A’s fans distressed by news of move

“This has seemed to be inevitable for a year or so, at least. I’m still more saddened than I thought I would be.” Oakland A’s fan Ryan Thibodaux on news the team is leaving for Las Vegas

OAKLAND, Calif. — Ryan Thibodaux arrived in the Bay Area in 1995 from Texas and instantly became a fan of the Oakland Athletics.

The one-time Astros fan cheered slugger Mark McGwire, who hit 52 home runs the following year. He saw the glory days of Dave Stewart and Dennis Eckersley; of Eric Chavez, Jason Giambi and Miguel Tejada; of $2 BART rides and bargain bleacher seats in the third deck. The A’s “converted me over pretty quickly,” he said.

All these years later, Thibodaux and many Oakland fans already were heartbroken about the state of their struggling team — small crowds, bad baseball and dismal winters watching top players being traded away or lost in free agency.

Now, the greatest disappointment yet: Yes, the A’s are leaving for Las Vegas.

“This has seemed to be inevitable for a year or so, at least,” Thibodaux said Thursday. “I’m still more saddened than I thought I would be.”

The news came Wednesday night from team president Dave Kaval, who said Oakland signed a binding agreement to buy land on a 49-acre site near the Las Vegas Strip to build the intimate ballpark they’ve always coveted but couldn’t pull off in the Bay Area.

“This really is one of the saddest days,” said lifelong fan Jason Bressler, 40, who grew up in suburban Alamo and now lives in Los Angeles. “Some of my best childhood memories were in Section 216 of the Coliseum with my friends and family.

“Attending Game 4 of the 1989 World Series with my dad is an experience I’ll cherish forever.”

Even after moving out of the Bay Area and starting his own family, Bressler kept his allegiance, making it a “point to take in multiple games a year whether in Oakland or on the road.

“Now that they are leaving I can’t help but feel like a big piece of my childhood is going with them,” he said. “It pains me that I won’t be able to share those same experiences with my kids moving forward.”

Oakland’s last professional team lost its luster long ago for many supporters who were increasingly frustrated and furious about a rise in season ticket prices and $30 parking fees — not to mention the carousel of players.

The A’s drew an announced crowd of just 3,035 fans on Monday, April 3, for the first game of a series with the Cleveland Guardians. It rose to 3,407 the next night — but 11 of 13 Class AAA games that day attracted larger crowds and four of them more than doubled the A’s total.

The team declined to comment on its attendance situation.

Manager Mark Kotsay, his coaches and the players are trying to survive, too. They lost 102 games in 2022 and are 3-16 heading into a weekend series starting today at Texas.

After being swept by the Cubs this week at home, the team had already lost five games by 10 or more runs. The only seasons since moving to Oakland in 1968 when the A’s had more than five double-digit losses for an entire season were 1996 (8), 2008 (8), 1984 (7) and 1979 (6).

Former Mariners outfielder Jay Buhner used to say he could hear toilets flush in the third deck of the old Kingdome in Seattle. It’s like that now in the dilapidated Oakland Coliseum. Kotsay hears everything from the dugout, even things outside of the park.

“You can hear every sound here, every voice, every word, yeah, you can hear it. It’s not discouraging. It’s not discouraging because you get the opportunity to go play. From a player’s view you’ve got to have some thick skin and understand that it’s not necessarily directed at you,” he said.

In May 2021, MLB told the A’s to explore relocation options, saying the Oakland Coliseum was no longer a viable option. The A’s had previously proposed and withdrawn plans for ballparks in Fremont and San Jose, and Kaval had worked on a plan for a new state-of-theart ballpark in the city’s Howard Terminal area.

Never an A’s season ticketholder, the 41-year-old Thibodaux still comes out to the Coliseum from time to time, and can appreciate the game itself if not the product. He still held out some hope for a new ballpark in the East Bay — but acknowledged it’s hard to be optimistic with so many empty seats and such a public courtship with Sin City.

The loyal fans, Thibodaux included, and the the men in the green-and-gold uniforms have known this day was coming.

“It hasn’t been the same for a long time,” he said.