Key Points
Bullet point summary by AI
- John Fisher systematically dismantled his team over three years to justify relocating to a new market.
- The Athletics now fields a competitive roster and leads its division despite the owner's history of fan alienation.
- The spending surge raises questions about motives and whether local support can be rebuilt in a city that has already lost its team.
It’s one thing to spit on your fans, stab them in the back, steal their car, crash it, blame it on your cousin, and then shove them into a ditch in the pouring rain. It’s another to laugh at them for being covered in mud.
That’s a reasonably fair description of what the once-Oakland Athletics’ Owner John Fisher did to his fans between 2021 and 2024, a three-year, deliberate sabotage of the baseball team in order to facilitate their relocation to Las Vegas. But he’s turned around and decided to start spending money on the roster as their official relocation looms, and the team now sits atop the American League West in the middle of may. But who on earth gets to enjoy it?
John Fisher's disrespect of Oakland fans has (somehow) reached a new low
This is not breaking news. As soon as the ink was dry on the Las Vegas relocation, the Athletics began paying players more than they ever had in their recent history. And while it isn’t the “ultimate affront” to the fans back in Oakland (Fisher has long secured the “Ultimate Affront” Lifetime Achievement Award), it’s a bit like filling a syringe with hot sauce and injecting it directly into a wound.
Between 2021 and 2022, the Athletics gutted their roster of the following names: Sean Murphy, Matt Olson, Josh Harrison, Matt Chapman, Elvis Andrus, Starling Marte, Mark Canha, and Chad Pinder. That is, you guessed it, their entire 2021 starting lineup minus Ramón Laureano (poor guy). That doesn’t even count Marcus Semien, who was cut loose after 2020 and has since been an All-Star three times. Even ignoring the neglect of the Oakland Colosseum, there is nothing ambiguous about that: it was the cynical annihilation of a historic and beloved baseball team for the sole purpose of justifying relocation. History will never forgive John Fisher.
But history will probably forget what’s going on now: in the last two seasons, the Athletics have handed out rich, long-term deals to Luis Severino, Lawrence Butler, Tyler Soderstrom and Jacob Wilson. They have not signalled any desire to trade either Shea Langliers or Nick Kurtz, and the Athletics now resemble … a baseball team, one that seems fairly likely to make the playoffs in an American League that can’t get out of its own way. They may win their division for the first time since the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season. And exactly who cares?
The demise of the Oakland A's was an institutional failure
Fisher has been the chief exploiter of Major League Baseball’s most criminal financial reality: revenue sharing without a salary cap or floor. I’ve long decried this system (literally been decrying it since I was a freshman in college) as guaranteeing profitability for owners regardless of if they field a baseball team or not. Fisher’s main goal for years has been to secure this money come hell or high water, and the impossibly bad Athletics teams of the early 2020s were part of this grand plan.
Now, Fisher appears to want the next level of financial benefit: an actual fan base that spends money on the team in a lucrative media market. Whether or not Oakland was a feasible future for the team is a fair question to ask, but it’s also clear that Fisher had no intention of negotiating fairly with the city either. And why Las Vegas? Why not Portland, Salt Lake City or Nashville, ideas put forth by Ken Rosenthal back in 2023? Fisher has still not answered for his choice of city either.
A good Athletics team in Las Vegas may salvage some self-respect for Major League Baseball, who has managed to keep much of this car-crash-in-slow-motion quiet-ish since it became a fait accompli. But we must not forget that the MLB central office allowed Fisher to behave this way with impunity, and that the classless destruction of the Oakland Athletics was an institutional failure rather than the freelancing of a single rogue owner. That very rogue owner has now decided to spend money on the team; it’s a pity that he already met with everyone who might still care and punched them in the face.
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