After 57 years in Oakland, the Oakland Athletics will play their final home game in the Bay Area on Thursday, September 24 against the Texas Rangers. In an attempt to thank the fans in Oakland, team owner John Fisher sent an email thanking the fans and attempting to explain the situation.
This did not sit with fans well.
Throughout this entire endeavor regarding the A’s departure from Oakland, the fans had made it clear that they wanted the team to remain in Oakland. While the team constantly posted poor ticket sales figures, much of that can be explained by ownership’s reluctance to update the outdated Oakland Coliseum and/or make impactful signings to keep the A’s a competitive team. To be hit with a letter from Fisher claiming that ‘we tried,’ while it wasn’t meant to be, feels like a slap in the face to many of the fans who’d been waiting for ownership to ‘try’ anything.
Nobody was angrier than ABC Bay Area reporter Larry Beil though. The sports reporter wasted no time giving his thoughts on the letter on local television. He did not mince his words, and he said what many fans in Oakland were feeling.
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Anchor’s gripes with John Fisher
Beil starts his rant by reading off the crux of Fisher’s letter. Fisher wrote that when he and his partner bought the team in 2005, they wanted to win championships and build a new ballpark. He then claims that while he tried his best to do just that, he ‘tried’ but ‘came up short.’ Fisher then goes on to claim that staying in Oakland was his ultimate goal and that he is sorry he could not achieve it.
Beil then delves into Fisher’s statement, claiming that while Fisher did propose five different locations for a new stadium in the Bay Area, all of those proposals were massively flawed, and they ‘never even got close to a shovel in the ground.’ Beil then argues against Fisher’s claims that winning championships was a priority. He compares Fisher to Golden State Warriors’ owner Joe Lacob, arguing that ‘you need to spend money to make money,’ just as Lacob did with the Warriors.
Beil followed that up with a bombshell, disproving Fisher’s statement that he would ‘like to speak to each [A’s fan] individually.’ Beil claimed that his station has been trying to interview Fisher for years, but that Fisher always chooses to ‘stay invisible,’ only ever opting for interviews when he wants to beg politicians for public funding.
Beil finishes his initial rant by doing what all A’s fans wanted to do when they read that letter, ripping it up. He then went into a tirade about Fisher’s incompetence regarding the team’s move to Vegas. Fisher said that even though the move to Vegas is viewed as set in stone, the A’s have not offered a plan for the stadium at all and will play each of the next three seasons in a minor league stadium in Sacramento. Beil believes Fisher and the rest of A’s ownership will mess this up as well, which could make Major League Baseball force Fisher to sell the team.
John Fisher letter: Reactions
Absolutely. Most notably, a former Oakland Athletics player actually took up arms against Fisher.
Trevor May recorded the final out of Oakland’s infamous ‘reverse boycott’ game last year, which saw fans flood the stadium to prove that they would attend games if ownership cared for the team at all.
May writes, ‘Be an adult. Get in front of a camera and say it with your chest. Releasing a letter, clearly written by someone else, and including a bunch of names you DEFINITELY do not know, is just disrespectful to those that love the team.’
May wasn’t the only one though. Former fan favorite Josh Reddick agreed with May’s sentiment wholeheartedly.
Why is the letter so bad?
The most enraging part of the letter is undoubtedly the statement ‘we tried.’ Many Oakland fans would argue that Fisher didn’t, and it’s hard to disagree with them. When it came to retaining star players with big contracts, the A’s never really did. In 2004, the A’s gave third baseman Eric Chavez a $66 million contract. Fisher bought the A’s in 2005, and despite contracts rising exponentially since then, that is still the largest contract the A’s have ever given out.
The A’s did have a few playoff runs over the years, but aside from their appearance in the 2006 ALCS, they never advanced past the divisional round. They’d had many young talents over the years that could’ve helped them win championships if they’d remained with the team: Josh Donaldson (won an MVP with the Toronto Blue Jays), Matt Chapman, Matt Olson (finished fourth in MVP voting in 2023 with Atlanta), Yoenis Cespedes, Marcus Semien, Sean Murphy. Those are just the recent guys, by the way.
Outside of the trade deadline acquisitions of Jon Lester (acquired in Cespedes trade) and Jeff Samardzija in 2014, the A’s never really made a splash on the trade market past 2010 either. Perhaps the infamous trade for Matt Holliday in 2008 that wound up horribly for Oakland dissuaded Fisher from trying anything like that ever again.
