Ernest Johnson, a long-time Athletics fan, has been a supporter since he was a kid.
“I’m from Oakland, California, and I have been a fan for as long as I can remember,” Johnson said.
He said he’s seen a wide range of games at the Oakland Coliseum.
“There was one A’s game where it was a fireworks game and the fireworks actually shot in the stands and lit a small fire near where we’re sitting,” he said.
“I’ve been to World Series games, I’ve been to games where there was near no-hitters, you name it, I’ve seen it there,” Johnson said. “I couldn’t tell you how many games I’ve been to there, but it was a huge part of my early life.”
Unfortunately for Athletics fans like Johnson, this is the last year the team will remain in Oakland.
The storied Athletics organization announced on April 4 that at the end of the 2024 season, the Athletics are moving to Sacramento to play there for three seasons, with an option for a fourth.
Sutter Health Park, the home of the Sacramento River Cats, the Triple-A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants, will be the temporary home for the A’s until its new stadium in Las Vegas is built.
The stadium hosts about 14,000 fans, making it the smallest stadium in the MLB.
The owner of the River Cats and the NBA team the Sacramento Kings, Vivek Ranadive, has partnered with John Fisher, the owner of the Athletics, to make moving to Sacramento possible.
The Oakland Athletics President Dave Kaval said in a media scrum on April 4, that the team will be laying off hundreds of stadium employees when the team moves to Sacramento.
“There are going to be some reductions in our staffing,” Kaval said. “That’s just part of the situation and it’s a sad thing.
“We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that we have the right severance packages, we help people with placement, and we just do what’s right,” he said.
Johnson said the move to Sacramento is not good for baseball, but it’s good for Fisher.
“It’s definitely viable to see that it is good for Fisher. I think the Oakland A’s fan base is very aware of these facets and will not support it,” he said. “There will be people who go the game as a novelty, however, I don’t think they are going to draw well because of that.”
Las Vegas has become a hotbed for sports over the past few years.
The Vegas Golden Knights joined the NHL in 2017 and made it to the Stanley Cup Finals in its first year. They recently won their first Stanley Cup last season.
The Las Vegas Aces of the WNBA moved to Las Vegas in 2018 and won back-to-back championships in 2022 and 2023.
The Oakland Raiders left California in 2020 to make the move to Las Vegas.
The Oakland Athletics will become the next team to move to Las Vegas, projected to be in 2028.
The Athletics has a nomadic history. The team began as the Philadelphia A’s in 1901 and became the Kansas City A’s in 1955. The team opened the 1968 season in Oakland after scouting possibilities in Seattle, Atlanta, Milwaukee, New Orleans and San Diego. They are the last major professional sports franchise to leave the city.
Since the move to Las Vegas was announced in November 2023, fans have organized protests and reverse boycotts to urge owner John Fisher to keep the team in Oakland or sell the team to someone who will keep it in Oakland.
Opening Day of the 2024 season when the Athletics hosted the Cleveland Guardians, fans were boycotting outside the stadium and the crowd outside almost doubled the fans inside the stadium.
Johnson said he believes there will be more gatherings where fans will come together to protest John Fisher.
“I anticipate more reverse boycotts and something big happening on the last home game,” he said.
Johnson said fans are changing the narrative of how they’re perceived by the rest of the baseball world.
“What we [Oakland Athletics fans] have done is we’ve changed the narrative of ‘Oh, it’s the fans’ fault,’… and I think what fans have done is countered that narrative and now it’s mainstream discourse,” he said.
“People are discussing this in a way that counters this simplistic narrative of ‘Oh the team isn’t supported, they don’t want a team’, so that’s where we had success,” Johnson said. “I think we made it a black eye for Major League Baseball.”
The final home game for the Athletics is on Sept. 26 when they host the Texas Rangers.
Johnson said he made plans to see the final home game ever for the Oakland Athletics.
“I definitely plan to be there, it’s going to be a significant event in my life,” he said. “I’m going to be in one of the last generations of home-grown Oakland A’s fans and were going to go away and not be anymore.”