For Oakland A’s Fans, It’s Not Been A Field of Dreams

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 31 May 2022

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A recent piece in the New York Times, called the Oakland A’s “the loneliest team in baseball.” Though the Coliseum where they play can hold 57,000 fans, on average only 6,000 show up for home games. What happened to the glorious days of the A’s when manager Billy Beane was acclaimed for his savvy in managing the roster and payroll to get the most out of bench players? Has the management of the A’s turned off fans with their threats to move to Las Vegas if they don’t get a new stadium? And can Bay Area fans sustain two major league baseball teams? We’ll look at the state of the Oakland A’s, their future, and the hard economics of major league baseball. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:32.1	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
0:48.8	Man, it's hard out there for an Oakland A's fan right now.
0:52.5	The team is involved in a bruising fight for a new stadium,
0:55.0	and they might leave anyway off to follow the Raiders to Las Vegas.
0:59.0	The management has traded away the stars and fan favorites yet again.
1:03.0	In recent games, the Coliseum has sometimes seen fewer than 3,000 people.
1:08.0	This famously loyal fan base finally seems to be giving up. We'll ask some of them
1:12.7	what they still love, if they're willing to stick out the stadium fight, and what their
1:16.6	predicament says about the state of the old pastime here and nationally. That's all
1:21.1	coming up next after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Let's start with who the Oakland A's have been in baseball lore. This is not a sad sack franchise. They three-peated from 1972 to 1974 back in the happier
1:47.1	mustachio days of the Coliseum. In the late 1980s, they had the Bash brothers and saw the
1:52.2	return of Ricky Henderson. In 1989, they swept the San Francisco Giants in the World Series.
1:57.8	This century has seen the team make the playoffs over and over, winning their
	...

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