Uprooted in Oakland

Baseball’s most nomadic major league team is on the verge of relocating again.

The Oakland Athletics were scheduled to play their final game in their current home ballpark on Sept. 26: Having decided against renewing their lease at the dilapidated, nearly 60-year-old Oakland Coliseum, the A’s—who spent 54 seasons in Philadelphia and 13 in Kansas City before moving west following the 1967 season—will temporarily head east to nearby Sacramento. There, they plan to spend at least the next three seasons in a 14,000-seat minor league ballpark while awaiting the completion of a new, publicly financed, 33,000-seat stadium in Las Vegas.

Judging by attendance at A’s games this season—or rather, the lack thereof—Oakland fans won’t miss them: As of Sept. 3, the A’s had averaged just 9,910 fans per game in their final campaign in the cavernous, nearly 47,000-seat Coliseum, according to ESPN. That’s the lowest figure in Major League Baseball by far.

A’s fans have largely boycotted the team since 2021, when MLB let the team set the wheels in motion for its move to Las Vegas. They view the ballclub’s billionaire owner, John Fisher, as valuing profits over putting a winning team on the field: While the A’s have reached the postseason multiple times since Fisher purchased the team in 2005, they have won just two playoff series in that span. The ballclub is best known for developing quality players who ultimately leave for fatter paychecks in other markets.

When efforts to procure a location for a new ballpark in the San Francisco Bay Area proved unsuccessful, Fisher dropped all pretense of being “Rooted in Oakland”—the slogan for a several-year marketing campaign aimed at convincing A’s fans that their team was there to stay.

Fisher only cemented his unpopularity by charging more than $100 for seats in the Coliseum’s highest row for the A’s final home game.

“It’s horrible,” longtime A’s fan Jorge Leon said of the team’s exit from Oakland. “It’s a dumb move by MLB driven by greed and a failure by the ownership of the Oakland A’s.

“Relocation should never happen to any sports club,” Leon continued. But he admitted, “I guess billionaire owners can do what they want with their franchises.”

Deion Sanders Associated Press/Photo by David Zalubowski

Prime support for dads

Deion Sanders, the controversial University of Colorado football coach known for proclaiming Christian beliefs but also barking at his critics, is doing a good deed to help the young players on his team who have fathered children.

Sanders has pledged to set up savings accounts containing $2,121 apiece for each player’s child. (The dollar amount hearkens to Coach Prime’s NFL days: 21 was his jersey number.) Not only does Sanders hope to give his players’ children a head start in life while their fathers finish school, he wants to reward those players for sticking around for their kids.

“A child is not a mistake,” Sanders told his players in a team meeting. “A child is an opportunity to mature you, grow you, advance you, and give you some skills.” —R.H.