The Oakland Athletics and Seattle Mariners are playing a baseball game on a Tuesday night in Oakland, and it's difficult to describe the silence. There are maybe 1,000 people in the stands at first pitch, and few of them have the energy or the inclination to make any noise. The team is the worst in baseball and the stadium is the worst facility in professional sports and the owner is two weeks removed from signing a land deal — one he will cancel before signing another — that he hopes will take the team to Las Vegas. It's raining, and the Warriors are playing the Lakers across the Bay. The silence is its own crushing roar.
The slogan "Rooted in Oakland" is still splashed inside and outside the ballpark, and at this point it can be read only as sarcasm or a cruel joke. The team has spent the past several years doing nothing to encourage fans to attend games only to wield the team's lack of attendance as a weapon in its relocation efforts. Ticket prices have gone up while the team's payroll, by far the lowest in baseball, has been reduced to beaks and claws.
John Fisher, A's owner and Gap heir, has agreed to purchase the land in Las Vegas for what is termed a privately funded $1.5 billion retractable-roof ballpark. But the team is requesting nearly $400 million in tax money — for a team and an ownership group the city never requested and isn't sure it wants — before it finalizes the second land deal on the Strip, which will require the demolition of the Tropicana Las Vegas. With Rob Manfred giving Major League Baseball's imprimatur, the A's no longer seem interested in the Oakland option: a fantastical $12 billion waterfront real estate venture (housing/retail/hotel/ballpark) that would have included hundreds of millions in public funding to facilitate the privately funded — that term again — $1 billion-plus ballpark. It's an ongoing saga that calls for its own chapter in a textbook on late-stage capitalism.
A poll conducted by the Nevada Independent online news site showed 41% of those questioned supported public assistance for the project, and 38% were opposed. The land purchase from Bally's Corp. was announced Monday, but Fisher and team president/pitchman Dave Kaval face a tight deadline to get the legislation on the proposed public funding before the Nevada state legislature before its session ends on June 5.
Jorge Leon, a lifelong Oakland resident and president of the Oakland 68s, a fan group that champions everything Oakland, says, "The rich history of baseball in Oakland hangs on some selfish trust fund man who has no idea how this community works." (Kaval, the spokesman for team ownership, declined to comment.)
The RingCentral Coliseum is a massive bowl of concrete and the last of the multipurpose stadiums built in the 1960s and '70s, can be charitably described as a throwback or realistically as a relic. After a flurry of renovations coinciding with Kaval becoming team president in 2016, the A's have done little to improve the fan experience. They installed tabletops in a few sections and rebranded them as suites, but on rainy nights the concession-stand employees that work underneath the Diamond Level seats directly behind home plate are forced to dance around a steady stream of rainwater — and whatever else is along for the ride — cascading into their workplace. The road to Vegas, it appears, is paved with filth.