The year was 2020. The Raiders had just won Super Bowl LI in their final season in Oakland, and were relocating to Las Vegas for the 2020 season. The Golden State Warriors had won three straight NBA Finals in Oakland, but had now moved across the Bay to San Francisco and a new billion-dollar arena. To think that the Oakland Coliseum & Arena were once witness to an historic run of championships that may never be seen again in pro sports history:
1972 - Oakland A's Won World Series
1973 - Oakland A's Won World Series
1974 - Oakland A's Won World Series
1975 - Golden State Warriors Won NBA Finals
1976 - Oakland Raiders Won Super Bowl XI (Jan. 9th, 1977)
In all, Oakland hosted 12 world championship teams over the course of five decades, five in the 1970's alone. But those halcyon days were now long gone, like a Reggie Jackson home run into the Coliseum bleachers, or a Steph Curry 3 at Oracle Arena. The Raiders were in Vegas, the Warriors in San Francisco. Only the A's remained.
A Brief History
The oft-traveled A's first planted their flag in Oakland in 1968. Baseball was booming in California, with the Dodgers and Giants leaving New York for greener pastures in the 1950's, followed by the Angels and A's in the 1960's. It was the latest move for an Athletics franchise that was first founded in 1901 in Philadelphia and remained there until 1955, when the team was relocated to Kansas City.
The East Bay was rewarded with three consecutive World Series titles from 1972 to 1974, and three more World Series appearances from 1988 to 1990. General Manager Billy Beane ushered in four consecutive playoff appearances in the early 2000's, highlighted by a 20-game win streak that was later immortalized in the book and movie, "Moneyball." For all their accomplishments though, the A's and Oakland were a star-crossed couple. No matter the season, the Athletics were always second fiddle to the Giants in the Bay Area. A crumbling Oakland Coliseum and flagging attendance didn't help matters. For much of the 2010's, the A's and their fans faced ceaseless talk of a move out of Alameda County. There was talk of a new stadium project in Fremont that never materialized. Then San Jose made its pitch to land the A's, only to be blocked by the neighboring San Francisco Giants and the infinite wisdom of Major League Baseball. For all the talk about new stadiums, there was barely a whisper out of Oakland.
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaff and A's mascot Stomper raise the A's flag at City Hall
A Commitment to Oakland
A funny thing happened in 2017. Just as the Warriors were breaking ground on Chase Arena in San Francisco, and the Raiders were finalizing a deal to relocate to Nevada, the Athletics recommitted themselves to Oakland. On March 27th, on the very same day that NFL owners overwhelmingly approved the Raiders move to Las Vegas,
officials raised the A's team flag over Oakland City Hall at a rally to celebrate Opening Day just a week away. It was the first sign that the A's would remain in Oakland. New Team President
Dave Kaval spearheaded an effort to renew talks with Oakland about constructing a new stadium with four proposed sites in mind, before ultimately choosing a waterfront park at the Port of Oakland's Howard Terminal.
Oakland's new waterfront ballpark, built in 2020, near downtown and Jack London Square
Three years later, Oakland's $636 million "Athletics Ballpark" was built on the shores of the East Bay near Jack London Square. Privately funded, the ballpark had 36,000 seats as well as expansive luxury boxes for Oakland-based corporate titans Uber, Pandora, and Kaiser Permanente, among others. Most important, Oakland still had a major league sports team.
Building a stadium was one thing, filling it was an entire thing entirely. In their final season at the Coliseum, the A's reached two million fans in attendance for just the second time in a fourteen-year span. To put that in perspective, Oakland's total attendance for 2019 was ranked 22nd in all of MLB.
There was renewed interest in the team as it was settling into its new ballpark. The team had its first winning season in five years, riding that wave all the way into the postseason where it lost in a one-game Wild Card to the Cleveland Indians. Sonny Gray, pitching in perhaps his last game in an A's uniform, surrendered just three hits to the Indians that night, but took it on the chin with a 3-2 loss in Cleveland. It wasn't quite the Hollywood ending the team was looking to take into the 2020 season, but it would have to do.