An Open Letter to the Oakland Athletics

Suite day with my siblings, cousins, and a friend

I’m a fourth-generation Oakland A’s fan.

My great-grandfather, Apollonio “Tony” Marzo, immigrated here from the Philippines in 1926 to get an education and perhaps had some idea of the American dream. His children would grow up in Oakland for most of their youth in the 1940s and ’50s. Baseball was his favorite sport, and he was first a fan of the Oakland Oaks until the Athletics moved to Oakland from Kansas City in 1968. My dad was born in Oakland in 1964, and he tells me that Grandpa Tony would sit on his porch listening to the Oakland A’s games on a transistor radio while smoking on a Toscanello cigar. Tony’s daughters, my grandmother and great aunt, continued the tradition, perhaps as a way of staying connected with their father, and have had season tickets to the A’s since 2003. If you ever heard a Conch shell blowing after a home run at the Oakland Coliseum, sure enough, that was my grandmother. According to her, when the A’s won the World Series in 1973, my grandfather (her husband) and uncle were at Game 7 and brought home a piece of turf that they planted in their backyard at their home at the time in Concord. In this way, the A’s were literally part of the home my dad and his siblings grew up in.

As you might imagine, I’ve quite literally been going to Oakland A’s games since I was born. My grandparents would take me and my cousins to the games on spring and fall weekends and on summer days. I grew up watching Eric Chavez and Barry Zito. I got an autograph from Mark Kotsay once, and I thought Frank “The Big Hurt” Thomas was the best power hitter I’d ever seen (sorry Barry Bonds). Once a year we would get a suite where the extended family would come and bring food for a day at the ballpark. When Moneyball came out, we went and saw it as a sort of family event.

Over the years, I developed a better understanding of the game, and the first time I was really invested in the team and the outcome was in 2012. Unfortunately, we fell victim to Justin Verlander and the Detroit Tigers that year, but the team was still green. In 2013 we made the playoffs again, and I was lucky enough to attend every home game in the ALDS series. I was there when Stephen Vogt had the walk-off RBI in Game 2 tying up the series! Of all the NBA, NFL, NHL, and MLB games I’ve been to, I never felt the energy and excitement in a sports crowd more than I did for those three home playoff games - 46,000 people on their feet waving yellow rally towels like madmen all chanting “LET’S GO OAK-LAND”.

The following season I experienced my second-worst baseball-related heartbreak. In the first half of 2014, the A’s were arguably the best team in baseball. They were 66 and 41 the night before the trade deadline. The next morning, I woke up and my mom told me the A’s traded away Yoenis Cespedes. I thought it was a bad dream. He was probably my favorite Athletic to date. But trust the management, they said - we needed Jon Lester because our pitching staff wasn’t good enough to contend with the best. And with that, the magic died for that year. The rest of the season ended historically bad: we lost 33 of the final 55 games, and then we lost in the Wild Card game to the Kansas City Royals. In the subsequent off-season, the A’s let go or traded away all of their best players.

Fast forward through eight years of the same soup just reheated. The A’s farm good talent, make the playoffs, have a three-year window, and then trade away all their talent because the owner refuses to pay anyone since he’s a cheap bastard. In 2021, commissioner Rob Man-fraud declared that the Oakland Coliseum was no longer fit for the MLB’s image. Our last hope was the Howard Terminal stadium for which the renderings looked amazing, but progress stalled for 5 straight years without breaking ground. Then, it was announced a day before continued negotiations with the city of Oakland that the Oakland Athletics organization purchased a parcel of land in Las Vegas where they intended to build their new stadium.

I’ll get to the owner of the A’s and where he can put his new parcel of land. But let's be clear about one thing - the city of Oakland and the other relevant Oakland stakeholders are not blame-free. The A’s have been trying to relocate within the Bay Area since 2001. I won’t bore you with their various failures, but Howard Terminal was decided upon as the location in 2018. I followed the progress of the plans and the negotiations and the agreements. You can’t build a Lego set in the city of Oakland without greasing everyone’s hand. With the amount of red tape and the lawsuits involved in any construction project it’s a wonder anything gets done around here. Three different sports franchises decided to relocate to greener pastures from Oakland within the past several years, so don’t tell me the A’s were the problem the whole time. Mark Davis announced his intention to move the Raiders to Las Vegas on March 24, 2016. The stadium OPENED on July 31, 2020. On the other hand, it took three years just to get the approval of the Environmental Impact Report for the Howard Terminal stadium. Everyone that was complicit in the deadlock that asphyxiated this project in the womb and ultimately dissuaded the A’s from staying should be ashamed of themselves. It was estimated that the Howard Terminal stadium would create 2,000 construction jobs and even more permanent jobs related to the ballpark and the surrounding area which was to be built up along with the stadium. Now no one gets anything.

As for the owner, John Fisher, I don’t believe he ever cared one way or the other. This organization was always an ATM to him. At the end of the day, he made the best decision for his bottom line, and that decision was to leave Oakland for Sin City. You would think if you purchased a historic and storied sports franchise you would be interested in the long-term success of your team and the surrounding community, but that’s not the case here. How do I know that? Run the numbers. The MLB has a revenue-sharing system in place. This I knew, but I didn’t realize just how much teams were receiving per annum until recently. Each team receives over $110 million per year as part of the revenue-sharing agreement. The purported purpose of this agreement is to promote parity and give smaller ball clubs the ability to compete with big market clubs. Obviously, if you’re the Yankees, this hurts you more than it helps you, but in theory it’s for the greater good of the league if the smaller clubs reinvest this money into their rosters. However, that’s not what we’re seeing happen. To give you an idea of the difference in Major League payrolls, this year, 21 teams will spend over $100 million, eight will spend over $200 million, and one will spend over $300 million. How much will the Oakland A’s spend, you ask? The organization will spend about $60 million for its total 2023 payroll. Mind you, that number includes the injury reserve payroll. So how much are the A’s spending on the 26-man active roster? You know, the guys actually playing? $36 million. Five players across the league are making more than that in just this year. So teams are mandated to share revenue, but there’s no mandate on spending said money that’s intended to improve your team. So owners like Fisher who seem not to care in the first place have little to no incentive to succeed when they’re already receiving a substantial cash flow regardless of their performance. It would come as absolutely no surprise if you told me that Fisher outright pocketed the rest. I’m curious to see if he plans on investing in his team now that they’ll be in Las Vegas. I just have a hard time imagining a team with a bunch of no-name players filling a stadium on a Friday evening on the Strip.

All that said, congratulations. You robbed a fan base of its beloved franchise which has been in Oakland for 56 years, won four World Series, and has had five Hall of Fame players. You’ve spat in the faces of loyal fans and Bay Area culture, so don’t come up with some “Rooted in Oakland” slogan or jersey concept. So when I say I’m resigning as an A’s fan, I’m not doing it happily or hastily - I’m not the one that wanted this. But after 24 years of my loyalty, you left me - the type of fan who would’ve died before he put on a San Francisco Giants ball cap. Goodbye.