How Oakland lost its A's but found its Roots and Soul (amid el Jimador Spiked Bebidas)

FanSided's Adam Weinrib traveled, on behalf of the el Jimador Spiked Bebidas team, to Oakland, California, looking to uncover enthusiasm at the Last Dive Bar and watch it bubble up and spread to the Oakland Roots and Soul, who were competing in a USL and USL W League doubleheader on Saturday.

Oakland is a Down Town

Once upon a time, Oakland was an owner's dream. Charlie Finley, the Athletics' mercurial leader, purchased the franchise in Kansas City, and convened a research team in 1967 to dive deeper into a potential move to Oakland. But as Jason Turbow relates in his '70s A's history, Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic, Finley's mind was already made up. "Tell me to move to Oakland," he ordered his impartial researchers.

From the Athletics' earliest days, though, they struggled to draw, competing with the same compounding forces the city's franchises have dealt with in recent years. The creeping Giants. Economic hardship. The escalating weight of losses.

In the late '60s, the A's lost for the reason most teams do: they weren't good enough. Their amateur scouting operation was about to bear fruit, but they weren't ready for primetime yet. These A's? They'd found their homegrown stars, winning 97 games in both 2018 and '19, then making the postseason for a third consecutive year in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. Then, the teardown began, part money-saving operation (a gambit that was cut off at the head by depressing gate receipts) and part something even more sinister. Owner John Fisher desired a move to Las Vegas, and tried to unglue his team and put it back together somewhere else by any means necessary. He got what he wanted, but he forgot about one thing: you can't melt fandom without a fight.

Friday night in Oakland, the group The Last Dive Bar engineered a reverse boycott/enthusiastic takeover at the A's-Blue Jays series opener at the Coliseum. Bright green "SELL" flags waved from every nook and cranny. The procession began blocks away from the ballpark, tied to a chain link fence on the corner of Joe Morgan Ave. or hanging from an overpass. They were hoisted proudly from a flagpole attached to a tailgating van parked directly outside the Catfish Hunter Gate, accompanied by a Warriors/Raiders/A's banner.

"My father raised me to love baseball ... the Oakland A's. I'm here to show my support," said a tailgater known only as "Buck," who generously offered me beverages not once, but twice in a five-minute conversation (I politely declined). "I hate that they're leaving, but we're still here. These are some sluggers right here. This is home."

The goal of the fans Friday night was complex: let the players, trying as hard as they possibly could under impossible circumstances, know that they were loved. Concurrently, let the owners know that they'd breached the point of being tolerated months ago, and that the battleground would now spill onto the playing field.

"You ever seen 'Major League'?" said one fan, standing with his wife in the concourse, decorated by a timeline of photographs celebrating Oakland's championship history. The couple had met in 1992 in the Coliseum parking lot, missing the days before "Mount Davis" in center field obscured the mountain view; one planned to defect to the Jays in 2025, while the other remained undecided, confident only that he could not root for the Giants. "We want to show these players the love they deserve for their hustle. They deserve to feel supported."

20 minutes before the game began, I stood in the upper deck, spotting approximately eight other fans seated across the level in its entirety. Why would you be one of the eight fans in the upper deck? Maybe that was your spot. Maybe that was where your dad or mom brought you, where you marveled at the expansive foul territory splayed out like the Great Plains. Maybe that was where you fell in love with baseball. And maybe that's the specific faraway part you don't want to let go.

After weaving through the concourse, past history being boxed up and folded in the form of retired numbers hidden in a side office, past a DJ asking fans to dance extra hard to Daft Punk's ironic lyrics, "One more time, we're gonna celebrate," and past bathrooms that still contain honest-to-goodness wall-length urinal troughs, I took in an inning in the bleachers, staring directly into the bright sun.

This is where a fleet of harsher-than-"Sell" banners flew, wallpapering the area above the out-of-town scoreboard.

The drums still beat. Fans still wore custom jerseys - or simplistic "Sell" shirts, referred to as the "real" City Connect, a variety of jersey Oakland will never sport. Just like Mount Davis' obscured view, you can't see the passion anymore unless you look at just the right angle, through the exposed slivers of the upper deck. But it's still there.

Oakland Fandom Finds it Roots and Soul in the Foothills

A collection of el Jimador Spiked Bebidas (an official partner of the USL Super League) sat in a hard, black metal cooler, evoking yesteryear, the days when you had to unlock an icy safe to earn refreshment. Surrounding the oasis was another reminder of the good old days, a wall of humanity 5,000 strong that refuses to be forgotten.

Less than 24 hours later, a collection of the Town's most passionate rooters had carved their way through the hills to Hayward, California, 20 minutes from the Coliseum. They'd traversed street level and begun to descend to the soccer pitch below, filling out the hard, metal bleachers section by section, inch by inch, until every space was covered. Tucked below the natural greenery of the forest was the well-manicured, bright-shining soccer pitch. First, the USL W's Oakland Soul would take on Academica SC, followed by the Oakland Roots and Tampa Bay Rowdies at 7:00 PM. The crowd would be there for the duration.

Once again, they parked behind banners. This time, rather than sit stationary while cheering on the players, not the franchise, they waved them high. The rooters marked their identity; not as "sellers," but as buyers of a vision. The artwork included an A's elephant logo with its face obscured and several colorful plays on the Roots' rainbow-mosaic logo, from which a thriving tree grows.

Fueled by their civic duty, crowds of warbling rooters pierced the mountain mist with the same drumbeats from the night prior, underscoring the Soul's methodical second-half demolition of their opponent in a 6-2 victory. When the Roots took to the pitch and the fervor boiled over, endless sing-song chants of, "Oaklaaaaaand! Oakland Roooooooots!" maintained the city's melody.

As I stared upon the powerful collective, resting a grapefruit paloma on my sweat-flecked brow as the sun beat down behind me, behind me, behind me, refusing to set, the amount of enthusiastic youth participation leapt off the bleachers. Young fans waited for Soul signatures, leaning over the front of the white-hot railing; the soccer standouts all obliged, one-by-one. Kids served as soccer ball caddies, standing behind the goal and hustling to catch the overflow, returning anything kicked into their purview. At halftime of each game, they poured out onto the grass from the sidelines, packing a frenzied mini game into a 15-minute respite for the players. Their parents watched.

Also joining the Oakland sporting fray this past week were, coincidentally, the Pioneer League's independent baseball team the Oakland Ballers, wearing caps emblazoned with "B's" in a direct nod to the franchise in the midst of a year-long tearaway. According to those who attended the franchise's watch party, thrown at the downtown bar The Athletic Club Oakland, "soccer-esque chants of 'We love you Oakland, we do!'" rang out throughout the raucous evening.

It should come as no surprise that support for the Roots and Soul is so overwhelming, given the fan base's proclivity to treat all screaming opportunities with a "soccer-esque" tinge. There is talk that the Roots will move into the Coliseum next season when the A's depart; with an ownership group that features Marshawn Lynch, Gary Payton, Jason Kidd, and Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong, it's clear that wherever they land, the Town's keepers see further growth potential (as Armstrong continues to seek validation of his authenticity after being kicked out of the Gilman scene decades ago after "selling out"). Their current home, CSU East Bay's Pioneer Stadium, is gorgeously situated in a hidden valley; the view is particularly spectacular when leaving the pitch and walking back up the stone stairs, towards the sunset. Still, there's too much passion here to be contained. The upward move feels inevitable.

As a young boy, instead of following my local soccer club's every twitch, I was obsessed with the green-and-gold A's championship days. I couldn't comprehend Rollie Fingers' twirled mustache. I watched Gene Tenace on the "Classic Sports" network. I once called pitcher Blue Moon Odom's private business because someone had printed his business card in a book on baseball history (and if that's a crime, no I didn't). In tribute to Oakland's dynastic days, which so captured my attention two-and-a-half decades prior, The Athletic Club's menu features a drink called the Vida Blue, named after the 1971 AL Cy Young and MVP Award-winning left-handed pitcher, whose disappearing fastball captured the baseball world's attention like a doomed comet that summer. The cocktail features an "electric" sidecar whiskey, just the way Blue was at his peak.

When I walked through The Athletic Club's doors on Saturday night to seek out what was left of the crowd, attendance was sparse. The A's had played an afternoon game. The Ballers were home, too. The downtown's beating heart had migrated to the suburbs, then gone to bed. At the peak of Blue's powers, the eccentric Finley tried to talk him into a marketing opportunity, asking, then begging, him to change his given name to "True" Blue. Vida wouldn't budge; it was his deceased father's name, and he honored his heritage every time he pitched. Finley tried to bribe the media and scoreboard operators to use the nickname behind his back; Blue revolted.

Now, you can still drink a Vida Blue on a Saturday night. They tried to take his identity away from him. He wouldn't let them.