Death of a Sports Town Part 5: The Curtain Closes on the Oakland A's

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4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 1 October 2024

⏱️ 34 minutes

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Summary

Last Thursday, the Athletics played their final game ever in Oakland, the city they’ve called home for 57 years. As friend of the show Jeff Passan wrote, baseball in the East Bay was “killed by greed… John Fisher did not have to move this team… This was a choice. A wrong one. History will sneer.” For the conclusion of our Death of a Sports Town series, we trekked to the Oakland Coliseum and bore witness to the sights, sounds, and emotions of a city’s last gasp as a big time pro sports town. It was a poignant and passionate display from a vibrant and rich fanbase, defiant to the very end. Today, we share that experience with you. Death of a Sports Town Episodes: Apple Podcasts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, & Part 4 Spotify: All episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I have to say before we start our trek Clinton I'm really not great with Heights and I had a
0:08.1	little moment at the top where I thought it you know completely unwarranted where I thought maybe okay where are we actually trying to go like
0:15.2	let me take a moment to explain what you're hearing here this is the sound of our
0:19.5	intrepid reporter Tim Kuin and myself last Thursday when we were sizing up a
0:24.9	structure that we spent a lot of time discussing over the past several weeks.
0:29.2	I don't know if my my fear is heights or like edges.
0:33.4	Yeah, yeah, those tend to come at the same time
0:35.9	though.
0:36.4	They are linked fears, I would say.
0:38.4	We were standing inside of the Oakland Coliseum
0:41.1	on the front row of the structure that has come to be known as Mount Davis.
0:47.6	The giant grandstand built to lure the Raiders back to Oakland in 1995 and named for Al Davis, of course the longtime owner of that football team.
0:57.0	And this would be the same grandstand whose construction cooked this city's finances
1:02.6	for decades and hamstrung its ability
1:05.0	to finance new stadiums for both the Raiders and the A's.
1:09.3	Where I'm not going to the top, okay?
1:11.4	I've refused to go to the top. It's already high enough up here and there are I don't know a hundred
1:16.8	feet more of stairs that I just won't be tackling at all.
1:19.2	Yeah I think I think yesterday on my watch it gave me eight flights for to go up there.
1:25.0	Eight flights.
1:26.0	Of course the details behind all of that were covered in the previous episodes of
1:30.0	our series Death of a Sports Town.
	...

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