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No crowd in baseball looks like an Oakland crowd. An Oakland crowd is people of all backgrounds, all ethnicities; people who save up to buy tickets; people who aren’t there just to take a photo that proves their presence; people who don’t care if nobody can understand how they can love a team that has worked so tirelessly to impede their joy. And kids, so many kids, a quaint throwback to the game’s roots as the affordable game, the every-day game, the people’s game. In leaving Oakland, Major League Baseball is leaving behind the most diverse fan base in baseball.
John Fisher wasn’t there Thursday for his team’s final game in Oakland, of course. He hasn’t been there, to watch the team he owns, for nearly two full seasons. What he missed Thursday afternoon, when a capacity crowd sent the A’s into their uncertain future with a raucous party, was a final thumb to the eye of capital-B baseball. The weather, the crowd, the vibe — you name it, it was very nearly perfect. The fact that he missed it should come as no surprise. He’s missed it — the entirety of life’s rich pageant as it plays out between 66th and Hegenberger — all along.
Beneath the sheer injustice and cruelty of the enterprise, there is something incalculably sad about the loneliness and isolation of extreme privilege. If Fisher gets his way, he will take his team to a minor-league ballpark in West Sacramento for three or four seasons before hitching up the trailer one more time to decamp for Las Vegas. What will he find there? Certainly not this: 47,000 fans gathering to cheer and cry and remember. People with little in common beyond this team, people from East Oakland and Alamo, people…
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