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‘A’s FAREWELL’
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Baseball History can write many, many stories, many versions of Athletics baseball.

Yes the A’s, who are leaving the Oakland Coliseum this weekend, as the franchise moves to Sacramento for 3-years to play in a minor league ballpark, before moving to Las Vegas.

The history will include the bitter ending authored by current owner John Fisher, who is the catalyst for the move.  He wrote a letter expressing sadness he was not able to get a new stadium built at the Howard Terminal site in Oakland.

He failed to mention the cost cutting operation, that led to a very low payroll, a losing record, the continual trades of veteran players for prospects.  All of his baseball decisions led to last place finishes, and the lowest attendance in modern day baseball (10,266) in his final year.

And no mention of  his failure to privately fund a portion of the stadium, wanting instead a destitute city to pay for a large segment of the costs.  It was always the blame of the Coliseum Commission, the city of Oakland, Alameda County.

Nice resume John Fisher has in his briefcase.

So this weekend they will pack up the Green & Gold uniforms and vacate the dump of a stadium, and the decades of fans, who loved the team.

There is history, lots of history surrounding the A’s and yet it seems like a curse that followed the franchise.

Connie Mack and the early Philadelphia A’s, were dominant, yet he always sold off his players because of financial problems.  The yesteryear names like Eddie Collins, Al Simmons, Jimmy Foxx, Lefty Grove and more were stars and then victims.

A team that in the late 1920s into the 30s won the American League over the Yankees multiple times, including a 107-win season.  But a team that sold off its players, and forever fell into last place.  One year the A’s lost 109-games, but their co-tenant Phillies lost 111.  Can you imagine that misery at then Shibe Park?

They became the Kansas City A’s in 1954, moving to a new market, but again plagued by ownership problems forever.  The biggest claim to fame, the A’s always traded their top players to the Yankees, and the standing joke, Kansas City was in the Yankees farm system.  Look up the Roger Maris deal if you want.

Charley O. Finley, the insurance tycoon, bought the team and moved it to Oakland.  He stockpiled talent and managers, and won in the early years.

But as times changed, the union won court cases against baseball, that led to free agency, it led to the next demise of all things Athletics.

Finley tried to sell off his players.  Breached their contracts.  Lost court and arbitration cases, and wars with the commissioners.  They became decisions that forever changed the game and wrecked his franchise, the one with a mule and an elephant as mascots.

The Swinging A’s with Rollie Fingers, Catfish Hunter, Joe Rudi, Sal Bando, Reggie Jackson and so many more big time stars and personalities were so popular.  Division titles, World Series rings, mustaches, beards and more.  And then it ended.

Finley stripped it, then sold the team.   The A’s became famous for Moneyball, and then John Fisher showed up with co owner Lewis Wolff but failed to put a winner on the field.

The stadium eroded, the franchise eroded, and support for the A’s and its Stadium ideas eroded.

So the A’s leave behind a sordid legacy, dating all the way back to the 1930s of Connie Mack, thru Kansas City, onto the Charley O days in the East Bay.

A collection of good players, but because it was the A’s, it always ended badly

Sadly, MLB allowed this to happen.  Approving sales of the team from one under financed owner to another.  Allowing the small market A’s to take in huge amounts of revenue share money, and put it into the owner’s pockets, not back into payroll.  MLB failed to intercede to help get a stadium deal done when they could have used  their influence to find better owners and find a better solution.

Check off all the emotional boxes this final week of the season.  Sadness at the way it ended; anger that John Fisher allowed this to happen.  Melancholy that something that was so special turned out so badly.

Next up, three summers in Sacramento, where those June-July-August nights are wrapped around triple digits temperatures.  Good luck in Las Vegas, where they have yet to find funding for John Fisher’s idea of a new snazzy Sin City Stadium.

Bad team, roster, franchise, owner, and history.  A farewell funeral this weekend for the Swinging A’s.

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