1968 was a hopeful time in Oakland, with a newly relocated A's team. It began with a young, upstart team that embodied the ethos of the late 1960's and early 1970's. That young core of Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue and Rollie Fingers would soon make the A's champions three times over from 1972-74. Charlie Finley made the rest of the decade a train wreck, but by the late 1980's, the Bash Brothers of Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire had teamed up with Dave Stewart, Dennis Eckersley et al to reach three more World Series, winning it in 1989. The franchise would never reach such heights again, but enjoyed success in the moneyball era and again in the late 2010's. But now, it's all over. Oakland has lost its team, leaving thousands of fans to try and content themselves with the memories I just described.
The Oakland A's relocation was not an unfortunate incident. It was an entirely preventable outcome brought about by a deeply callous and neglectful ownership group spearheaded by John Fisher. Nowhere was this more evident than with the increasingly decrepit and increasingly lifeless Oakland Coliseum. It was a problem that grew more conspicuous as the years wore on, but neither Fisher nor MLB could be bothered to try and fix it. The billionaire several times over wanted the public to foot the entirety of the bill for a new ballpark when a series of renovations and better promotions could have done the trick.
More importantly, he could have invested in building a winner on the field. But time after time, the team's stars were allowed to walk as free agents, scouting and player development was chronically underfunded, and the team's payroll was consistently among the lowest in the game. Whenever the A's were a contender, it was in spite of their owner, not because of it. There was never money to sign a key free agent to give the team that push over the top, nor the extension to keep a franchise cornerstone around. Winning never mattered, only the bottom line.
You see, the owner of the A's is a miser that makes Charlie Finley look like Santa Claus. Here's a couple of key nuggets of context to support the allegation. In 2004, the A's boasted a $59.4M payroll. In 2024, the A's boast a $62.7M payroll. The 2004 number is not adjusted for inflation by the way. Furthermore, you may recall that minor league players were out of work during Covid. The decent thing to do would have been to pay them their few hundred dollars a month at a bare minimum. Instead, John Fisher elected to try weasel out of paying a whopping $400 a month to his less than 200 minor league players. He is a billionaire several times over. For context, Shin Soo Choo, then of the Texas Rangers, ponies up $1000 for each of the Rangers 191 minor leaguers despite having no obligation to do so and a fraction of the wealth Fisher has. And it gets better. Today, I learned from an ABC article that the stadium staff in Oakland, some of whom have served the franchise faithfully for three or even four decades, will not be receiving health insurance beyond this week nor any severance pay. Does Fisher not have the minimal decency to at least hand these people an envelope with a bit of money as a gesture of thanks and to try and alleviate their worries about a job loss just a little? Does he secretly expect some of his players to do what he should have done unprompted?
The way Oakland A's fans have been treated is deeply unfair, utterly repulsive, and profoundly un-American. I'm happy for fans in Vegas who will get an MLB team finally, but it should have never happened like this, and for their sake, there's no way MLB should allow John Fisher to retain control of the franchise. Someone this unwilling to invest in a team shouldn't own one, and we shouldn't be remotely surprised if ten years from now, the Las Vegas A's are being dragged through the mud with fans being treated like dirt, as was the case in Oakland. What a shame that six decades of proud tradition were defiled purely by choice, only because MLB allowed a penny pincher to run a team to the ground for two whole decades.
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