Oakland A’s Fan Gives Emotional Tribute to Team at the Last-Ever Game in the City: ‘My Kids Are So At Home Here’

CBS Sports

An Oakland Athletics fan paid tribute to his team in the final game in the city by explaining how his family has been connected to it for generations.

The A’s on Thursday played their last-ever game in the Oakland Coliseum. While ownership continues finalizing the team’s relocation to Las Vegas, the team will play in a Minor League field in Sacramento for the next few seasons.

More than 40,000 A’s fans packed the stadium to bid farewell to the team.

Before the game, one fan detailed just how much the team has meant to his team:

My dad didn’t know what to do with me, so he brought me here, and we used to walk across that BART bridge to games and it was like magic. I watched Dwayne Murphy and Rickey Henderson out there, running the outfield, stealing bases, hat flying off — it was beautiful. And that’s what made me fall in love with baseball.

And then I had a little brother who is 13 years younger than me, and I didn’t know what to do with him. So what did I do? I brought him here. I brought him to baseball games. I brought him to opening day. His birthday’s in April and we would come to opening day every year. And when I went away to college, I would send him tickets to opening day every year, and he would call me for the national anthem, and he would call me for the seventh inning stretch, and he would call me for Jason Giambi’s first at-bat as a Yankee so I could hear the boos.

And then when I had kids, I knew what to do with them. And so what did I do? I brought them here. My kids are so at home here. They come in here and they take off their jackets and they drop them in a corner and they run off because they feel like they’re at home — not like they’re in a place with 20,000 strangers or 4,000 strangers. And so that’s what baseball in Oakland is.

This is generations. This is like father to son to brother to child, and you’re ripping that away for what? You’re trying to fill a stadium with 70% visiting fans? That’s ridiculous. Baby Gap, “nepo baby,” guy who inherited everything. We work for ours. That’s what we do in Oakland. We work. Everything that we have, we work for. This is blue-collar; this is who we are; and we want this to stay.

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