Best Poorest Team Ever

Every year I played softball, I was the only Oakland A’s fan on my team. My boyfriends have always been San Francisco Giants fans. I was always the sports outcast in school because I never wanted to go to Giants games. I was too concerned supporting the team I actually knew and had faith in.

Growing up in Northern California with an Oakland-born and avid baseball fan for a dad, I loved baseball and the Oakland A’s without learning much about the game itself, outside of knowing by heart Oakland’s stats, players, coaches and managers. I was a sisterless preteen, so most of my free time was spent going to baseball games and watching ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN Classic with my dad and brother.

The A’s have die-hard fans, including half of my family (my mother’s kin is from San Francisco), but they aren’t Northern California’s popular team to love and follow. The San Francisco Giants are the main obsession. An obsession many have bandwagoned since 2010, as the team won two World Series in the past three years.

As irritating as these bandwagoning fans are to most baseball followers, these occasional but not so invested fans are a core part of the Giants’ financial support. A monetary backing the Oakland A’s desperately need, no matter how ill intentioned or superficial it may be.

The Giants, and their privately funded stadium, AT&T Park, built in 2000 – with its bayfront views, nine-foot Willie Mays statue and colossal 80-foot playground slide inside a steel coke bottle, next to an equally massive baseball glove – draws in crowds not for the baseball players, but for the All-American-Baseball-Experience. Always found in the stands are a bevy of drunken people, the most gourmet stadium food you can imagine and plenty of activities for the kiddies to occupy themselves with since they didn’t come to watch the game, they came to look cute in those mini baseball jerseys!

Based in the east side of Oakland, Ca, a poverty and crime ridden city, the A’s home O.co Coliseum looks more like a degenerate, empty, sad leftover of a stadium that used to have a bustling history. The sewer system constantly backs up, dining selections are akin to the dream menu of a home alone 12-year-old, and the bathrooms look more suitable for shooting up rather than using the toilet. Portable seat cushions are basically required and I’m pretty sure the sound system features the original equipment from the stadium’s 1966 opening.

Although the stadium is the only entertainment space in the area with its own stop on the local public transportation, and even with the Coliseum’s most recent “renovation” in 1995, throughout baseball season a tarp usually covers the top seating areas, as these seats are rarely filled. The stadium, a shared home with the Oakland Raiders, is the only remaining American venue utilized by both a MLB and NFL team.

In the last decade, the A’s and the Giants have had pretty similar playoff records (yes I know, besides the whole Giants winning two World Series deal). Yet the Giants remain one of MLB’s highest paid teams, averaging over $100 million in the last few years.

This financial advantage contributes much to the attraction the Giants clubhouse is able to draw. The Giants’ move to AT&T Park from Candlestick Park, where the baseball team shared a stadium with the city’s football team the 49ers, saved them from a probable out of state relocation.

Since 2005, the A’s have faced similar relocation pressures. After failed plans to move to nearby city Fremont, the A’s franchise is looking to move to a bayfront Oakland location, or further south to San Jose, a city considered “Giants Territory” as it resides on San Francisco’s side of the Bay. Without a strong local fanbase – there aren’t too many people walking to A’s games – it’s hard for the team to convince private investors anyone outside of the franchise actually cares if they move or not.

The A’s, 2013 AL-West Division Champions, still have one of the lowest payrolls in the MLB. According to ESPN, the team’s 2013 payroll is $60,372,500, the fourth lowest of the 30 teams in the MLB.

Even with ongoing financial odds against them, the A’s rank number three in League titles won in the history of baseball’s “Fall Classic”. Although the financially troubled team has not won a World Series since 1989, and has not again made it into the World Series since 1990, the A’s continue to creep into the postseason.

The early 2000s were when I went to the most A’s games. Back then I knew nothing of baseball analysts, nor had I heard of sabermetrics or the famed part admiration, part exposé book by Michael Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, published in 2003. The book focuses on sabermetrics and its role in the Oakland A’s unconventional methods of assembling a winning team roster despite financial setbacks, a process that led the A’s to the postseason two years in a row in 2002 and 2003.

I did know and idolize the A’s winning clubhouse in those early 2000s years. Even to this day, hearing names like Nick Swisher, Jason Giambi (whose trade to the Yankees may have jump started the whole Moneyball deal), Barry Zito (yes, he started with the A’s), Mark Ellis, Jermaine Dye, Bobby Crosby, Eric Chavez, Miguel Tejada, Scott Hatteberg and Ron Washington, bring on strong waves of nostalgia.

Since 2004, the A’s have only made it to the playoffs three times, including this current 2013 season. As the Giants missed the postseason boat this year, they still lag behind the A’s in League titles won by two Series. They have a few more years before thinking about changing that position.

With a low payroll, lack of local fans and worthy-of-mentioning venue, the Oakland A’s roster has been promising for the past few seasons. Although they didn’t clinch another World Series this year, I hope their roster works together to fight whatever supposed financial setbacks baseball traditionalists expect them to falter to. Even more than continued postseason success, I hope the A’s find a resolution to their long standing location issues.

Because no matter how good the team, no one wants to go to a baseball game where they will be more irked than entertained. Fans don’t want to subject themselves to a shitty stadium environment when they could save money and stay at home, avoiding wretched smells, people and amenities.

The A’s need more than Coco Crisp, Yoenis Cespedes and John Donaldson to draw in the crowds. As much as I hate to say this, the A’s need to appeal to the niche baseballs fans who care more about the experience than the game. These ‘fans’ bring money to the ballgame. They are what help hometown heroes move into well deserved and manicured stadiums, where athletes want to play and where people want to watch.