In Oakland, frustrated A’s fans unite, sound off
-
Tim Keown, ESPN Senior Writer
OAKLAND, Calif. — On the same day the Nevada Senate voted to approve $380 million in public money for a Las Vegas ballpark for the Athletics, fans in Oakland held their long-planned “Reverse Boycott” intended to fill the Oakland Coliseum and prove their worth to owner John Fisher and Major League Baseball. The timing felt cruel in a cosmic sort of way.
It turned out to be a party without a celebration.
In the south parking lot, fans lined up three hours before the game to grab one of the 7,000 green “SELL” T-shirts provided by $39,000 in community donations and produced by Oaklandish, a local clothing company. There was a taco truck and a DJ and tables set up for fans to make their own anti-Fisher signs.
The game drew 27,759, the largest home crowd of the season and more than triple the team’s home average of 8,555.
The A’s won 97 games in 2019 and made the postseason again in 2020 before Fisher began stripping the team of its young stars, reducing payroll to the lowest in baseball. The team raised ticket prices and did little to nothing to improve the fan experience as the wins dwindled, then used poor attendance and the condition of the ballpark to justify its decision to seek a new home.
The news of the Nevada vote cast a pall over what was expected to be a jubilant display of Oakland’s ability to support its team.
“Now we just want to let people vent their frustrations,” said Jorge Leon, the president of the Oakland 68s, a fan club that helped organize the protest. He wore a “SELL” shirt and a wedding ring that inscribed “Oakland” in A’s script. “If it’s set in stone that they’re leaving for Las Vegas, I hope the mayor kicks them out.”
An A’s fan who asked to be identified only as Dee said, “They have literally repelled the fan base.”
“Empty seats by design,” Leon said.
“Whatever longshot it is, whoever wants an expansion team should look to Oakland,” Dee said. “There’s a fan base here ready to support a team that deserves it.”
Two hours before the game, the A’s announced they were donating all ticket revenue from the game to the Alameda County Food Bank and the Oakland Public Education Fund. One of the sticking points in the Nevada deliberations was the team’s commitment to the community, which was deemed inadequate by several opponents. The bill passed only after it was amended to force the team to commit $1.5 million to the community once the ballpark is completed.
“From this point on, I’m rooting for the Oakland A’s fans,” Oakland mayor Sheng Thao told ESPN. “If anybody ever doubted the passion of these fans, just look at the sea of green out here. We’re going to continue to work to keep the Oakland A’s in Oakland. Las Vegas deserves a team — an expansion team. But the A’s must stay in Oakland.”
That prospect became far less likely Tuesday afternoon, when the Nevada Senate voted 13-8 to give Fisher — a billionaire heir to the Gap fortune — what he sought: a package of public funding that will pave the way for him to build a $1.2 billion stadium on the Las Vegas Strip. Thao, making her way through the Coliseum parking lot wearing a Matt Chapman A’s jersey, said the city of Oakland and the A’s were “days away” from agreeing on a massive $12 billion to $18 billion real-estate project that would have brought a waterfront ballpark to Howard Terminal on the Oakland waterfront when she received a call from Fisher telling her the team had agreed to a land deal in Las Vegas.
“We were so close,” Thao said. “We secured $1 billion for outside infrastructure, and I truly believe the city of Oakland was being leveraged in the move to go to Las Vegas. That’s why I said no more. No more. It started to feel a little bit abusive in that sense, and that’s why we walked away.”
Looking up at the “Rooted In Oakland” signs the A’s splashed all over the Coliseum to project their supposed devotion to the city, Thao said, “If you have a real plan to stay rooted in Oakland, you’d be a good partner. We want them to be honest with their marketing.”
Asked what avenues she could pursue to keep the A’s from leaving, Thao said, “I’m going to continue to talk to the legislature in Nevada, and I’m going to continue to work with Congresswoman Barbara Lee to make sure there are some checks and balances in regards to when and how teams move from one city to another.”
Lee, D-Oakland, and Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, have introduced a bill called the “Moneyball Act” that takes aim at MLB’s antitrust exemption. It requires any team that relocates more than 25 miles away to compensate its former city, or MLB would lose its antitrust exemption.
A woman roaming the south lot 90 minutes before Tuesday’s game stopped and took in the moment. Thousands of fans in “SELL” shirts and A’s jerseys — Coco Crisp was a particular favorite — ate free tacos and drank beer. A steady stream of fans crossed the pedestrian walkway from the BART station to the ballpark, a sight rarely seen outside of playoff games.
“This is just going to make me feel sadder that I came here,” she said.
As a few fans danced in the shade of a section of mothballed Coliseum seats in the south lot, Dee was asked to imagine the scene had Nevada voted down SB1.
“You’d see a lot more smoke out here, that’s for sure,” Dee said.
Inside the stadium, the “sell the team” chants began immediately after the national anthem, and the crowd attempted to remain eerily quiet for the first at-bat of the top of the fifth inning as a nod to the 55 years the team has called Oakland home.
Jose Siri, who led off the inning for the Tampa Bay Rays, must have wondered what he did wrong. As Siri neared second base after slapping a double down the left-field line off Hogan Harris, the silence broke and a boisterous chant of “sell the team” rumbled through the stadium.
And for nine innings, baseball mattered again in Oakland. With the crowd engaged in every pitch, it felt like it meant more than a midweek, mid-June game between the best team in baseball and, prior to Tuesday, the worst. The A’s, although not used to the attention, beat the Rays 2-1 for their seventh win in a row — perhaps the most improbable event of a momentous day.
After Trevor May struck out Siri for the final out, the venting took on a more ominous tone as fans threw water bottles and beer cans and whatever else was handy onto the field toward security and the grounds crew.
They came for a celebration, and they did their best under the circumstances.
An hour before the game, the crumbled asphalt of the south parking lot had become a minefield of empty beer cans, most of them local and craft. The line to the taco truck was half a football field. The music played, a fair amount of smoke hung in the air and the invective flowed. It managed to straddle the fine line between wake and party.
-
Heather Dinich, Senior College Football Insider
ATLANTA — Following Ohio State‘s fourth straight loss to Michigan, the players had a meeting with coach Ryan Day during which they “really hashed some things out,” quarterback Will Howard said Saturday, a turning point in their season that helped propel the team to Monday’s national championship game against Notre Dame.
“It was really a truth-telling time,” Howard said at the College Football Playoff media day. “The facts were laid out there. People were challenged. Everyone including myself had to look in the mirror a little bit and say, ‘What can I do better? How can we fix this thing?’ The thing that we clung to was we still have this opportunity out in front of us to right all these wrongs and go play for a national championship and here we are. We’re right where we wanted to be. A lot of people wrote us off, but we really just believed in ourselves.”
The Buckeyes were favored by 21 points against Michigan, the widest point spread for the rivalry since 1978, according to ESPN Research. Since then, they have reeled off three straight playoff wins — against Tennessee, Big Ten champion Oregon and SEC runner-up Texas.
Ohio State offensive coordinator Chip Kelly said the team has shown its resiliency over the past few weeks, but had a choice to make.
“They talked through it,” Kelly said. “I think they understood what was presented, what’s ahead of us. I think that’s a big point. When you look at the game against Michigan, it could be one of two things: It could be your tombstone, or it could be a stepping stone, and Ryan and our players turned it into a stepping stone.”
Ohio State defensive coordinator Jim Knowles said the 13-10 loss to Michigan made the team closer. After the first loss of the season to Oregon, Knowles said, “There were a lot of fingers being pointed at the defense. And the second one, it was kind of the other way.”
“I made a point to say to our guys, ‘Remember what that felt like the first time? You need to go out of your way to pick up your brothers on offense,'” Knowles said. “In a way they did, and it kind of really merged us.”
The Buckeyes are making their sixth national championship game appearance (national championship games began with the inception of the BCS in the 1998 season), but haven’t won one since the 2014 season. Ohio State is 2-3 in national championship games. The Buckeyes are trying to win their first national title under Day, who faced heavy backlash and questions about his job security following the loss to Michigan.
“Every year you learn and you grow,” he said, “trying to be self-aware enough to surround yourself with people who will tell you the truth, hoping to get better, and that’s really all you can do.
“When you go through great moments, you really grab on to the people who are around you, and it’s the same thing when you go through difficult moments,” Day said. “That’s why you build relationships.”
Ohio State has a 6-2 lead in the all-time series and has won six straight. Notre Dame’s last win over Ohio State came in 1936. Knowles said Day never allowed any of the criticism to impact his work or effect the staff.
“It’s not something we talk about because we just try to put our heads down and work,” Knowles said. “But in the end, brothers in arms, you’re happy he is being seen for the quality of person and coach that he is because he does a great job and he cares about the players and is in tune with what’s going on with the staff. The only thing you can do to help is win, so I’m glad we have done that.”
-
Paolo Uggetti, ESPN
ATLANTA — After being limited to one catch in Ohio State‘s Cotton Bowl semifinal victory over Texas, freshman phenom Jeremiah Smith gave a warning Saturday in advance of the Buckeyes’ national championship matchup against Notre Dame.
“If you are going to play man [to-man defense] against Ohio State, be ready,” Smith said. “I can’t wait to put on a show.”
Smith, who repeatedly pointed out during his media day availability that the Irish play man-to-man defense “80%” of the time, acknowledged that he relishes when defenses try to stop him with only one defender.
“What [the Irish do] they do very, very well. So for them to change up what they do, would be kind of silly,” Ohio State wide receivers coach Brian Hartline told ESPN. “They’re really, really good players, great players on the outside. And we’re really great players on the outside, too. It’s what you want in a game of this magnitude.”
Following Smith’s best game of the season against Oregon in the Rose Bowl (187 yards and two touchdowns), Texas’ secondary sold out to stop Smith, whose only catch in the Buckeyes’ win was for 3 yards.
“You watch the film — they doubled, tripled me,” Smith said. “It’s frustrating, but being a decoy helped us win the game.”
In his first year at Ohio State, Smith has been a supernova, catching 71 passes for 1,227 yards and 14 touchdowns. Heading into this game, he’s averaging 17.3 yards per catch.
“He’s one of the most talented dudes I’ve been around … you always want to try to get him the ball,” quarterback Will Howard said. “But he can also take out two or three guys at a time [as a decoy], and sometimes that’s a good thing.”
Smith’s performance in the Cotton Bowl was by far his least productive of the season, but it helped to open up opportunities for other skill players such as Carnell Tate (seven catches for 87 yards) and Quinshon Judkins (two receiving touchdowns).
Whether the Irish try to go away from their usual playing style in order to limit Smith or stick to their scheme remains to be seen. Although Smith noted that Notre Dame’s secondary might be the best they have faced all season, he is ready for the challenge.
“If I’ve got to be a decoy in this game, I’ll be a decoy,” Smith said. “All I want to do is win.”
Also, Ohio State star DE JT Tuimoloau, who rolled his ankle against Texas, talked about his health and the injury.
“I feel really good. I feel really good. One thing, our strength coach says you can’t do too much of taking care of your body, so I’m overloaded on take care of everything.”
Tuimoloau said he’s been somewhat limited in practice to nurse the ankle back.
“Me and Coach Day bumped heads; I want to get out there, he wants me to rest, so we met somewhere in the middle.”
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports10 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business2 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway