MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
When Charles O. Finley announced in 1968 he was moving the Kansas City Athletics to Oakland, Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri, from the floor of the U.S. Senate, blasted the maverick A’s owner, who in just eight years as owner of the team had threatened to move it to Louisville, Milwaukee and Seattle, by calling Oakland “the luckiest city since Hiroshima.”
Symington wasn’t wrong, but all these years later, it wasn’t the late Finley who carried out on the ominous death knell for professional sports in Oakland; that would be current A’s owner John Fisher who is doing it, as this will be the final season for the A’s in Oakland, and the final season the city of Oakland will be home to a professional sports team.
The Athletics are supposed to move to Las Vegas, but their new stadium may not be ready until 2028, so until then, they’re supposed to play in Sacramento and share a ballpark with the San Francisco Giants’ Triple-A team.
It’s been a very difficult stretch for the hardy sports fans of the East Bay, as the NFL Raiders left for Los Angeles in 1982, came back in 1995, then moved to Las Vegas in 2020. The Golden State Warriors, who had long played at Oracle Arena right next to the Oakland Coliseum, went back to San Francisco in 2019.
The politics that have surrounded the franchise’s unsuccessful search for a new home in the Oakland area over the years make it unlikely that MLB will return to Oakland any time soon, if at all, even though Oakland is a much larger media market than Las Vegas.
What makes it so sad is the loyalty of the Oakland sports fans is unquestioned, as the A’s have been stuck with a sewage plant of a stadium in the Oakland Coliseum, which has all of the ambience of a federal prison which I know because I’ve been there – the Coliseum, not a federal prison.
What makes it even sadder is the only thing local officials have ever done for the Coliseum, which first hosted the Raiders in 1966 and the A’s in 1968, is ruin it as a means to get Al Davis and the Raiders back to Oakland, and, again, that certainly worked out as well as the city treating the A’s as the low-end tenant they’ve always been treated as, didn’t it? And that goes for when the A’s have been the only tenant.
The Coliseum was actually a pretty nice ballpark for baseball in the 1980s, but not after they built those hideous seats in center field, still not so affectionately known as Mount Davis, to appease Davis and the Raiders to get them back from L.A. – uh, before they moved again to Vegas.
Look, the time of the Coliseum has long passed, for even in its good days it was called The Mausoleum by Oakland A’s players. It’s still been a place, though, that has hosted so many wonderful teams and moments in our time, and you just feel bad when that time comes to an end.
All of which came to mind on Sunday when the Orioles played in the Coliseum for what will surely be the final time, because there has been a long and storied sports history between Baltimore and Oakland in both MLB and the NFL.
How about when the Baltimore Colts beat the Oakland Raiders at Memorial Stadium, 27-17, in the AFC Championship Game to go to Super Bowl V, where the Colts beat Dallas for the title?
There was the Ghost to the Post AFC divisional playoff game in 1977, also in Memorial Stadium, that the Raiders won in double-overtime, 37-31, in what I still consider to be the greatest NFL game I have ever seen.
In 2001 in the AFC Championship Game, the Baltimore Ravens went into Oakland’s “Black Hole” and shut down the Raiders to advance to their first Super Bowl triumph.
Jim Palmer threw his only no-hitter against the A’s in Baltimore in 1969; and in 1991, Bob Milacki, Mike Flanagan, Mark Williamson and Gregg Olson combined to no-hit the A’s in the Coliseum.
In 1971, the Orioles won the ALCS at the Oakland Coliseum to advance to the World Series in a series that featured eight Hall of Famers – Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer, manager Earl Weaver, Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers and manager Dick Williams.
Then in 1973 and 1974, the A’s beat the Orioles in the Coliseum for their second and third AL pennants in a row, and just two years later, the teams traded their best players for each other – Reggie Jackson to the Orioles, and Don Baylor to the A’s.
All told, the Orioles played the A’s 287 times in the Oakland Coliseum, with the A’s winning 144 and the O’s winning 143.
And even on top of that, the Oakland Coliseum has been home to four World Series champions, six American League champions, two Super Bowl champions and one AFL champion.
The A’s, and even the Raiders, should have had new stadiums in Oakland long ago, no one is denying that; yet the Raiders have moved on twice and seem none the worse for wear for doing so. Eventually, wherever they end up, the Athletics, forever a nomad franchise (Philadelphia, Kansas City, Oakland, who knows where next?) will be just fine, too.
It’s just always the people and the devoted fans, who have no control over where their lifelong favorite teams will be next, who stay with you; because they’re the ones who are always left behind.
Baltimore knows this pain. No other city, though, knows this pain or has felt it as often as Oakland has.
And that just feels very unfair, and very, very sad.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X at @MikeBurkeMDT