Death of a Sports Town Part 1: Rooted in Oakland (Encore)

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 26 December 2024

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On the afternoon of September 26th, the Oakland Athletics played the Texas Rangers in their final game ever in the city they’ve called home for 57 seasons. Following the lead of the Warriors and Raiders, they are the third major sports franchise to leave the city in just five years. This exodus is the culmination of decades of decisions, negotiations and missteps. And now, Oakland is no longer a big-time sports town. So how exactly did we get here? How does this all look and feel on the ground in the East Bay? And when a city loses all its teams, what’s left behind? With the help of lifelong Bay Area resident Tim Keown, we’ve been exploring these questions for months. And today, we kick off our multipart series Death of a Sports Town with a look at the ironically rich history of sports in “The Town,” and we unearth the 30-year-old decision that doomed sports in the gritty-city-by-the-bay. The multipart series: ‘Death of a Sports Town’ is being re-published in the feed for the next 4 days. If you don’t want to wait, you can check out all of the episodes of this series from when they originally aired at the links below. Apple Podcasts: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, & Part 5 Spotify: All episodes Check out the playlist, featuring our favorite stories of 2024. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everybody, Michelle Steele here, and I hope you're having a great holiday season.
0:06.6	Maybe you guys have noticed that we are taking a production break right now, but still wanted to highlight a special project we put together this year on ESPN Daily.
0:16.2	One of the biggest sports stories this year was the end of big time professional sports in the city of Oakland, as the athletics played their final game in that city this past September.
0:27.6	In the lead up to that discouraging milestone, your regular host, Clinton Yates, worked with lifetime Bay Area resident Tim Kewen to document how this came to be and what it says about the state
0:39.9	of sports today. The result was a five-part series titled Death of a Sports Town. For those that
0:47.0	missed it or want to revisit it, we're going to be re-presenting that series over the rest of the
0:52.2	holiday break, which means today we're bringing you
0:55.3	part one of that project, which originally aired on September 3rd, a few weeks before the final
1:01.0	A's game at the Oakland Coliseum. Also, take a look at today's episode description to find more
1:06.7	of our best stories from 2024. And with that, I turn the mic over to Clinton and Tim.
1:15.7	Tim Kewin, anybody who spent any time in the Bay Area knows just how much a part of life
1:20.8	natural disasters are there.
1:22.7	But the topic we're here to discuss today is more of a man-made disaster.
1:26.9	Am I wrong?
1:27.8	You're absolutely right, Clinton. And Oakland, California, a proud city with a proud sports history,
1:35.0	finds itself in this sad situation because of specific individuals and specific decision-making
1:41.4	bodies that made the choices to get us here.
1:51.8	It's a long and winding path to look at what has happened in Oakland,
1:54.3	but Oakland is not a bad city.
1:56.4	Oakland is not a bad sports town.
2:03.9	It was not somehow destined to lose all three of its major sports teams because of anything it did or is. I mean, those teams left because three sets of owners and leagues sort of acting
2:12.5	separately, but all in their own interests, they chose to do this. You know, this isn't the first time you've discussed this on this show,
	...

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