![]() Oakland cares about its team and would love nothing more for the A’s to stay. ![]() In an old pinstriped A’s cap and green jersey with a script “Oakland” sprawled across the chest, he knows he’s one of what seems like a vanishing A’s fan base.Įxcept to listen to him talk about the team, there’s a passion there. He admits he’s only really started paying deeper attention to them in the last few years.īut even so, he has plenty of memories of the Coliseum. Accompanying me was my friend Matt Tiemstra, who grew up in Oakland and a more casual A’s fan. I attended Wednesday afternoon’s game between the Yankees and A’s as a fan. John Fisher is about to blow that up for a move to Las Vegas. More a respected opponent with a unique sort of shared history. In 1975 and ’77, respectively, two key players from those teams signed record-setting free agent deals…with the Yankees: Jim “Catfish” Hunter and Reggie Jackson.Īgain, this isn’t a rivalry in the same vein as the Red Sox or Astros. The A’s won three straight World Series from 1972-1974 while the Yankees struggled. Slick-fielding third baseman Clete Boyer was also a former A’s prospect.Ĭue a move to Oakland in 1968 and free agency less than a decade later, and the roles were reversed again. Pitcher Ralph Terry was acquired from KC and pitched a complete game to win Game 7 of the 1962 World Series. The following season, Maris won the first of two straight MVP trophies. Roger Maris was little more than a high-upside/potential bat when the A’s traded him to the Yankees in December 1959. Nothing changed except for one thing: lots of their players were traded to the Yankees and became stars in their own right. The connection between the teams carried over into the ’50s, long after the A’s lost too much in Philly and moved to Kansas City. The A’s then made the next three World Series behind slugger Jimmie Foxx, winning two of them. The closest Mack’s teams ever came to the prime Ruth-Gehrig Yankees was finishing 2.5 games behind them in 1928. Connie Mack’s A’s won three World Series while the New York then-Highlanders were perennial non-contenders. Granted, that isn’t to say the Yankees and old Philadelphia Athletics were bitter rivals. With the latest teardown of the A’s, the rich history between the team and the Yankees is becoming further forgotten. If the A’s are to move anywhere, it should be to either Portland, Vancouver or elsewhere in California.īut I digress. Las Vegas already has both the NFL’s Raiders and a beloved minor league baseball team. If you want my two cents, it’s pretty simple. Whether or not the A’s should move to Las Vegas at all is a different conversation in itself. Who needs a longstanding legacy in a city with passionate fans when you can have a new stadium and a voucher to the buffet at the Wynn? Or, rather, the slow depreciation of that history with the A’s headed to Las Vegas in 2027. Instead of usual series takeaways on the Yankees’ unceremonious sweep of the Oakland Athletics, I’d like to instead talk about the rich history between both teams.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |