Oakland is preparing to say goodbye to the A's—and to major league sports. The Oakland Athletics will play their final home game at Oakland Coliseum on Thursday, NBC News reports. After the game against the Texas Rangers, the A's have three away games in Seattle. Next year, the team, which has been in Oakland since 1968, will drop Oakland from its name and move to West Sacramento for at least three seasons. The club and stadium operators were unable to agree on a lease extension ahead of the team's move to Las Vegas. The NFL's Raiders left Oakland for Las Vegas in 2020, the year after the Golden State Warriors moved across the bay to San Francisco.
Fans blame billionaire owner John Fisher for not doing enough to keep the team in Oakland. An open letter from Fisher apologizing to fans was widely considered insincere, the AP reports. "I can tell you this from my heart: we tried," he wrote. "Staying in Oakland was our goal. It was our mission, and we failed to achieve it. And for that I am genuinely sorry."
- KGO-TV sports anchor Larry Beil called the letter a "great work of fiction," NBC News reports. "John, you're a serial penny pincher," he said Monday. "You've destroyed your family's great name and legacy because of your cheapness." Fisher is an heir of the family that founded the Gap.
- Two fans tried to steal seats from the Coliseum after a game Tuesday but were stopped, and the seats were reinstalled, SFGate reports. In a post on X, the Oakland Roots soccer team said, "Hey Fam, we're playing at the Coliseum next year and we would love to save some seats for you all!"
- Officials say there will be increased security at Thursday's game. A giveaway of 25,000 mini-Coliseums will take place at the exits after the seventh inning, possibly out of fears that fans will throw the replicas onto the field if they get them earlier. Bryan Johansen at Last Dive Bar, which plans to hold a wake for the team on Thursday, told the Mercury News that "there's not any coordinated effort to do anything crazy like go on the field or hurt anybody or start a ruckus." He added: "That's completely asinine that the A's would even suggest that. It just shows you that they're completely detached from the pulse of their fan base, and they have been for years."
- Earlier this year, lifelong A's fan Jim Zelinski, whose father took him to the team's first game in Oakland in April 1968, told the AP that the stadium was like the "public square," with people from all kinds of backgrounds mingling. "I had some of the greatest memories of my life at the Oakland Coliseum," he said. "The A's are such an irreplaceable part of the East Bay culture that I don't think people can quite grasp what incredible sadness there is going to be like at that final game in September." But he won't be at the Coliseum on Thursday: The 65-year-old died in June after a long battle with bladder cancer.
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