After several months to a few years of build up, it’s now officially been confirmed. The Athletics will move from Oakland to Las Vegas as soon as 2028. The team is expected to play in the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum for at least one more year, then will move to their minor league ballpark in Las Vegas itself from 2025 to 2027 due to the former stadium leash expiring. After that, Las Vegas will officially have it’s very first professional baseball team.
This was a move that had been expected for some time now. Anyone that knows the politics and business side of baseball could realize how much contempt that A’s owner John Fisher had for the city of Oakland and it’s fanbase. The team has had one of the lowest payrolls in baseball for the better part of a decade, they refuses to go out and spend money on big players, and would always trade away their top star players the moment that arbitration becomes a major factor. And heck, they even refuse to pay for stadium employees to at least keep the stadium clean. All of those things and more is what led to the Athletics being one of the worst professional baseball teams of all time last year and the reason they are being forced out of Oakland as soon as possible.
As a fan of baseball and sports, I can’t tell you how much this move sickens me. Not only because John Fisher has proven how little he cares about putting together a quality product on the field but that he’s being REWARDED for it by the rest of the league. It’s disgusting how cheap owners are still being allowed to purposely tank teams and crank out awful teams intentionally just for the sake of lighting their own pockets. What makes it even more disgusting is that everyone in baseball KNOWS this and still refuses to do anything to stop this all from happening. If that goes to show how little the league cares about the quality of it’s own product, then I don’t know what does.
I may not be an Athletics fan but I can certainly relate to the fans of Oakland. This all goes back to another a-hole sports owner in Stan Kroenke (I cringe when I so much as type this man’s name out) when the Rams were in St. Louis. Similar to what Fisher has done with the A’s in Oakland, Kroenke went into full tank mode with the Rams on purpose during the team’s final years in St. Louis. He cranked out awful teams year in and year out, tried to put the blame on the fans for not supporting the team when he was purposely not trying to win, shown his true colors when he had his eyes on moving the Rams back to LA for the sake of funding a new stadium, and got his wish completely in 2016 by convincing the NFL to move the Rams out of St. Louis based on a lie. To add more salt to the wound, the moment he got out of Missouri, he did everything in his power to make the Rams in Los Angeles a winning team once again, eventually leading to a Super Bowl appearance in 2019 and a Super Bowl victory in 2022. If most of that sounds familiar, that’s because that’s basically what John Fisher has done with his own ballclub. While I may not be someone that can predict the future, it would be a surprise to absolutely NOBODY if Fisher finds himself more motivated to win once the Athletics move to Las Vegas completely.
The city of Oakland has had their fair share of heartbreaks in recent years over losing their professional sports teams to other cities across America. There was the Warriors that they lost in 2019 when that team moved back to San Francisco, there was the Raiders which they lost less than a year later in 2020 when that team moved to Las Vegas, and now just three years later, there is the Athletics which they will also lose to Las Vegas. That makes for three professional sports teams lost in just five years. If there is not a city in America that has suffered the most in regards to losing their own sports teams, then I don’t know what that is because Oakland certainly fits the mold when it comes to that.
It would be something if there was at least a notable attempt from the owner or the league itself to stop this move from happening but that was clearly not the case here. Oakland itself was basically betrayed by both their own owner and major league baseball itself. The motives from John Fisher were as clear as daylight these past few years and everyone could see the writing on the walls but yet nothing happened to prevent any of this. Just like how it’s still hard for me to this day to want to watch NFL football because of the way they treated my former team, I would be hard pressed if Oakland fans won’t be bother to even turn on a single MLB game anytime soon because of everything that has happened.
There has been increasing discussions as to why baseball is not as much of a popular watch as it once was. Even with the new rule changes this year that helped increase ticket sales, it still has suffered from consistently low TV ratings, especially in regards to this year’s World Series between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Texas Rangers, which was the least viewed World Series in MLB history. Everyone has their own theory but I believe the biggest answer is simply because of how little most teams care about winning nowadays. As each season goes by and more and more teams are being allowed into the playoffs, it’s become increasingly clear that more and more teams are trying very little to put out the best possible team they can. Because if basically any team can get into the playoffs now, what’s the point of even trying to be competitive when just being at least five or six games above .500 can guarantee a playoff spot. This leads to lesser payrolls, more poorly constructed rosters, and owners that are basically rewarded for putting half ass products out there rather than being punished for it. All of that and more is what makes room for disaster teams such as last year’s Athletics and more.
Regardless of what team you root for in baseball, I think every baseball fan can agree that this is not how we want our teams to go out and have owners who clearly don’t care. All 30 teams in baseball deserve a chance at putting together a great team every year. And it should be the main goal of the owner to do everything in their power to put together a great team either now or for the foreseeable future. Anything besides that is completely unacceptable. Every owner in sports should have limits and restraints that forces them to do what they can to deliver the best possible team they can for the fanbase of the team they owned. Anything less than that is unacceptable. If they refuse to, they should be punished for it. Either by the means of fines or being forced to sell their team to someone who actually cares. That should be clear and simple yet it isn’t. And the fact that situations such as this is still allowed goes to show how no team is ever safe in sports from being forced out and anyone could lose their team if their owner and league cares very little about them.
Regardless, the Athletics will be moving from Oakland to Las Vegas as soon as 2028, with them moving on to their AAA ballpark in Las Vegas from 2025 to 2027. To the A’s fans in Oakland that have shown their love and support for your team throughout their history, I’m so sorry and I wouldn’t blame you if you can never find it in your heart to forgive Major League Baseball for what they have allowed to happen. It just sucks!
Adam's Blog 