The Oakland A's: The New Laughing Stock of The MLB

By John Holguin 

Spring training is happening and opening day is only a few days away for the MLB. The team that has been talked about the most due to the recent announcement of the team's move to Las Vegas is The Oakland Athletics. Known as the “A's”, this franchise has had some of the  worst records in baseball for three years in a row and it’s starting to get old for Oakland A’s fans. The A’s have constantly had to trade their star players, such as all star 3rd baseman, Matt Chapman, who was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays in the beginning of the 2022 season. There were also five more trades before the start of the 2022 season. From there, they have had back to back seasons of awful records. Their 2022 record was 60-102, and their 2023 season was worse, with only 50 wins and 112 losses. But what makes them so bad? 

It’s not that the A’s are just a bad team- they have good young talent on the team - but it goes deeper with owners, location, fans, and management within the Oakland Athletics organization. In fact, there was a whole movie made about it called Moneyball with actors like Brad Pitt, and Jona Hill. The movie explained how the A’s developed a strategy where they discover that they don’t need to pay their star players and can instead settle for less valuable players and still get wins. However, this strategy has grown old and has proved to be irrelevant in today's MLB. Now the A’s are left with a dying franchise that can't really do much but try to start something new. A lot of fans have stopped going to the games in a boycott against the owner, John Fisher, who plans to move the team to Las Vegas. Ever since this move to Vegas was announced, fans have stopped attending the games. 

The Oakland A’s attendance at the colosseum has been record breaking, but not in a good way. The Oakland A’s have experienced some of the lowest game attendance in MLB history. Compared to the rest of the league, they were last, with only 10,275 fans per game. This boycott by the fans has left the stadium looking almost abandoned. The Oakland Colosseum was also rated one of the worst stadiums for games due to the age of the stadium, as well as some of the worst rated bathrooms and seats for fans to use. There were plans to keep the team in Oakland and build a new stadium in Oakland but it was denied by the city of Oakland. This left no hope for the team to stay in Oakland and left fans doubtful of John Fisher's ability to manage the team properly. Many fans demanded that John Fisher sell the franchise but the fans' voices were not heard.

On a Tuesday night game against the Tampa Bay Rays on June 13th, thousands of Oakland Athletics fans came to the game in a reserve boycott that was organized on social media. More than 22,000 fans showed up to the game. Before the game started, there were thousands of fans in the parking lot giving away shirts that had the words “Sell” or “Sell the Team”. The fans got as loud as they could throughout the game and chanted profanities that were targeted at owner John Fisher. However, this boycott did not work and the A’s are still moving to Vegas. Despite the fans’ attempt to keep their beloved team, things just didn’t work out and they will now be moving to Las Vegas. They will get a new state of the art stadium but all the memories made in Oakland will soon just be a thought.