thinking, ‘What a raw deal these people are getting. All they do is love their team, and they get saddled with this crook of an owner,’ and now history is repeating on us.”
Indeed. Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao even accused Fisher and A’s President Dave Kaval of negotiating in bad faith…
There is more. Read the rest here.
Ernie says
I don’t understand what all this ( the above ) has to do with islam , jihad etc . Who can explain the link /enlighten me please ?
Emilie Green says
It has nothing to do with those topics. All the same, lighten up. It’s Robert’s blog and like the owner of the As he’s exercising control.
“because I remember when the Expos left Montreal”
That phrase reminded me of an interesting World Series match-up I had imagined when I was a mere kid. The NL Montreal Expos’ first MLB season was 1969. The AL Minneapolis Twins took up residence in that city in 1961, having moved from Washington DC (where it played as the Senators).
Maybe they existed in the minds of architects and engineers over the years, but covered baseball stadiums didn’t exist in MLB in the late ’60s and early 70s.
So you would have to be the most dedicated fan of baseball to shell out serious money for tickets to watch a World Series match-up between these two games in October.
With football, fans accept that playing in cold and really cold conditions was part of the “fun,” with the weather and field conditions often being the 12th player for either side. But for baseball?
* Really good example is the famous Ice Bowl, played in Green Bay (Packers v. Cowboys), 12/31/67.
Ernie says
Thank you for informing Emilie !
Jon Sobieski says
Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and his woke council have destroyed Oakland. Who isn’t leaving that third world slum.
Transmaster says
When I dad was in the US Navy we lived in the Bay Area is various Navy housing. I remember the Oakland “A”, and the Oakland Raiders. The Raiders are now in Las Vegas, and now the “A’s” want to join them. The fans of these 2 teams have been screwed over for decades. They got blackmailed into spending 100’s of millions of dollars building new stadium only to have these team continue to blackmail them. How much of this can fans take? A lot apparently.
Jerome from Layton says
The A’s are carpetbaggers. They used to be the Philly A’s. As far as Oakland goes; go Woke and go broke.