Jake Mintz’s afternoon at Oakland Coliseum – now a bad sight for few eyes

OAKLAND, California – A scenic, cloudless afternoon in the bay. Nearly 47,000 seats occupied by only 4,159 (announced) white-collar workers. No matter how few show up, the show goes on.

Welcome to another day of professional baseball at the concrete monument to hopelessness and neglect known as Oakland Coliseum.

Here possums live in the walls. Sewer overflows are a regular occurrence. Most concession stands are blinded. Music and announcements are played from a single, colossal loudspeaker high above the right field seats. An employee mentioned a bunch of forgotten go-karts somewhere in the depths of the upper deck. NFL memos and regulations are all over the back hallways, even though the Raiders left in 2019. The outfield halls are eerily deserted, open to adventure with a touch of post-disaster Chernobyl.

Built in 1966 for the team’s arrival two years later, the Colosseum has its charms and quirks, but it certainly hasn’t aged well. Some passionate fans affectionately call it The Last Dive Bar, sticky, beer-stained floors and all. Others, saddened by his worn face, find his condition too demoralizing to face. It’s a stadium well past its sell-by date.

Fans and players simply deserve better.

Most mornings in the East Bay, even in spring, begin with a heavy morning fog. But often that gray haze gives way to sunshine by noon. That’s the daily expectation for people who call this place home; that combination of patience and optimism is an essential part of the East Bay experience. The Oakland A’s are unfortunately a rainy day.

On April 19, the Athletics announced they had purchased land off the Las Vegas Strip, with the goal of building a new stadium in the desert by 2027. After more than 20 years of difficult and fruitless negotiations with the local government over a new Bay Ballpark, this was the organization’s biggest move to leave the city. And while the Vegas plan is far from a foregone conclusion, the organization’s open embrace of Nevada taxpayers has only served to further alienate fans who have bled green and gold since the team’s arrival in 1968. .

And so it comes as no surprise that last place Athletics reported 2,064 tickets sold on May 15, the third-lowest recorded total in MLB history. The actual turnout was probably even lower. By comparison, two days later, about 2,000 people lined up in the Colosseum parking lot at 9 a.m. just for the chance to buy early access merchandise for the K-Pop concert next door. This was the setting as I drove into this empty shell of a ballpark for a Wednesday matinee against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

The first thing you notice when you attend an Oakland A’s game in 2023 is the silence. The thunderous drums of the right field bleachers, which for years served as the stadium’s soundtrack and heartbeat, are no more. In its place is a row of protest signs, draped over the right field railing with spray-painted slogans like “Stop Blaming the Fans” and “Sell the Team.”

No more than 10 people sat in the once-packed grandstand area as two die-hards in the front row proudly waved huge green and gold flags into the void.

You can still have a great time in a dilapidated, unspectacular sports venue. The Coliseum is no worse off than many college football sites, no less shiny than many European football stadiums. But this is… not that. That calls for an objectively good on-field product. And this? This is a roster primed to fight for the worst record in league history, seemingly to keep pushing fans away to better justify an eventual move to Vegas.

At one point, Diamondbacks right fielder Corbin Carroll threw a souvenir into the right field seats. The ball clattered off an empty seat and rolled to a stop down the cement aisle. In a typical stadium, this would have been cause for a frenzied sprint for the ball. Instead, a sunburned man in a printed T-shirt slowly got up from his seat, sauntered over to the ball and pocketed it before leisurely returning to his seat.

A few rows away, an older gray-haired dude in a floral-patterned aloha shirt yelled at the lucky fan, “Come on, now. Hold the ball up and give us all a ‘woo woo’.” reluctantly required. The cynical self-consciousness among the A’s faithful was as hilarious as it was sad.

It’s worth noting again that no one shows up because the team is terrible and the margin is falling apart. The club cries low attendance and refuses to reinvest in the on-field facility and product. The club gets worse and the yard gets rotten, we make our jokes online and the cycle repeats.

The few prides that still attend A’s games are probably either dazzlingly in love, excruciatingly bored, irrationally hopeful, creatures of habit, emotionally dependent, unable to let go or, in some cases, all of the above. This sunny Wednesday, when the A’s lost 5-3 and their MLB worst record dropped to an irrelevant 10-35, the crowd was mostly a sparse mix of hooky players smuggling their own beer, shrill elementary school kids on field trips, retirees in sunhats with time to kill and diehards with their scorebooks at hand in Jarrod Parker jerseys.

In fact, very few fans wore the uniforms of the current A players. Given the state of the team, that is understandable. Most of the backs are labeled “CHAPMAN,” “OLSON,” “DONALDSON,” “CÉSPEDES,” “BASSIT,” “MURPHY,” or other bygone franchise icons shipped to distant lands for prospects and peanuts. That dynamic is another reminder of how the Colosseum is a dilapidated museum, frozen in time.

Magic once happened here partly because the fans made it that way. But for too long they have gotten very little in return.

Everywhere you look, you see what this place and this team used to be: concourse murals celebrating the great A’s of old and their many accomplishments; the giant tarpaulin that covers the midfield seats with the franchise’s retired numbers; photos of Hall of Famers and World Series titles hung haphazardly on abandoned hallway walls. There’s a rich history at the Coliseum—only four active MLB stadiums have hosted more games—but there’s a difference between preservation and stagnation, between commemorating the past and refusing to adapt to the present.

Behind section 115 is a broken phone box attached to the wall. It has faux wood paneling, decades of dirt, and no dial tone, though the buttons still beep when pressed. It’s a harmless appendix from a bygone era that most professional sports organizations would have removed long ago. Consider it a charming, disheartening tribute to what happens when a facility, and by proxy a fan base, is abandoned by those responsible for its stewardship.

“Wait, let’s take a picture before we leave,” a mother told her two teenage sons as they left the stadium. “We don’t know if we’ll ever come back here.”

Jack Mintzthe louder half of @CespedesBBQ is a baseball writer for FOX Sports. He played college baseball, bad at first, then very well, very briefly. Jake lives in New York City where he coaches Little League and bikes, sometimes at the same time. Follow him on Twitter @Jake_Mintz.

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