Stadium Report #1: So long, Oakland Coliseum
Ten personal memories from 20 years of going to games here
I wanted to get to Oakland for Opening Day this year, knowing we’re nearing the end of Major League Baseball in the city perhaps forever. (update: 2024 is it, as they will be playing in Sacramento the next 3-4 years. As someone whose local NHL team plays in a college barn, let me tell you this is far from a great solution.)
I didn’t make it to the Opening Day boycott in the parking lot where fans gave a big F-U to ownership and had a big party on the massive asphalt expanse. I did make it for game 2, however. A cold, rainy Friday night matchup against the Guardians. It was a recipe for a poorly attended game and it “delivered”. The official attendance was 3,837 and it felt like barely 2,000 if I’m being generous.
Still, this was my first time going on a road trip and trying to get interviews from fans, staff, bystanders, whatever… so I was a little excited. I went with Sarah (diehard A’s fan from this interview:
We got there early, paying $30(!) to park at 5:00 for a 6:40 start. I put my journalism hat on, grabbed a case of Coors Light and thought I’d go hangout with some of the other tailgaters; it was slim pickings. There were maybe 3 to 4 groups setup by the time I gave up and went inside at about 6:15. We only talked to one group, who were there celebrating a birthday with friends and family. About a dozen of them had come from as far as Reno (over the Donner Pass and beating the snow) to wish EJ a happy birthday watching his favorite team.
I didn’t get much from them. EJ, his stepfather Matt, and his mother Shelly talked a little about how he became a baseball fan and then an A’s fan. Basically, Matt is into motocross and rodeos up in Reno, but EJ got hooked on baseball living in the Bay Area. They’d come to a game or two every season at the Coliseum because that was the closest team. And now they were in a cold, empty, rainy parking lot drinking beers and singing Happy Birthday and enjoying some family time while doing everything they could to delay going inside to the deserted stadium looming over us.
The parking lot and the tailgate used to be one of the top attractions of the Coliseum. Didn’t matter where you parked, your walk to the admission gates involved slipping through tightly packed cars, dodging baseballs and footballs, and hearing the sizzling of burgers and hot dogs on portable grills as you passed multiple clans all enjoying the camaraderie and bonding that can only happen sitting on a tattered folding chair with a cold Budweiser and a boombox on the tailgate. Well, it doesn’t look like that’s the case anymore. Besides Milwaukee, is there anywhere left to tailgate? I know for sure you can’t at Chase Field unless it’s August and you want some dashboard cookies.
When I was a freshman in college, I had a late Thursday final for my last class of the school year. So I was one of the last to move out of the dorms. When I got back after the test to load up the truck, there was maybe 2 other people still there out of the 40 or so on my floor. The party was over. That’s what it felt like showing up to the A’s parking lot this Friday.
So I had to call an audible. And like any good journalist, I’ll just make the story about myself. And even better than words, I’ll use photos! We had plenty of time and no supervision, so I told Sarah I wanted to get some pictures from sections of the ballpark I had specific memories in. Let’s walk in… after passing Bauer’s brother at security:
By the way, I know this was Bauer’s brother because he totally didn’t do his job. It’s lawless there now. As we left in the 8th inning, this drunk had pried open a concession stand window and was trying to fill his beer cup from the keg and… no one cared. No employees, no security, not even Stomper could be found:
Okay, on to “Graig’s Coliseum highs and lows”.
Memory 1: The Entrance
It used to be a lot more exciting coming through this tunnel into the wide concourses with green and gold everywhere (except during Yankees series…) And walking out, helped by that big yellow arrow pointing the way, was the only place in the world I didn’t mind the smell of cigarettes that lingered and gathered in the rafters above.
Memory 2: The Concourse and the Bathrooms
I didn’t snap a pic of the bathrooms, but I do remember this particular story from Opening Day 1999 against the Yankees. We had seats way in the right field upper deck looking down on the foul pole. My brother was extra excited and he wouldn’t shut up about this rookie, Eric Chavez, who was supposed to be the next big thing. Anyways, it was a cold and windy night up there. I was with my brother, my dad, and the three Cohans. On the way out we went to use the bathroom. Which means 12-year-old me and my three short friends lined up at the trough to piss up and over the rim into it, shoulder to shoulder with every other A’s fan in attendance that night it seemed like.
Well, right in front of us in the trough, soaked in pee, was a paperback book someone had dropped in and wisely decided not to fish out. Of course we laughed, and this old fat man next to us laughed too. He said, “Oh good, a target! Just piss right on Leonard!” and he swung his stubby little chode to the left to hose down the book. So all four of us got a lovely view of what the penis of a smelly, obese alcoholic man looks like, and a little time in the splash zone as well. I remember him saying Leonard because that was the author’s name on the book, which then means it must’ve been an Elmore Leonard book. So my first experience with one of my favorite authors and the man behind the greatest TV show of all time, Justified, was watching his work get pissed on in a Coliseum urinal trough. Welp.
Memory 3: September 10, 2001
Right around this section, third base dugout, was where we had seats pretty often from 2001-2004. I remember this one vividly since it was the last baseball game I’d ever go to in the ‘before times’. Barry Zito threw a complete game (1 ER, 10K, 2BB) in 2:35 in front of 12,115. It was a quick, pleasant night with my dad and brother, peanuts and Cracker Jack and all that. And then the next morning… well, I’ll just say this is the last Major League game I ever went to where we didn’t have to stand for God Bless America in the 7th, walk through metal detectors and obviously all the new fun of air travel.
Memory 4: October 14, 2001
It was Game 4 of the ALDS against the Yankees and my dad, my brother and I were sitting in this section, probably 8 to 10 rows from the top of the ballpark. It was the game Jermaine Dye broke his leg with a foul ball. But I didn’t see that happen. The inning before, I ran down the steps and ducked into a little shaded spot in the concourse. I didn’t know what was going on then, but now I know it was the first time I’d ever had a panic attack. Like the full on, sweating, dizzy, going to vomit, probably gonna die kind. I had no idea what was happening and I just wanted to go home.
And then I heard the crowd go quieter as he lied there. Other fans were coming down into the concourse during the break as he got carried off. I was crouched down in a squat, trying to gather myself, and one fan came up and said, “it’ll be okay, I bet he’s just got a bruise.” He thought I was all worked up over the injury. Anyways, I eventually crept back to my seat, pulled my hat down low and just tried to ride out the rest of the game since we couldn’t leave that early. They still happen every so often and I’ve gotten somewhat better at managing them, but riding that first one out was… terrifying.
Memory 5: June 30, 2003
We sat somewhere in this section. I remember we were the only two people in that section and I was convinced I’d finally nab a foul ball. Who’s “we”? Well that’d be my high school girlfriend, who the night before had broken up with me in a park and then driven off to a party. The next afternoon, she called and said she wanted to go to an A’s game, just the two of us. I said yes, the first of many, many questionable decisions I’ve made regarding women.
When I told Sarah this story as I took the above picture, she couldn’t believe that girl would’ve done that and also couldn’t believe that I went. But I remember that night. I don’t remember any of the game. In hindsight, it would’ve been better to remember the game and forget the rest of that whole thing.
Memory 6: October 6, 2003
Another memory around a terrible injury. It was a long, long wait while they carted him off. Vik and I honestly thought he’d died. I was there in those same seats behind the third base dugout, I had no idea about the part where the Red Sox got into it with Turd Ferguson over there in his foam cowboy hat. Sadly, that was game 5 and the A’s lost (again). But on the way home we got listen to this crazy Monday Night Football comeback on the radio which was a wild ride those last 30 minutes:
Memory 7: October 2, 2004
For one, this was the last game I ever went to at the Coliseum without tarps covering up part of the seats. It was a huge series. The A’s came into that final series tied with the Angels for 1st in the AL West. So I drove up from Cal Poly, where I’d been all of 3 weeks, to go to the games on Friday and Saturday. The A’s dropped the first two games and didn’t make the playoffs, finishing September and October with a 13-18 record and trading Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder that offseason. The Friday night crowd was 47,081. The Saturday attendance was 42,832. You can’t do better than a fall afternoon in the East Bay.
And speaking of blowing it, sitting next to me at this game was the girl I actually liked in high school. She had a boyfriend but we hung out most of the summer and off and on afterward. At some point mid-game, she said, “Hey, Graig”. So I looked over, she was just staring at me up and down. I’d seen enough movies to know what that meant so I leaned over and kissed her. Turns out that was not what I was supposed to do. She laughed hysterically when I realized what she was staring at was her phone reflecting a light spot onto my face, trying to get it in my eye, which I didn’t notice at all. The A’s got shutout Friday night. I got shutout Saturday. Whoops. The second of many, many questionable decisions I’ve made regarding women.
Memory 8: September 1, 2006
This was the 28th and final Major League stadium I went to in 2006 after the baseball trip (Miami and Seattle got skipped). They’d started tarping off the upper decks by then, but the A’s were up 9 games in the west and 31,179 were in attendance. Seeing these old pics of a full lower bowl, the bleachers with the drummers and homemade signs draped over… the franchise could’ve embraced their fans better. Instead they spent the next 18 years driving them away.
Memory 9: May 26, 2014
It was a long break between games at the Coliseum after college. Between 2006 and 2014 I’d lived in 4 states before winding up in Arizona. But I came back for Memorial Day weekend to go with friends and another “sellout” crowd of 35,067. This team made the playoffs, too, losing the first ever Wild Card play-in game to the Royals.
I remember it being sunny and hot. But what I really remember was my trip on BART to SFO airport afterward. I had an early evening flight and hurried to catch a train across the bay. That was my first encounter with the current situation on BART transit. This woman, toothless, gray-haired and strung out on drugs, was shouting at everyone in the train car. When someone asked her to sit down, she pulled a knife and threatened to stab everyone. I was only 3 stops into my ride and already under attack. Luckily they dragged her off two stops later and… I have not been on BART since.
Memory 10: March 29, 2024
And that brings us to my final visit to the Coliseum. It’d been a decade between visits. I didn’t feel any nostalgia or sadness or any emotions really during the whole game. I just felt like baseball in Oakland was already dead. It was just being kept on life support until the team can run away. I had no idea things were this bad. I always knew the national view of the Oakland Coliseum is not what it actually is. To the fans and the locals, it’s still a place to meet up with friends, enjoy a ballgame and be part of the community that’s been established since the 60s.
Here’s what it reminded me of… A couple years after graduating college, I was living in Utah. Since finishing high school in 2004, I hadn’t lived back in Danville for more than a month at a time. This was 2009 and I flew back for Thanksgiving. Our family dog, Chloe, was 18 years old by then. She’d been deaf, arthritic and just an old lazy dog for years at that point. It’d been like 9 months since my last visit home, and this time I noticed she had gotten so much worse. She was staring at walls, didn’t recognize anyone, seemed to be in pain. She’d been falling in the pool a lot. My family members who still lived at home didn’t notice it since it had been happening gradually. So the next morning I took her to the vet, knowing she wasn’t right. She didn’t come home from that trip. The last few months she’d had cancer and dementia and basically was gone. Now she was no longer suffering.
That’s what it felt like in Oakland this year. It’s already dead, it’s been dead for a couple years, probably a decade to be honest. The humane thing to do is to put this fan base out of its misery. We already know the owners don’t give a shit, so selling to a new principal owner is out of the question. But just get out. The fans already said good-bye. The franchise already dumped them. The roster is nearly unwatchable. Let them move on.
I learned recently that you can’t move on if whoever or whatever you’re trying to move on from keeps hanging around, stringing you along. Whether that’s a woman or a baseball franchise, the No-Contact rule is the best prescription (so I’ve been told…).
