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.)
