By now, much of the rage has passed. The takes have gone cold, the vitriol has been spewed, and all the jokes have been told about the dopey owner being born on third base and thinking he’s hit a triple. The Oakland Athletics will soon pass into history, which means the time has come to move on from the sadness of the funeral and turn instead to a much-deserved celebration of life.
In that spirit, this should be said: To the Oakland A’s, thank you.
For 57 summers, Oakland has had its own team. By extension, so did every kid like me, who would get a whole lot more out of baseball than just a lovely diversion. This game brought me closer to belonging.
In retrospect, it made perfect sense, the tension that came from growing up with dueling cultures. My parents came to the East Bay from the Philippines in the 1970s, and each of them harbored different ideas about blending in. My dad seemed mostly indifferent to the Americanization of his children, and his enjoyment of sport seemed tied mostly to his ability to wager on the outcome. My mom, however, seemed bent on ensuring that we kept a connection to our origins. We would eat the food and, at least, understand the language.
These are wonderful thoughts, and they remain top of mind, especially now with my own daughter and son. But back then, they led to a feeling of not quite belonging. On TV, the families did not look like mine, and they did not eat the food that my family ate. All of it felt weird.
Then when I was nine, an older cousin introduced me to baseball by showing me a newspaper page he’d taped to his wall. The blaring headline referenced the 40/40 club, and the photo showed a man holding up a base while wearing a uniform of green and gold. It was impossible to miss José Canseco.
Something about it must have been intriguing, because from that moment on the A’s became my gateway to a new world. They gave me something to watch after school and then talk about the next day. I just got baseball, and it was such a good feeling that the other sports would soon become required viewing too. This was in the late ’80s and the Bash Brothers ruled the American League. Rickey Henderson could run. Dave Stewart stared a hole through opponents before dominating them. Mark McGwire hit the ball a long, long way. And when Dennis Eckersley came to the mound, the game was over after a flurry of pinpoint fastballs and nasty sliders. Baseball required no cultural proficiency — to appreciate it required no translation.
Summers were spent buying baseball cards, and playing Bases Loaded on my Nintendo, and providing the play-by-play myself, and peppering it with phrases like “Holy Toledo!” because that’s what Bill King did, and as everybody knew, Bill King was the best. As my siblings got older, they started watching too, and that only made it more fun. Years later, baseball gave us yet another thing to share.
But more than anything else, baseball gave me something to chase, and only later in life did I come to appreciate this as a wonderful gift. It hadn’t occurred to me that it is more common to not know the desired destination. While playing was out of the question, writing about baseball at least seemed within reach. Soon the goal became getting into the press box. Thanks to a bunch of lucky bounces, it actually happened.
Every fall, a Hall of Fame ballot arrives at my mailbox. I was there when Derek Jeter collected his 3,000th hit. I was there when Dallas Braden gave Alex Rodriguez an impromptu lesson on workplace boundaries. I was there when the Chicago Cubs won their first World Series since 1908. And, yes, I was there when Bartolo Colon hit a home run.
It probably sounds silly, but no matter what happens next, I’ll always be able to say that I know what it’s like to touch a dream.
It wouldn’t have happened without the Oakland A’s.
While taking stock of my blessings, it’s clear that so many of them flow from baseball. It remains a constant in my life. It’s there in the backdrop of so many conversations with my brother. It was there this summer during the big family camping trip, when we mimicked the batting stances of the A’s starting lineup from 1988, crouching like Rickey and waving the bat like Carney Lansford. It was there 20 years ago, when we lost one of my sisters way too soon, and we did something that we all knew she would have wanted. That’s why she rests with the No. 3 jersey of her favorite A’s player, Eric Chavez.
I think of my sister often, especially now, and I wonder what she’d make of how it all worked out. Journalism requires that fandom be left at the press box door, so it has been years since my mood has hinged upon the outcome of an A’s game. Yet, baseball allowed me to meet my wife, the Yankees fan, who I’m convinced once took me to see “Moneyball” so she could revel in the heartache caused by her team to mine. It worked out pretty well — our kids are growing up in a house in which a ballgame is always on. So at least we know we’ll get that part right.
One morning recently, while I read aloud from a story about Shohei Ohtani — one that declared him the best player in the game — my daughter looked up from her breakfast with a take. She’s only six, but she has already exhibited the beginnings of an outsized and loving personality, not unlike one of her namesakes, my sister.
“Excuse you,” she said. “What about Aaron Judge?”
My wife and I could only smile.
So, thank you to the Oakland A’s. Thank you for existing. Thank you for 1989. Thank you for (mostly) being so good at baseball. Thank you for the Big Three. Thank you for the 20-game winning streak. Thank you for all those Sunday afternoons in right field with my brother and my best friend. Thank you for inspiring a very lucky kid, who grew up to be a very lucky man, who hopes very much that in Sacramento or Las Vegas, there’s a kid somewhere who can still be moved by something as wonderful as having a baseball team to call your very own.
(Top photo of the Oakland A’s celebrating after capturing the 1989 World Series by defeating the Giants: MLB via Getty Images)
