Ask an Australian what's so funny about 'Rooted in Oakland'. They will happily tell you.

Judging by the team's official account's tweets, 'Rooted in Oakland' was quietly retired by the Oakland A's in May 2021 or so. It had been their slogan since 2017, when owner John Fisher bought out his partner Lew Wolff's shares in the team and assumed full control of operations. The slogan is meant to evoke Oakland's city symbol of a tree, and to suggest the commitment that the A's projected at the time to keeping the team in Oakland.

The emptiness of this is clear now, as the team makes a mad rush to escape to Las Vegas. It's hard to appeal to your 'roots' when you pay a better lineup of lobbyists than your lineup of players to cry poor to the Vegas government, and fans in Oakland have certainly stopped buying it.

Stadium upkeep has been neglected. Attendance has cratered to an anemic 9,960 fans per game. Possums live in the walls. Sewage regularly floods the dugouts. On Wednesday they were on the wrong end of MLB's first perfect game in 11 years. And the side of the stadium still proudly tells you that this is all Rooted in Oakland.

Abandoned by their once-loyal supporters, playing in front of 50,000 empty seats in baseball's biggest stadium, on a field that, at the most-attended game of the season, found itself covered in trash. There are 29 major league clubs and then whatever this is.

Down under they'd find this funny for a different reason. In Australia, 'rooted' translates closely to 'got f—ed really hard'.