There’s a growing sadness among baseball fans in Northern California’s East Bay region as the 2024 MLB Oakland Athletics schedule moves on to Bronx, New York, this coming week for a four-game series with the New York Yankees. The countdown is on, with less than 140 games remaining in the regular season before the club relocates.
For many baseball fans, the thought of no longer having their own club, their own identity in professional sports, is unthinkable. Some have described the feeling of being stripped of a club to cheer “boo” and “wait until next year” for is no different than losing a best friend.
There’s one A’s fan in Austin, Texas, who is experiencing such professional withdrawal. Nancy Finley is also taking the planned hopscotching of the A’s of 2024 to planting their gear in Sacramento from 2025–2027, and finally landing permanently at their planned home in Las Vegas, Nevada—fingers crossed—for the 2028 season a bit hard.
“I can’t image the East Bay without a baseball team,” Ms. Finley told The Epoch Times during a recent phone conversation. “I have friends (in Oakland) who are worried about how the team leaving will be affecting their real estate values.”
Along with the economic implications of losing the A’s to the City of Oakland and surrounding areas, Ms. Finley puts her happiest foot forward and recalls several vivid memories of her introduction to the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum in 1968. This was the year the A’s relocated from Kansas City, Missouri.
“The first time dad and I flew into San Francisco; we made the drive over the Bay Bridge. I saw Alcatraz Island, and as we were getting closer to Oakland, the high-rise buildings. What a site.”
Ms. Finley is taking the A’s skipping out on the East Bay home they’ve nested in for 56 years personally. Very personally. Since her teenage years, Ms. Finley has been more than a super fan of Oakland baseball. A’s baseball represented what was the family business.
From 1960 to 1980, Ms. Finley’s uncle, Charlie Finley, owned the A’s. Ms. Finley’s father, Carl Finley, began working for his first cousin when the club in 1962 was still the Kansas City Athletics. As a minority owner of the club, when the relocation to Oakland took place for the 1968 MLB season, Carl and his daughter packed up their home in Texas to manage the business end of the club.
With Charlie Finley remaining full-time in Chicago, Illinois, it was Carl who oversaw the daily operations of the club, with the titles vice-president and general manager. Carl was the trusted conduit between cousin Charlie and Oakland’s East Bay communities.
Romanced with thoughts of the Oakland A’s past successes, including three consecutive World Series championships in the early 1970s and suiting up 17 players that would one day be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, the reality of life in the Oakland region is very different today.
When the A’s flew Ms. Finley last season to a 50th reunion of the 1973 World Championship team, she witnessed a different Oakland than the 1970s Oakland that came to mind.
“The area is rundown. Crime is bad. I can’t think of one place to feel safe in the area. It didn’t have to happen,” she said.
Bolting from California’s eighth most populous city for the sixth most populous city doesn’t seem to be enticing enough for a sports franchise to uproot for three years. However, for the A’s to set up shop for three seasons in Sacramento, playing home games in an active Triple-A minor league stadium until their new ballpark in Las Vegas is open for business, much of the behind-the-scenes negotiations remain secretive.
“When Charlie and dad had the team, they didn’t enjoy the annual revenue sharing MLB teams have today,” says Ms. Finley, who points out that soon the A’s will go from playing in a coliseum that holds 63,000 fans to a park that holds a tick above 14,000.
A’s current ownership, led by John Fisher, a former part-owner of the San Francisco Giants, is looking at the prospect of having a new stadium located on the site of the old Tropicana Las Vegas Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. A stark difference in professional sports reality as the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum is the fifth oldest MLB ballpark.
When thinking of the A’s franchise that she remembers growing up around, Ms. Finley doesn’t see why a greater effort between the City of Oakland and Mr. Fisher wasn’t explored to keep baseball in East Bay alive.
Familiar nicknames as “Blue Moon,” “Catfish,” and “True Blue,” as seasons in Sacramento and beyond pass, so will local fans’ memories of the incredible feats accomplished on the diamond by A’s greats of the past. A new era of A’s baseball gets to create its own history in the Nevada desert.
For Ms. Finley, she’s giving her best effort to support a successful A’s future outside of Oakland. But, like parents do, letting their children move on for hopefully better days ahead isn’t easy. Ms. Finley still has the kids’ luggage up in the attic and isn’t ready to start packing.
