The Last Days of the Oakland A's

The Athletics. The poor, unloved Athletics. After being evicted from Philadelphia, Kansas City and now, Oakland, baseball's homeless team must now content themselves with three years in a minor league ballpark in Sacramento until their (a-hem) next forever home is completed in Las Vegas, Nevada.

You may be familiar with their story. Or you may not. In the event you are not, let me fill you in.

One of baseball's original sixteen teams, the Athletics began life in Philadelphia. One of two teams in what was then the nation's third-largest city, they were managed by Connie Mack from the get-go. Despite his talents as a manager (and later as an owner), the Athletics endured a bi-polar existence that ping-ponged between championships and extended periods of last-place finishes.

Were they the supreme example of the sport as suggested by the WWI-era teams of Eddie Collins, Charles Bender and Eddie Plank, or as suggested by the 1915 team that struggled to 109 losses after a dire sell-off ?

Were they the imposing late-twenties and early-thirties teams of Al Simmons, Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Cochrane and Lefty Grove, or the abysmal, cash-strapped squads of the forties and fifties?

The details are unclear to me, but those hapless Athletics couldn't compete with the Phillies, (who posted losing records every year between 1918 and 1949 with one, sole exception—1932). If nothing else, it goes to show how deeply stressed the Athletic's finances had become. They couldn't even contend against the team that had been the worst in baseball for three consecutive decades.

By 1954 it had become clear Philadelphia wasn't big enough for both of them. The Athletics left for the green pastures of Kansas City, Missouri following the conclusion of the season. But despite a new city, new ballpark and new ownership, the Athletics continued to flounder. By 1967, their attendance was half of what it had been in 1955.

Unlike their wandering cousins, the Boston/Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves, they had yet to discover a permanent home. But in the spring of 1968, Oakland looked like a good bet.

California was fresh. Underdeveloped. Awash with opportunity. It had yet to morph into the most-populated and most-expensive state in the lower forty-eight. The cities by the bay might have even conjured up notions of a west coast New York City, where instead of the Yankees, Dodgers and Giants competing, the Athletics and those same Giants would vie for superiority in northern California.

It didn't take long for the Athletics to warm to California sunshine. A promising crop of young players emerged, among them Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando and Catfish Hunter. Within five years, they'd anchor baseball's newest dynasty; a battling bunch of mustachioed long-hairs with the reputation for being rugged non-conformists.

They were baseball's new breed, and like them or not they won three consecutive World Series, becoming the first team to do so since the 1951 Yankees. Only the 2000 Yankees have done it since.

But like Connie Mack's golden-era teams, circumstances didn't allow fans or players to enjoy that success.

They had been owned since 1960 by Charles Finley, a flamboyant Insurance executive. To his credit, he devised all sorts of promotions to induce the good citizens of Kansas City into attending Athletics games. From that standpoint, he resembled Bill Veeck.

But despite his non-traditional eye for promotion, he was strictly by-the-book when it came to paying his ballplayers. As a result, the team was rife with acrimony. Players fought for wages commensurate with their skill level and were met with fierce resistance.

Adding to the drama, Finley was a hands-on owner. He loved to meddle. Rosters were constantly re-shaped in accordance to his whims. Likewise, manager Dick Williams seemed constantly on the hot seat. Nope. George Steinbrenner had nothing on Finley.

After a fifth-straight division championship in 1975, the Boston Red Sox swept the Athletics 3 – 0 in the ALCS. It was over.

With Catfish Hunter completing his first season with the Yankees, his former teammates were likewise eager to move on. Reggie Jackson and Ken Holtzman were traded to the Baltimore Orioles. Joe Rudi was traded to the Red Sox. Sal Bando was granted free agency and signed with the Milwaukee Brewers. Bert Campaneris was granted free agency and signed with the Texas Rangers. Rollie Fingers and 1972 World Series hero Gene Tenace were also granted free agency and signed with the San Diego Padres. Vida Blue was traded to the Yankees.

Within a year of the 1975 division championship, the Oakland Athletics were unrecognizable. The sell-off had nothing on those Mack himself had been forced to make following the 1914 and 1932 seasons.

Even more ironically, another problem that had plagued the Athletics in Philadelphia reared its ugly head 2,879 miles to the west: where were the paying customers?

Even before seven-figure attendance counts became standard, the Athletics rarely led the league. They finished second in 1930 and '31, fielding a team of four Hall of Famers. And in Mack's first golden-era, the 1910 and '11 editions actually led the league. But more often than not, the Athletics were also-rans when it came to ticket-selling.

And that didn't change in Kansas City—or Oakland.

An uncle had gifted me with a subscription to Sports Illustrated while the Athletics were in the midst of their World Series threepeat, and it pointed out that their1974  attendance was eleventh out of the twelve teams in the American League. The year before it was eighth.

Why?

Whatever irritations and distractions Charlie Finley couldn't provide, playing for minuscule crowds did. While the crowds that showed for the Series were certainly enthusiastic, I have to feel they paled in comparison to the crowds they would have drawn in Chicago, Philadelphia or New York City. Detroit. Boston. And so on.

In Major League Baseball, only the Minnesota Twins and the Giants drew more-poorly than the singular team en route to a third-consecutive world championship.

There never existed a concentrated volley of criticism regarding the location of the Coliseum. Or the neighborhood in which it was located. Being a new arrival (as well as a world champion) in a sparkling, ten-year-old stadium should have been a recipe for success. But it wasn't.

Perhaps the most-plausible reason it wasn't was a general lack of interest.

San Francisco embraces the 49ers, the Giants and (more-recently) the Warriors pretty vigorously. Apart from the NFL Raiders, I'm not sure Oakland did the same with their teams. And I hasten to point out that even those beloved Raiders now play in Las Vegas.

As we have seen in Miami and Tampa Bay, perhaps Oakland was never an ideal home for a major league baseball team. Perhaps the Giants were enough. And as the succeeding fifty-years have shown, that brief period wasn't an outlier. When the Athletics played well, fans showed up (so to speak). When they didn't, fans stayed away.

They were one-hundred eighty degrees removed from the Chicago Cubs.

Add in a municipal government that seemed indifferent about either updating the Coliseum or building a new stadium and it led to an opportunist like John Fisher hijacking a team and skulking away like a snake oil salesman to the next municipality whose ego required a professional sports franchise.

All aided and abetted, of course, by Major League Baseball.

Watching the video of the Athletics last game in Oakland was heartbreaking. It existed outside of the confines of profit and loss statements. It existed outside of legal briefs and continuances and sheafs of confidential documents. It existed outside of empty texts from team management that only intended to relay the message “It's not our fault.”

The video contained people. Three-dimensional people who were there to share their joy and sorrow. To articulate the pain of losing a civic institution like a ballclub. They rejoiced in the commonality they had shared. They didn't talk about consumer panels or attorneys or securing public loans.

They talked about—gasp—baseball.

They talked about life, and how it happened in and around the Oakland Coliseum. They talked about friends and neighborhoods and communities. And how a greedy, selfish billionaire and an indefensible municipal government gave it to the city of Oakland—without so much as an offer to treat them to a dinner out.

Nobody could get nothing done. With one notable exception. (And the good citizens of Las Vegas are building him a brand new baseball stadium.)

My Joe Biden Confession

I was disappointed when the Democrats announced that Hillary Clinton would be facing-off against Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election. But not because of any ill-feelings I have towards the former First Lady.

She performed brilliantly in her role as Secretary of State and was a distinguished First Lady, suffering through her husband's infidelities with remarkable dignity.

No, my disappointment stemmed from a what I believe was a prefabricated agenda to serve the Democratic party. Not only would they be the first party to elect a Black president, but the first to elect a woman as well.

Instead of waiting to gauge the national mood and deciding on the best possible candidate for that particular election, Democrats decided to send Clinton into battle—regardless of her opponent.

Yes, there was a fair bit of arrogance in the assumption she would defeat whomever the Republicans ran against her. What's that old expression about counting your chickens?

As it turns out, Clinton was Trump's ideal opponent. Not only was she roundly despised by the GOP, but an issue involving e-mails she sent and received as Secretary of State played right into Trump's hands.

And a perfectly-timed announcement by the F.B.I. just days before the election cinched it.

Despite losing the popular vote by a count of nearly three-million, the orange-haired cretin ended up in the White House thanks to the electoral college.

Next election we were offered Joe Biden. He was a career politician and a longtime Senator from Delaware, yet I wasn't enthused. Nor were any of the Democrats I spoke with. This was the guy who was going to take down Trump and his obsessive-compulsive cult?

Eight years ago, I had rooted for Bernie Sanders. In 2020, it was Elizabeth Warren. Now I would have to choose between Trump and Biden. If I haven't already made it clear, I was under-whelmed.

I shouldn't have been.

It turns out that after four years of Trump's ignorance, arrogance and general fecklessness, Biden's grassroots, plain-as-day sensibility were just the cure Democrats had been looking for. (Modesty requires me to admit that at the time, I just knew his name wasn't 'Trump'.)

This time, Biden took the popular vote by seven-million and pummeled Trump in the electoral college. But despite the sound whipping, Trump's ego would not let him go gently into that dank, dark Republican night.

Nope. President Petulant displayed his rigorous ability to manipulate, stating before Election Day that if he didn't win, the election was 'stolen'.

How's that for covering your ass?

Despite getting the re-counts and investigations he demanded, guess what? He still lost. By 7,059,526 votes.

He carried the lie forward, as did the intellectually-disadvantaged folk who constitute his cult. Seeing a 'Trump Won' banner in 2023 was the saddest and most-pathetic example of voluntary stupidity I have ever seen.

Why not claim that water isn't actually wet? Or that Wendy's was selling nuclear arms to Libya?

Again, I have diverged from the original intent of this post. Joe Biden became president under very trying conditions, not unlike those of Barack Obama. Trump's non-intervention with the pandemic and its fallout created a crisis much worse than it needed to be.

But come to think of it, like anything that didn't directly affect billionaires, it was Trump's standard operating procedure. Like all Trump-centric criticism, it was a hoax. It's rigged. It's a witch-hunt. It's the product of radical left-wingers.

Sigh. Doesn't anyone like Donald?

But I warmed to Joe Biden. As bland and ego-less as he was, Biden settled the ship. He didn't appoint Trump-tards to every judicial opening. He didn't hand additional tax breaks to billionaires and their companies. He worked to maintain voter's rights and championed reproductive rights.

He decried the nation's runaway gun violence and worked to inhibit it.

Best of all, he didn't receive love letters from Kim Jong Un or pretend that Vladimir Putin was anything but what he is.

Yeah, his handling of immigration could have been better. And guilty or not, he was held responsible for inflation not returning to pre-pandemic norms. And let's not forget we're still sending weapons and money to Israel even after they have admitted to genocide.

But he has greatly restored America's position as a world leader and a tireless champion of democracy. That counts for something. Especially when your opposition seeks to destroy it.

And on July 21^st, he made a decision almost unfathomable in the politics of the twenty-first century. Owing to a poor debate performance three weeks earlier, he announced he was—for the good of the party—removing himself as a candidate for President of the United States.

Wait—you mean selflessness isn't dead?

Can you imagine Donald Trump doing the same thing? Even with a central nervous system suffused with fentanyl?

Of course not.

President Biden's acknowledgement of duty and responsibility happened in a city stuffed with preening egos and selfish power grabs.

“Wait. You're doing that because it's the right thing to do? Wow. You're setting a really bad example for the rest of us, bro.”

And so he was. 

Unburdened by the monstrous ego that controls his opponent, Biden took a step back, realized the momentousness of the occasion and realized he wasn't the best man for the job. Democrats are fortunate Donald Trump is incapable of making the same decision.

Thank you, Joe. You are truly a man amongst men.

Wither Caitlin Clark?

Can you stand another piece on Caitlin Clark? (Don't worry—if your answer is 'no' I completely understand.)

Ironically, that is part of the problem. You see, deserved or not, Ms. Clark is the most-heralded female basketball player to enter the WNBA in some time. And there has been much speculation as to why.

There are many potential reasons. First off, she's white. And secondly, she's heterosexual. In a league primarily made up of gay Black women, that makes her an outlier from the word go.

And when she shows up with a shoe contract and several corporate endorsements (as well as the cover of Time magazine), what I call the jealousy factor skyrockets upwards. It's very easy to imagine competing players thinking “I'll take that bitch down a notch or two.”

And many have. From her opening night struggles where she set a WNBA-record with 10 turnovers to a recent game versus the Chicago Sky in which guard Chennedy Carter administered an indefensible cheap shot to her, there appears to be a concerted effort to baptize Clark into the hard knocks world of professional basketball.

And adding to the drama is the fact that Clark is, yes, a trash-talker. Which is fine—as long as you can back it up.

Before a three-point contest during an NBA All-Star weekend, Larry Bird stood up in the locker room and faced his competition. “Which of you is going to finish second?” he asked. There was no response.

And just who won that three-point contest?

Guess.

However vigorous Clark's chutzpah, it has been tested. And will continue to be. At least until she demonstrates a Michael Jordan-like ability to shred her opponents and devour them.

To her credit, she has maintained a very marketable demeanor in public, appearing gracious, confident and in control. She has everything to gain and nothing to lose by ignoring her haters.

They will exist regardless of her career arc.

But this isn't the last of Caitlin's indignities. 2024 is an Olympic year, and the USA must assemble an Olympic team to participate. And the basketball neophytes who have recently descended on the WNBA have made their feelings clear: as the most popular player the league, isn't it Caitlin's birthright that she be named to the team?

Not quite.

While event-specific teams such as this may appear otherwise, the powers that be seek the best players for these teams, not the most-famous. And whatever her potential, Caitlin is not one of the premier point guards in the WNBA. She very well may be one day, but not today.

Struggle isn't new. Nor is it unusual. Ms. Clark is the latest in a long line of highly-talented athletes who made the jump from college to the pros and didn't find instant success.

But given her level-headed and focused approach, success is imminent. We (or rather, you) just needs to be patient.

The Shaq Attack, 2.0

I'm not sure it matters now, but I never came to terms with Shaquille O'Neal. His bruising physicality was in many ways a burden, as fellow players, coaches and NBA executives all saw in him the potential to be The Greatest Player Ever.

No pressure, right?

Without ever having had that kind of pronouncement bestowed upon me, it's hard to understand it fully. But I suspect it was a 24/7 cam of expectation.

And Shaq was pretty good. He led a young Orlando Magic team to the NBA Finals at the age of 22. After jumping ship to join the Los Angeles Lakers (why isn't that a cliche yet?), he and Kobe Bryant formed a powerful duo as the Lakers ran off three consecutive championships in '00, '01 and '02.

But as we saw with the Jordan-era Bulls, success quickly became a game not played on a basketball court. Who was the better player? Who deserved most of the credit? Who was the leader the rest of the team turned to when things got tough?

These squabbles caught fire much quicker in L.A. than they did in Chicago, and the inevitable power struggle between O'Neal and Bryant led to the former leaving Lakerland after the 2003/04 season. That was also the last time Shaq n' Kobe went to the NBA Finals as teammates.

After exhausting the Laker front office with multiple injuries and escalating salary demands, O'Neal was jettisoned to the Miami Heat.

A stellar first season seemed to bode well for his stay in Miami, but before long the all-too-familiar foot/ankle/toe injuries set in. O'Neal managed to play just 59 and 40 games the next two seasons.

He managed a minor comeback in 2008/09 with the Phoenix Suns (playing in 75 games), but the end was clearly near. After a year each with the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Boston Celtics as a second-stringer, he retired.

In the end, O'Neal is a study in contradiction. While his athletic abilities were routinely described as “limitless”, those assessments did not take into account O'Neal's personality. Despite a public persona that was playful—almost childlike—he suffered ruptured relationships with scores of the people he played with and for.

And that's not even taking into account the media.

At the core of those disputes were O'Neal's outsized ego, petulance and a work ethic that frequently left coaches scratching their heads. Lakers' coach Phil Jackson even referred to him as “probably the only player I coached who wasn't a worker.”

Trapped between unlimited physical potential and a personality not hard-wired like Bill Russell's, Larry Bird's or Michael Jordan's, Shaq was almost doomed to fail. No matter how well he played, the perfection of infinity always lay ahead, untouched.

But Shaq's critics had their points. He struggled to hit half his free-throws, a fact which the opposition frequently exploited. And when properly motivated, he could be a monster on defense. Problem was, he wasn't always motivated.

He showed who he could be in the 2000/01 season and was deserving of the MVP trophy as a result. But he never reached those heights again. It appeared he was (gulp) satisfied. Bryant and assistant coach Tex Winter weren't shy about expressing their frustration.

O'Neal's pettiness was spotlighted when he publicly criticized those who elected Sun's guard Steve Nash to consecutive MVP trophies. Nash, a likeable guard who served as the engine for the team nicknamed 'The Solar Express', somehow stole the votes that, by right, were O'Neal's.

Sigh.

And O'Neal did it again recently, using the pulpit afforded him by cable TV's 'NBA on TNT'. Only this time, the thief was Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic, who was unfairly awarded his third MVP in four years.

Even more curiously, the two players he openly questioned happen to be white. It could be coincidence, and it could be something else. Not being a social media subscriber, I am ignorant of any opinions he might have offered on Black MVPs.

At any rate, this tempest is certainly interesting. Especially since Nash is a Hall of Famer and—barring a career-ending injury—Jokic will be as well.

It leaves me wondering: is O'Neal projecting his own disappointment over winning a single MVP award onto Nash and Jokic? Maybe he has regrets. Maybe he wishes he had done certain things differently.

If so, welcome to the club, Shaq. Nearly all of us have those thoughts at some point in our lives.

But at the age of fifty-two, I wish you could express those thoughts without besmirching the accomplishments of others.

Many people would say you have enjoyed a disproportionate share of life's gifts. It's a shame that largesse hasn't created in you an equally vigorous sense of graciousness.

You know, the way you were fawned over as a player.