Nothing Gold (Or Green) Can Stay

The End of the Oakland A's era Has Stirred Up Some Things in Me

In 1988, I was twelve years old, and a bit of a poser. Because my friends were doing it, I traded in my Red Sox hat for a snazzy, green Oakland A’s one. I was still a Sox fan at heart, but the efforts of Jose Canseco to establish a brand new club, the 40/40 Club, had me hooked. For non-baseball fans (and it’s totally fine if you are, you might still enjoy this post.), the 40/40 Club means a player has hit 40 home runs and stolen 40 bases in a single season. In 1988, it had never been done. Here in 2024, 36 years later, Shohei Ohtani just established the 50/50 club, to show what a rare feat this kind of thing is.

Even though I was a big Canseco fan (and I certainly was; posters, t-shirts, books filled with his baseball cards), in the ‘88 playoffs when the Red Sox and the A’s met, I couldn’t bring myself to root against the Red Sox. I was young and stupid and kind of wanted them both to win. The fact that the A’s dominated and swept the Sox kind of helped me make up my mind. But, in 1989, nothing really stood in my way, even a wrist injusry to Canseco that put him on the shelf for half the season. Whether it was the strength of the A’s or just a little bit of teenage rebellion where I wanted to root for a different team than my Dad, my fandom was at its peak. The A’s peaked, too, as they bowled over Toronto and the San Francisco Giants to win the 1989 World Series. Some folks may remember that World Series for being the one that was halted by an devastating earthquake.

By 1992, the bloom was off the rose for the Oakland front office, as Canseco was still a very productive player (one of the most productive in the game, in fact), but was also one of the most, shall we say, scandal-ridden. He was actually traded to the Texas Rangers while in the on-deck circle waiting to bat, and he was leading the team in home runs at the time. I believe I bought a Rangers hat, but I mostly returned to my first love, the Red Sox.

The point is, for a few years, I was an A’s fan, so I am a little sad about the team leaving Oakland and possibly moving to Las Vegas, if they can get a stadium. They will apparently be playing their home games for the next few seasons at a minor league park in Sacramento, where the temperature on the field can get up to 110 degrees during the summer. Also, the Oakland Coleseum, where they played for 57 years, will now be torn down.

I’m not necessarily feeling sad about a building I never went to being demolished, or a team that I haven’t followed for over 30 years being moved. But when I was watching videos of the fans during the A’s last home game, and A’s manager Mark Kotsay’s postgame speech to them, all I could think of was, “What if this happned to Fenway?”

I mean, it probably won’t, at least in my lifetime. Fenway Park is a fixture of the area, and the busiensses and high-rise condos that have been built up around it need those dollars, and it is almost as much a concert venue as a baseball park these days. I am sure that, even though it is over 112 years old, it will be here long after I am gone. That is comforting on a personal level, but it is still a bummer to see this once-proud franchise reduced to this. I hesitate to use the term “laughing stock,” and I know I don’t know the whole story, but it literally seems like the plot of the movie Major League in real life.

I think the other thing I’m thinking about when I read about the end of the Oakland A’s era is the disillusionment of my youth. I’m not one of those crabs that thinks that the last few Star Wars movies, atrocious as they were, have ruined the childhood. But many of my idols have turned out to be, to quote myself, scandal-ridden. Hulk Hogan, who alwats preached for kids to train, say our prayers and eat our vitamins, turned out to be a racist and, as if that wasn’t bad enough, a Trump supporter. Bill Cosby was the star of the most popular show in the country when I was a kid, and also hosted a kid’s show, and all the while he was drugging and raping women. It turns out that Canseco might be the least horrible of all of them. All he did was take steroids, and not only did he own up to it in his book (which is a hilarious read), he outed all the other cheaters, and then actually said that everyone should do it, as long as they are supervised by a physician. Why not try to be better at your chosen profession? Players get laser eye surgery to see the ball better, and no one accuses them of cheating.

But I digress…

Obviously, I know that nothing gold can stay, but I’m still a little sad. I’m sad for the A’s fans. I’m sad for any Bill Cosby fans. I’m sad when anyone feels that they can’t be a fan of their thing anymore. All you can hope for is that there were lessons learned, and people can put that passion towards something or someone more deserving. Like maybe the red Sox? They’ll probably be here for awhile.

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