By Beau Cline
After 55 long years in Oakland, California, the Athletic’s have decided to head out, leaving one of the oldest stadiums in the MLB. The Athletic’s have long been awaiting a new stadium and their wishes have been granted. They’ve just announced finalization of an agreement on 49 acres of land just west of the Las Vegas strip. Production of this new stadium hopes to start this next year, where they plan to make a 35,000 seat capacity stadium, according to Team President, Dave Kaval.
“We realize this is a difficult day for our Oakland fans and community,” Team Officials have told reporters, as they realize this team has been more than just entertainment for the residents of Oakland. Officials said they made “strong and sincere” efforts to stay in their hometown since 1968. However, this is contrasting to previous statements by the A’s owners saying that they’ve long been seeking a stadium. But they had this to say to those claims “Even with support from fans, leaders at the city, county, and state level, and throughout the broader community, the process to build a new ballpark in Oakland has made little forward progress for some time,” The A’s had hopes of a new stadium being built on the waterfront of Oakland, but the land was never found and the idea crumbled away.
The A’s have been struggling to perform like their predecessors losing 102 of their games last year and this year’s season has started even slower. After their last season, the team’s pay cap has been redacted to a whopping 58 million the lowest in the league. In the past the A’s were one of the leading teams of the MLB. When they first moved to Oakland they started very hot winning 3 straight world series from 1972 to 1974. Not long after, star batter’s Mark McGwire and Jose Conseco led them to a world series win in 1989. But it seems ever since John Fisher acquired majority shares of the organization they haven’t been able to keep up. During the “Fisher era” payroll’s were cut, they traded away star after star, and have made it to the postseason 7 times, but only advanced past the divisional round 1 time.
This would make it the second MLB team to move cities in the last 50 years. For Oakland this isn’t the case, in the last 4 years, all 3 of their professional teams have moved cities with the A’s being the final one. The Golden State Warriors led the pack moving out of their stadium in 2019 to go to a new stadium in San Francisco. The following year, the Raiders moved out of their shared stadium with the A’s to go to a fresh stadium in Las Vegas. Now the Athletic’s are joining the raiders out in Las Vegas, where they hope to get a fresh new stadium.
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