Dear A’s Fan,
I wanted to write a note of sympathy to you, but hear me out.
I want to write it from the perspective of a hard-core Giants fan, who can dabble in petty when it comes to our cross-Bay rivals, and I want to write it to a hard-core A’s fan, who can dabble in petty when it comes to beating your cross-Bay rivals.
And I want to keep it real.
Instead of offering low-hanging fruit, like rage at awful John Fisher, I want to offer what I think a lot true Giants fan want to offer: a heartfelt hug from a bitter rival, with the understanding that it’s not always puppy dogs and ice cream when it comes to A’s fans and Giants fans.
Like, I know how much each team’s hard-core fan bases wanted to beat the other team’s hard-core fan base. Like, knowing that wearing the split A’s/Giants hat is the most befuddling, Switzerland-neutral type of fandom we can never process. Like, understanding that when the late, great Ray Fosse and the younger, more pee-and-vinegar version of Mike Krukow verbally went at each other during a Bay Bridge Series, we took sides.
Like — and let me clear about this — *even getting pissed off when you lost a Cactus League game* to each other.
True story. On more than one occasion, I can remember grumbling about yet another spring training beatdown from the A’s on the Giants, and reaching out to friends wondering why Tony La Russa and Sandy Alderson treated a Tuesday in early March like Game 5 of the World Series.
Oh, and now that I’ve mentioned the World Series . . . this letter of sympathy and friendship comes from a Giants fan that is *still* smarting from 1989. Even after 2010, 2012 and 2014 — and believe me, I know how much those hurt *you* ! — you A’s fans can always drop the 1989 bomb and, even though millennials and Gen Z’ers think of it as a black-and-white movie . . . it still stings. You guys have scoreboard.
I lived in Oakland for seven years, and found out first-hand how dyed-in-the-green-and-gold Oaklanders truly felt about the Giants. Spoiler alert: you hated us. For the more intense denizens of ‘The Town’, that feeling extended to San Francisco itself. (And let me not digress about how some of you still won’t go see the Warriors at Chase, The City is that repulsive to your cultural identity.)
Funny story: friend of mine worked at the old Oakland Tribune, in that classic Trib building in downtown Oakland. Some night desk workers were discussing where a certain restaurant in San Francisco was, and asked one of the true old heads working the desk. “I haven’t been to San Francisco in 25 years,” snarled the crusty vet, from a building located about 10 minutes from downtown San Francisco. Impressive grudge.
Back to the point of this missive.
I come to you in peace, and in love.
And there is not time or space for me to acknowledge the issue of the territorial rights in San Jose. The Giants clearly played the coldest business possible in this deal, and it all was supported by Bud Selig and MLB. The A’s got screwed. I always thought if the A’s did move to San Jose, it would be incongruous, though, and they’d lose what they always had over the Giants: the cool factor.
Part of this written hug to you guys, is admitting and fully embracing what you guys had — true, authentic, legit, real *cool* and true, authentic, legit, real *passion*. On the smallest of notes, I’ve always been jealous of Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration” as a walk-off tune. On the much bigger of notes, A’s rosters always were way more punk rock than the corporate Giants, always way more like that ‘QUESTION AUTHORITY’ bumper sticker than a stale Giants marketing slogan; always more likely to be the fun high school party than the boring high school study group. Oh, and your commercials for the teams were always way funnier and more creative, too.
Your playoff crowds were, flat-out, the best in all of baseball outside of old Yankee Stadium. Full stop.
I should say that much of these descriptions are framed post-Pac Bell Park. The last quarter-century of the Giants having the gleaming waterfront temple contrasted with the Coliseum’s slowly crumbling infrastructure brought all these underlying rivalry emotions to a head. You guys promptly put up a ‘ZERO SPLASH HITS/FOUR WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONSHIPS’ billboard on the Bay Bridge, firmly starting a 25-year identity war of you guys as the scruffy underdog and the Giants as the establishment nerds.
Part of this sympathy letter must acknowledge that there were times in my life when we freezing-cold Giants fans at mostly empty Candlestick Park were the forgotten kids on the playground while you guys forearm-bashed in the glorious daytime weather, fans sunbathing in the outfield bleachers while the Oakland hills and BART framed the East Bay horizon. So, you always had that.
But Pac Bell changed most everything, and heightened the geographic rivalry and heightened our differences and we each wanted to beat each other’s brains in on the diamond, and each got *really* bummed from every Bay Bridge Series loss.
And then came the news that the A’s were leaving Oakland.
And then came the long slow funeral of this summer. And then came this final week.
And then came Thursday afternoon — once again under those classic Oakland blue day-game skies. And you guys packed the joint. And it looked soooooo good and it was soooooo loud and The Town stood soooooo tall. You guys went out on your shield. Even though the reason for the day is so terrible, and so heart-wrenching . . . you guys did it UP.
True Oakland A’s style.
And it drove home the point that, in the end, you guys are our Bay brothers and sisters, and we all work together, and live together — and we are all blood relatives in the family of baseball.
And that any pain that crushes your baseball soul is, in the end, pain that crushes our baseball soul, too. Ask not for whom the 7th inning stretch tolls, you know? Something like that.
After all, how can we have a finger-pointing rivalry or Bay Bridge Series adrenaline or spring training angst, if there are no Oakland A’s? How empty will it be to not get a little rankled at Oracle Park when the A’s hit a bases-clearing double and some guy in a Tony Armas gamer is high-fiving some guy in a Terry Steinbach gamer while packs of Kelly-green fans chant ‘LET’S GO OAKLAND’ in our fair city?
Outside of gained market value for the bean-counters at Third and King, nothing good happened for any of us on Thursday in Oakland. This was a death for all of us.
It’ll never be the same. All I can do is offer to buy you a beer at the nearest dive bar, and talk ball over a cold one.
Much love,
A Giants Fan