By spiritofamerica @ Adobe Stock
Oakland’s vaunted sports team of old, the Raiders, the A’s, and the Warriors, have all decided to leave, or have already left the city. In The Wall Street Journal, Jared Diamond recognizes that crime was one of the motivating factors for the pro teams in their decision to leave the city. The other was the money Oakland lacked. He writes:
A generation ago, Oakland was the center of the American sports universe, a community of just over 400,000 people where champions were made and superstars were born.
A franchise from “The Town”—locals will tell you that San Francisco is the city—won a title in five straight years in the 1970s: baseball’s Athletics in ‘72, ‘73 and ‘74, the NBA’s Warriors in ‘75 and the Raiders in ‘76. All three teams played steps apart at two venues surrounded by parking lots and a BART station on 120 acres just off of Interstate 880.
But the lights are about to dim on major-league sports in Oakland. The A’s on Thursday will play their final game at the Coliseum, the stadium they have called home since 1968. After years of saying they wanted to build a new ballpark in Oakland, the A’s reversed course. Instead, they will crash for a while in a minor-league venue in West Sacramento while they try to turn their dreams of moving to Las Vegas into a reality.
It’s the final, devastating blow for a city that has had its sports scene completely decimated. The NBA’s Warriors parlayed Steph Curry-mania into a sparkling new arena across the bay in San Francisco after 47 seasons in Oakland. The Raiders followed them out the door a year later to move into a publicly subsidized football palace next to the Las Vegas Strip. The A’s were the last team standing.
Now, in the space of just five years, an integral part of American sports history has been wiped out.
This was the place where John Madden roamed the sidelines and Al Davis elevated the phrase “Just win, baby!” from a motto into a mission statement. It was the site of indelible moments like the Sea of Hands and the “Heidi” Game. It’s where Oakland native Rickey Henderson transformed the base paths into his own personal track meet and where Curry all but broke the game of basketball by draining shots from outer space. It was the cradle of baseball innovation, where Billy Beane and Moneyball changed the sport forever, and the hotbed of talent that produced the likes of Bill Russell, Jason Kidd, Marshawn Lynch and countless others.
The Warriors, Raiders and A’s all have slightly different motivations for bailing on Oakland, but ultimately they all came down to money—the money other municipalities had to offer for stadiums and the money that Oakland lacks amid budgetary woes and an uptick in crime. The result of all this movement is unprecedented, with all three of Oakland’s major-league sports teams abandoning the city in the span of half a decade.
It has left Oakland’s sports fans heartbroken and dismayed, left to wonder what happens next.
Read more here.
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