On Sept. 26, 2024, over 45,000 people gathered at the Oakland Coliseum, in a mix of joy and sadness as they watched their beloved A\u2019s play the team\u2019s final game in Oakland.<\/p>\n
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That afternoon, the A\u2019s defeated the Texas Rangers 3-2 in a win that served not only as the send-off for the city\u2019s baseball franchise, but represented the last major professional sports team to abandon the city within the decade.<\/p>\n
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In 2019, Oakland lost the dynastic Golden State Warriors when they moved across the bay to San Francisco. The following year, the Oakland Raiders headed to Las Vegas in pursuit of their own financial windfall, and paved the way for the A\u2019s to move to that same city of renowned glitz and glamour.<\/p>\n
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But for the people the teams left behind, the reckoning has not been easy. During their 60-year tenure in Oakland that began with the Raiders who started playing here in 1966, the three teams brought a total of 10 championships to the city: two for the Raiders, four for the Warriors, and four for the A\u2019s.<\/p>\n
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In that time, generations of fans grew up feeling loyalty to and love for the players \u2014 and now it\u2019s all a distant memory.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI grew up going to games with friends and family,\u201d recalled Jenna Anderson, a schoolteacher in San Jose. \u201cIt gave us something to do on any random night. We could just get cheap tickets and see some of our favorite athletes. There wasn\u2019t anything like it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Another lifelong fan, A\u2019s season ticket holder David Hernandez, who attended the final game at the Coliseum, had his own memories to share about watching Oakland\u2019s sports as a child.<\/p>\n
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\u201cMy father has pictures of holding me here as a baby, and it\u2019s also one of my oldest memories,\u201d Hernandez said. \u201cGames in Oakland were just different in the best way.\u201d<\/p>\n
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There were reasons Oakland\u2019s professional teams seemed to all pull out of the city at once.<\/p>\n
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For one, between the years 2019 and 2024, Oakland was responsible for 86 percent of the crimes committed in Alameda County. In 2023, a study was released showing that robberies had increased by 30 percent, and homicides by 37 percent, compared to 2019.<\/p>\n
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As a result, many fans during this period felt unsafe going to games, and ownership noticed the drop-off in attendance.<\/p>\n
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At the same time for the A\u2019s, owner John Fisher decided not to spend the money required to improve the dilapidated stadium. Fans experienced dirty and broken seats, expensive food, limited memorabilia at team stores, and even an opossum problem within the stadium walls.<\/p>\n
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Not only that, for about 20 years, Fisher wasn\u2019t paying big contracts to top level players the franchise needed to win.<\/p>\n
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Additionally, the City of Oakland throughout those years didn\u2019t help allocate funding for any of the teams. On the contrary, the city increased the annual price astronomically for the A\u2019s to remain at the Coliseum, from $1.25 million to $20 million, while claiming it was trying \u201cto protect the taxpayers\u201d from the costs of remodeling the historic stadium.<\/p>\n
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Meanwhile, A\u2019s star players were being traded as the team lost more games, and fans began to protest by not buying tickets, so the stadium regularly appeared close to empty on game nights. This led to the conversation of the team possibly leaving Oakland for good.<\/p>\n
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Ownership wasn\u2019t making money, so it looked to the decisions made by the Raiders for guidance. On Nov. 16, 2023, after years of negotiating, Major League Baseball owners unanimously voted to relocate the A\u2019s to Las Vegas, ending a culture of some of the most loyal fans in all of sports.<\/p>\n
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Now, the Coliseum hosts a United Soccer League team, the Oakland Roots. And nearby, the Oakland Ballers, an Independent League baseball team founded in 2023 \u2014 who won the 2025 Pioneer League Championship \u2014 have gained some of the fans who lost the A\u2019s.<\/p>\n
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But for the fans who remember how Oakland sports used to be, there\u2019s no replacement for the past. According to some, the city\u2019s sports teams were\u00a0 connected to something bigger \u2014 rooted to the very way they were raised.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s just not the same \u2014 seeing a soccer field in a baseball [or] football stadium doesn\u2019t even look right,\u201d said Calvin Wunderman, a lifelong fan.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI won\u2019t ever go to a Las Vegas A\u2019s game. They\u2019re supposed to be here, in Oakland.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Sept. 26, 2024, over 45,000 people gathered at the Oakland Coliseum, in a mix of joy and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195436,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":{"0":"post-195435","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-oakland","9":"tag-oakland-headlines","10":"tag-oakland-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}