Athletics

Oakland Athletics owner John Fisher is unfazed by calls from fans to sell the franchise.

Fisher spoke to Mick Akers of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and said he has given no consideration to selling the franchise as he seeks a move to Las Vegas.

"I have not considered selling the team. I've now owned the team with my partner Lew Wolff, it's shocking really how the time flies, but since 2005. Our goal since then has been to find a new home and build a new home for our team," Fisher said.

The Athletics have already formally applied for relocation with Major League Baseball, but there is no timeline for approval. The franchise's lease in Oakland expires after the 2024 season.

Fans have revolted as Fisher's plans to move the A's to Vegas became public, with multiple "reverse boycotts" being held at Oakland Coliseum this season. During those rowdy events, which fans flocked to the stadium to show their displeasure with ownership, fans loudly cheered players while roundly mocking Fisher.

Despite having a payroll of just $58.8 million for the 2023 season, Fisher says the team is on pace to lose $40 million. It's hard to know whether those figures are accurate; Forbes reported the A's brought in $29.2 million of operating income last year.

What is clear is that the A's have been playing in perhaps the worst stadium in American professional sports for some time. There is no denying the need for a stadium upgrade, and given the lack of progress on a new building in Oakland, the move to Vegas has some logic.

That's unlikely to ever result in forgiveness from fans in Oakland, the city that's been home of the franchise since 1968.

The Oakland A's have had a far from seamless process as they attempt to complete their move to Las Vegas.

The organization has already drawn the ire of its fans in the form of organized protests and have also dealt with the tons of red tape that comes along with trying to build a new stadium.

Now, they're dealing with frustration from other team owners in MLB who feel that the A's have gotten an unfair break from the league during this process, according to the San Francisco Chronicle's John Shea.

"I heard from industry sources with close ties to MLB ownerships that some owners of low-revenue teams are upset that the A's are receiving preferential treatment -- no relocation fee, for instance -- and that high-revenue owners aren't thrilled that the A's benefit from increasing revenue sharing but don't seem to transfer the money into their baseball team, including payroll," Shea wrote in a column Sunday.

Back in June, Oakland got approval from the Nevada Legislature to build its new $1.5 billion stadium on The Strip with $380 million in public funding. And luckily for the organization, they'll be able to save a bit more money thanks to MLB commissioner Rob Manfred.

In December, Manfred said the league would waive the A's relocation fee if they were to move to Las Vegas, which is the source of some of the other teams' consternation. The A's won't have to pay a sum of about $300 million.

He then addressed the issue once again last month following an ownership meeting, saying it'd be unrealistic to make Oakland pay the fee.

"The relocation fee, the ultimate decision, will be made in the process that I described a moment ago," Manfred said. "I've been clear with the owners: In the context where you have an owner who's making a billion-dollar private commitment moving to a market where they receive public funding, for baseball to step in and have a relocation fee, I don't see that as a realistic possibility."

As for the revenue sharing, the A's relocation to Vegas is set to make the franchise upwards of $50 million in revenue in 2024 and 2025 combined. According to the collective bargaining agreement, the A's were eligible for a 25-percent revenue share in 2022, a 40-percent share in 2023, a 75-percent share in 2024 and a full share in 2025 if they have a new stadium set to go, which is currently in the works.

And yet, the organization still has the lowest payroll of any team in MLB at $60.5 million.

The move is still subject to approval from the other MLB owners, but the A's have already begun the application process.

Oakland Athletics fans will not give up fighting to keep their team in the Bay Area.

After attracting the largest crowd of the A's season to the Oakland Coliseum with a "reverse boycott" June 13, protestors of the team's move to Las Vegas will hold events in August and September and plan to continue in 2024, according to The Athletic's Melissa Lockard.

"It's like an engine, and it keeps revving up every time," said Jorge Leon, president of the Oakland 68s, the fan group behind the June 13 event. "The reverse boycott was just one of many events that we already had planned."

The Athletics had an average Tuesday attendance of under 4,000 before the reverse boycott, which brought 27,759 fans to the stadium. Many were wearing bright green t-shirts that read "SELL," a message directed to owner John Fisher.

Reverse Boycott @Athletics pic.twitter.com/VtL30rqDst

— Marc J. Spears (@MarcJSpears) June 14, 2023

The same day of the reverse boycott, Las Vegas governor Joe Lombardo approved a bill approving the construction of a $1.5 billion baseball stadium on June, appearing to clear a path for Fisher to accomplish his goal of moving the team to Southern Nevada.

The team's move would come after the 2024 season, when the A's contract with the Oakland Coliseum expires. The Athletics have played in the venue since 1968, but its deteriorating condition has led to at least a decade of problems ranging from sewage leaks to infestations of feral cats and moths.

Those problems, combined with the team boasting the lowest payroll and worst record in the MLB, has caused overall attendance to plummet.

By holding these events, Athletics fans hope to show the team's leadership that fans would attend A's games if the team's ownership and venue issues are solved. According to Oakland 68s leadership, these efforts will continue until relocation becomes official.

Oakland mayor Sheng Thao is continuing her fight to keep the Athletics in the city.

Thao told The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal she and MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred met in person on Sunday to provide him with "documented evidence" of the city's plan to build the A's a new stadium.

"At the meeting, which Thao said took place at her request, she presented Manfred with 31 packages, one for him and one for each major-league owner, detailing her city's efforts to get a park built on a waterfront site at Howard Terminal," Rosenthal wrote.

According to Thao, Manfred seemed "receptive" to Oakland's presentation and he intends to forward the documents to MLB's three-person relocation committee.

Rosenthal previously reported Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attanasio is one of three team owners who will be on the committee.

Per Rosenthal, Manfred addressed his meeting with Thao during a press conference prior to the All-Star Game on Tuesday.

"We had a good meeting, a very open exchange of views," Manfred said. "I understand she came to the process late and is doing her best to figure out if there is something that can be done in a process that was in a lot of ways kind of over when she showed up on the scene."

Thao's decision to meet with Manfred came after the commissioner told reporters last month "there is no Oakland offer" to build a new stadium.

A's general manager David Forst said in November the organization was pushing for a new stadium in the Bay Area after the team and city missed a deadline to finalize an agreement on the proposed $12 billion Howard Terminal project.

Building a ballpark at the Howard Terminal is a proposal that dates back to 2018 when the A's revealed plans to build a privately financed 34,000-seat stadium.

The city and team remained in negotiations over a ballpark district at Howard Terminal until April when the A's entered into a binding agreement to purchase 49 acres of land near the Las Vegas Strip with the intention of building a $1.5 billion retractable-roof stadium with 30,000 seats.

On June 13, the Nevada Senate approved a $380 million bill to provide funding to the Athletics for funding on the new stadium.

That same day, A's fans staged a reverse boycott for the team's home game against the Tampa Bay Rays. They drew a season-high 27,759 fans in the Coliseum, with many of them protesting against majority owner John Fisher with signs and chants encouraging him to sell the team.

Thao said after the Nevada Senate vote the city was "so close" to a deal that would have led to a new stadium in Oakland, including securing "$1 billion for outside infrastructure, and I truly believe the city of Oakland was being leveraged in the move to go to Las Vegas."

MLB owners still need to vote on a potential A's relocation. The vote requires 75 percent approval from the owners.

The Athletics have been in Oakland since the 1968 season.

The Seattle Mariners and Oakland Athletics are division rivals in the American League West, but that didn't stop fans from showing their solidarity during Tuesday's All-Star Game.

Fans in Seattle's T-Mobile Park chanted "sell the team" during Brent Rooker's at-bat in the sixth inning:

“He hit it pretty well” - Juan Soto

We agree 👏 pic.twitter.com/EXWhG2QmwK

— Athletics (@Athletics) July 12, 2023

A sold-out T-Mobile park chanting "SELL THE TEAM" as All-Star Brent Rooker laces a ground rule double.

— Céspedes Family BBQ (@CespedesBBQ) July 12, 2023

The Athletics outfielder hit a double on the second pitch of the at-bat.

It all happened against the backdrop of the Athletics potentially moving from Oakland to Las Vegas. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told reporters Tuesday that the franchise has "begun to submit information related to their relocation application. It's not complete at this time."

Athletics fans are frustrated and made their displeasure toward owner John Fisher known outside the stadium in Seattle:

A small group of fans is gathered outside T-Mobile Park protesting the A’s proposed move to Las Vegas. pic.twitter.com/eHfLaIGdkh

— Kyle Glaser (@KyleAGlaser) July 11, 2023

While the franchise is taking steps toward the potential moves, it is clear fans are not happy with the situation. It reached a point that fans of other teams appeared to join in the chant during Tuesday's game at a rival's ballpark.

The Oakland Athletics' relocation to Las Vegas took another step forward after MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred confirmed the franchise has officially started the application process.

"They have begun to submit information related to their relocation application," he told reporters. "It's not complete at this time."

It looked like the Athletics' plans to build a new stadium in Las Vegas were encountering enough resistance that might not only delay any relocation but also derail it altogether.

However, Nevada legislators approved Senate Bill 1 on June 14, which earmarked $380 million in public funding for the Athletics' stadium. Gov. Joe Lombardo signed the bill the following day.

"Today is a significant step forward in securing a new home for the Athletics," the team said about the news. "We thank Nevada Governor Lombardo, Legislative leaders, and Clark County Commissioners and staff for their hard work, support, and partnership. We will now begin the process with MLB to apply for relocation to Las Vegas."

Beyond obtaining the necessary approval from MLB and its owners, there are a few other issues to iron out. Figuring out where the A's will play before their Vegas stadium is constructed is principal among them.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal's Mick Akers reported ownership intends to see out its lease at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum through the 2024 season. The new venue in Las Vegas won't be ready until 2028 at the earliest, though.

Manfred said Tuesday it remains unclear where the A's will call home in the window between Oakland and Vegas.

"Our relocation guidelines actually spell out clearly what needs to be included in an application," he told reporters. "One of the things that you have to include is what's gonna happen during the interim period. They have not made a submission on that topic."

Some A's fans continue to voice their disapproval over the move and are calling upon John Fisher to sell the team.

A small group of fans is gathered outside T-Mobile Park protesting the A’s proposed move to Las Vegas. pic.twitter.com/eHfLaIGdkh

— Kyle Glaser (@KyleAGlaser) July 11, 2023

"SELL THE TEAM" chants coming from the crowd section here at the draft. One passionate A's fan cheering his guts out got a big section of folks to get into it.

— Céspedes Family BBQ (@CespedesBBQ) July 9, 2023

Until the relocation is completed, a dramatic turn of events could keep the Athletics in the Bay Area. The San Francisco Giants were all but certain to head east to Tampa, Florida, before failing to gain the required votes.

For now, it's at least clear Manfred and Fisher are moving full steam ahead toward Las Vegas.

Ask an Australian what's so funny about "Rooted in Oakland." They will happily tell you.

Judging by the team's official account's tweets, "Rooted in Oakland" was quietly retired by the Oakland Athletics in May 2021 or so. It had been their slogan since 2017, when owner John Fisher bought out his partner Lew Wolff's shares in the club and assumed full control of operations. The slogan is meant to evoke Oakland's city symbol of a tree, and to suggest the commitment that the A's projected at the time to keep the club in town.

The emptiness of this is clear now, as the team makes a mad rush to escape to Las Vegas. It's hard to appeal to your "roots" when you pay a better lineup of lobbyists than your lineup of players to cry poor to the Vegas government, and fans in Oakland have certainly stopped buying it.

Stadium upkeep has been neglected. Attendance has cratered to an anemic 9,960 fans per game. Possums live in the walls. Sewage regularly floods the dugouts. On Wednesday, they were on the wrong end of MLB's first perfect game in 11 years. And the side of the stadium still proudly tells you that this is all Rooted in Oakland.

Abandoned by their once-loyal supporters. Playing in front of 50,000 empty seats in baseball's biggest stadium, on a field that, at the most attended game of the season, found itself covered in trash. There are 29 major league clubs and then whatever this is.

Down under, they'd find this funny for a different reason. In Australia, "rooted" is inventively crude slang for having sex.

Then-closer Liam Hendriks couldn't help but note this when he was named an All-Star in 2019. The A's had taken out an ad in his home city of Perth celebrating him, complete with a giant #ROOTEDINOAKLAND. They didn't do their homework, and it was embarrassing, but mostly funny.

It was more charming back when the A's were good. Much of this situation was.

Now it's easy to see it as its own kind of marketing pitch to Rob Manfred and MLB. Look at what's left of our roots, this empty smelly stadium, all concrete with air pollution and leaky sewage. We're screwed in Oakland.

In the team's eyes, the rage from fans must seem childish more than anything. Business got done and money was made, and getting worked up about the marketing being a lie is a big waste of time.

What you have to hand to them is that they never lied at all.

"Rooted in Oakland" was in fact the constant project of Fisher's A's, the thing they worked hardest to make true and succeeded in doing. Thanks to Fisher, fans used to root in Oakland all the time.

---

Home of Champions

As tough as it is to tell right now, the A's will leave behind a decorated history of success in Oakland. Since 1968, the year they moved to to the city, the A's boast four World Series titles. Only the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox can say the same thing.

For a while, the A's were more popular than the Giants across the bay.

Oakland has a number of advantages over San Francisco as a pro baseball market: better weather, much easier transportation, the best tailgating in baseball as one of the few teams to allow it and famously good beer choices.

The A's are the only MLB team with green in their color scheme (teal doesn't count); the iconic green-and-gold hat is popular around the world.

The A's were winners. While the sad-sack Giants were busy failing Willie Mays and Barry Bonds out in windy, inaccessible Candlestick Park, the A's fielded one of the best dynasties in baseball history in the 1970s, in a scenic ballpark with a meadow in the outfield and a beautiful view of the Oakland hills.

When the A's were good, owner Walter A. Haas operated the team under a principle that would hopelessly confuse Fisher today. Haas took the privilege of owning a ballclub seriously. Ownership took on financial risk, investing in entertainment for fans and making improvements to the Coliseum, running the club at a loss some years to put out a team that would enrich the city of Oakland and its residents.

Overall, Haas likely booked a cash loss running the franchise during his time in ownership, and was willing to because he genuinely loved the city. Haas wanted to leave behind the pride that Oakland has today, earning praise from team star Dave Stewart, among others, for his civic spirit and financial buy-in. The only pro team to wear "Oakland" on its uniform, those A's made the city their identity more than the Warriors or Raiders ever did.

Things peaked when the A's swept the Giants in the 1989 World Series, the latter of whom hadn't won a title since they played in New York. It got so bad that the Giants reached and signed an agreement to move to Florida.

What changed?

In 1995, part of a briefly successful effort to lure the Raiders to the Coliseum, the city of Oakland borrowed $200 million to build "Mount Davis," the impossibly ugly block of seats and suites that towers over what was once a nice baseball stadium.

This was a great deal for Raiders owner Al Davis but an incredibly bad one for the city and county, and one that they are still paying off long after the Raiders left town. Taxpayers still owe $13 million a year through 2025 for the same 30-year-old renovations that made the Coliseum obsolete, with the overall price tag nearly doubling to $350 million just from interest payments. It was a catastrophe that wrecked the city budget for years.

Later that year, Haas died, and his family decided to sell the team.

Right before the explosion in media revenue that would lift the boat of every MLB team and allow cheap owners like Fisher to operate at a profit, the Haas family sold the team for $85 million to real estate developers led by Steve Schott, who would in turn sell the team to Fisher and Wolff in 2005. The team's cost-cutting approach you see today has been in place since, with handing taxpayers the bill on a real-estate deal just like Davis did as the transparent goal.

Through this lens the team's repeated failures to make a deal happen in Oakland become clearer.

The Mount Davis deal ruined the Coliseum, permanently soured Oakland on public financing and made voters and politicians broadly suspicious of any dealing with the team to begin with. Every day, the A's in the Coliseum showed just how badly publicly funded projects can fail, while the team's owners carried on for 25 years pursuing a deal just like it and wondering why they kept striking out.

Across the bay, the Giants built their stadium without any public money, opening a lovely park on the water in 2000 for $357 million, about the total cost it ended up taking to build Mount Davis.

While the A's never committed seriously to a privately funded stadium deal and a series of half-baked attempts ran into basic land rights and infrastructure problems, Giants attendance soared as they strung together three World Series titles in the early 2010s, putting a bigger dent in Oakland's fanbase each time.

Stuck blowing up winning teams while ownership prioritized a real-estate handout, turning off more fans for good each time they sold star players, the A's gradually stopped trying to compete altogether.

Fans lived the whole cycle over and over, each time having to explain to your kid that their favorite player was going to go play for some other city, with each sell-off increasing the certainty of more to come in the future.

In spite of this all, Oakland still loved baseball. Less than a decade ago, multiple teardowns into the Fisher era, the Oakland bleachers were still a maelstrom that had Stephen Curry wishing their energy could transfer to Warriors fans. They now sit mostly empty, draped with signs insulting Fisher, signs warning Las Vegas and little else.

You can't blame fans for not buying it anymore. This current "rebuild" and this 2023 A's "team" have ditched the idea of a pretext, or a selling point, or even a slogan.

Marcus Semien was the first of Oakland's latest core to come up for free agency, hitting the market after the pandemic season in 2020. The A's never made Semien a real offer, "floating" him a one-year offer of $12.5 million with a nearly unheard-of deferral that would have spread it out over 10 years, a grim indication of how short on cash the organization was.

Semien signed an $18 million deal with Toronto. One of the first things he noticed, he said, was that the Blue Jays invested actual resources in their players. In his first season after leaving Oakland, he hit 45 home runs.

After a lifeless 2021 A's team collapsed down the stretch, they traded stars Matt Olson and Matt Chapman, netting nearly nothing in return in moves that are already busts. The 2022 A's were even worse, and they responded by selling even more, trading Sean Murphy for another paltry return.

The 2023 A's are historically terrible, on pace to finish 41-121, and show few signs of life, with nothing to show for the core of stars they developed in the 2010s.

Let's be fair. Even after so many mistakes, you can call some of their circumstances bad luck. A lot had to go wrong to make the A's this horrible.

For starters, none of the Giants teams in the early 2010s stacked up in a historical sense. The fact that the local competition maxed out at 94 wins, but won it all three times, was a tough break.

From a baseball sense, the pandemic was also brutally timed. The A's were built to compete in 2020, and attendance had been growing, before COVID slammed the door on that team, on the massive planned stadium development at Howard Terminal, and now potentially on Oakland baseball forever.

Some of this has to fall on the city of Oakland too. It's difficult to point to anything that the city has done well in attempting to keep the A's in town, and given the chance, the city has tended to make it harder.

The most important external factor might be fully unrelated to baseball: Fisher's family owns a lot of Gap, Inc. stock, and it has been a very bad couple of decades for that company. According to SEC filings, Fisher is the largest shareholder, and his holdings are down over 75 percent since 2013, having lost well over a billion dollars in value.

This could end up as the only relevant explanation for the move to Las Vegas. Even as late as May 2021 while his shares still had life, it is truly possible that Fisher meant it with "Rooted in Oakland." There is a great chance that he genuinely wanted to make a deal happen in the city when he bought the club, and that now he is simply too broke.

---

How to Fail On Purpose

The ultimate culprit for the disgrace on the field, and the common thread since the Haas family sold the team, is the conscious effort the A's have made to alienate fans. Trading stars over and over has been a constant process doomed to fail, systematically betting against the long-term value of star players, when stars turned out to be highly *under-priced* compared to today's market.

Compare the top MLB salaries in 2005 to those today. Even after adjusting for inflation, star players are more expensive across the board. Why? Clubs that invest in their present and future grow their fanbases, realizing the long-term revenue that stars drive and leaving the penny-wise pound-foolish competition in the dust.

Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, Nick Swisher, Carlos González, Yoenis Céspedes, Josh Donaldson, Matt Chapman, Matt Olson and Sean Murphy were all traded. Jason Giambi, Barry Zito, Marcus Semien and Liam Hendriks were let go in free agency.

To date, the six-year, $66 million contract Eric Chavez signed in 2004, the year before Fisher bought the team, is still the biggest in franchise history. In the intervening 20 years, the Bay Area has seen incredible economic growth, and the A's have been content the whole time to cut costs and pinch pennies, missing out entirely on the flood of money into the region while the Giants reaped the profits.

The Oakland A's will forever be associated with the philosophy of intentional failure. The A's won more games than the Giants in the 2010s, and it didn't matter. Disrespecting customers became Fisher's standard practice, the only objective became scraping out everything good and leaving an empty shell behind, taking a free ride on MLB revenue sharing while other teams made the investments.

After squeezing all he could from ordinary people of Oakland, Fisher jacked up ticket prices as a final insult, ensuring deserted stands for the team's miserable last act.

Fisher will eventually sell the team for more money than he paid, having kept expenses down and cashed a massive check or two of taxpayer money along the way.

The nakedness of this is why people should not be surprised that fans no longer root in Oakland.

Fisher has dismantled any reason to care about the baseball on the field, and priced up what's left, profiting nicely in the act. He will never show his face in Oakland, and after long enough, with the scam fully up, the people are returning the favor.

By twist of fate, Nevada's legislature agreed to the stadium deal on June 13. On the same night, A's fans filled the Coliseum for a long-planned reverse boycott, breaking for one night the unofficial group refusal to put money in Fisher's pocket, to show what word-of-mouth and fan passion can still do if given any reason at all.

Chanting "sell the team" and "f--k John Fisher" at volumes so loud they disrupted the game multiple times, A's fans told the team goodbye after the game by blanketing the field in trash. There is a point where this becomes the last available protest.

The A's will abandon the Coliseum as essentially a garbage heap, just as we saw it on the last real night of Oakland A's baseball.

About as far from a tree—a real tree with strong roots that grow and endure, as you can get. The only place farther may be Las Vegas.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred insisted Friday that a seemingly snide comment he made about the Oakland Athletics' attendance as part of a "reverse boycott" last week was taken out of context.

According to Meghan Montemurro of the Chicago Tribune, Manfred said the following on the subject of the A's in London ahead of a game between the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals:

"My comment about Oakland was that I feel sorry for the fans, that it was my initial preference that we find a solution in Oakland. The comment that I made about the fans on a particular night was taken out of context of those two larger remarks. I feel sorry for the fans. We hate to move. We did everything we could possibly do to keep the team in Oakland. And unfortunately one night doesn't change a decade worth of inaction."

After the A's drew 27,759 fans for their 2-1 win over the Tampa Bay Rays last Tuesday week as part of a reverse boycott, Manfred told reporters: "It was great. It's great to see what is, this year, almost an average Major League Baseball crowd in the facility for one night. That's a great thing."

Manfred's comment was in spite of the fact that the Athletics drew more for that game than MLB's average per-game attendance of 27,497 this season, according to Baseball Reference.

Manfred did go on to say that he felt bad for the Athletics' fans before blaming the city of Oakland for failing to reach a resolution regarding a new ballpark:

"I think that the real question is, what is it that Oakland was prepared to do? There is no Oakland offer, OK? They never got to a point where they had a plan to build a stadium at any site. And it's not just John Fisher. You don't build a stadium based on the club activity alone. The community has to provide support and you know, at some point, you come to the realization, it's just not going to happen."

Per Drellich, the spokesperson for Oakland mayor Sheng Thao combatted Manfred's comment by placing the blame on the A's organization:

Statement from Julie Edwards, spokesperson for Oakland mayor Sheng Thao, in response to Rob Manfred saying there was no offer for a stadium in Oakland: pic.twitter.com/guRJfmiQF8

— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) June 15, 2023

Regardless of who is truly to blame, it looks like all systems are go for the Athletics to move from Oakland to Las Vegas in the coming years.

Last week, Nevada governor Joe Lombardo approved a plan that will provide the Athletics with $380 million in public funding toward a stadium that will be built on the Las Vegas strip.

Once that occurred, MLB began the process of getting a relocation from Oakland to Las Vegas approved, starting with the A's submitting a relocation application.

A's fans showed up in droves last week to offer their support for keeping the team in Oakland, but the Athletics still rank last in MLB this season in average attendance with only 9,688 fans per game, according to ESPN.

It is difficult to blame the fans, though, as the Athletics' roster was stripped down to bare bones, resulting in a 19-58 record, which is the worst in MLB this season.

The "SELL" shirt from Oakland Athletics fans' reverse boycott imploring team owner John Fisher to sell the franchise will be making its way to Cooperstown.

Per Alex Simon of the Mercury News, Baseball Hall of Fame executive Jon Shestakofsky expects to add the shirt to its artifacts.

"We are here to document history and preserve that history as it relates to baseball and it relates to the game," Shestakofsky said. "That happens on the field, when a significant accomplishment takes place, but it also happens off the field."

A total of 27,759 fans, a season-high mark in Oakland, went to the Athletics' 2-1 home win over the Tampa Bay Rays on June 13. Those fans made their opinion and voice heard as the team progresses toward its planned move to Las Vegas.

“Stay in Oakland! Stay in Oakland!”

A’s fans are making a statement with a reverse boycott at the Oakland Coliseum.

🎥 @BASportsGuy pic.twitter.com/zyV6oKNKPE

— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) June 14, 2023

Reverse Boycott @Athletics pic.twitter.com/VtL30rqDst

— Marc J. Spears (@MarcJSpears) June 14, 2023

A’s fans break from organized silence at the start of the 5th before erupting into “Sell The Team!” chants. #Athletics #ReverseBoycott pic.twitter.com/0l20HA3Eaz

— Joe Hughes (@VegasJoeHughes) June 14, 2023

The “Reverse Boycott” was a display of how it would look if the A’s committed to staying and committed to winning.

Despite what you may have heard, this fanbase is worth the investment.https://t.co/Ro4toEK3zt pic.twitter.com/exhaFDNaxZ

— Marcus Thompson II (@ThompsonScribe) June 14, 2023

Shestakofsky explained that the Hall is trying to capture and document the "voice of the fans."

"What we're really documenting here is the voice of fans," Shestakofsky said, "And fans having a voice in this process."

The Athletics have called Oakland home since 1968, winning six American League pennants and four World Series along the way.

Singer and Oakland A's fan Rebecca Black is not "getting down" with the prospect of her team being moved from the Bay Area to Las Vegas following the news that the latter approved a public funding bill that would allow the franchise to build a new stadium on the city's Strip.

And Black certainly wasn't "looking forward to the weekend" series between the A's Philadelphia Phillies. Especially when Oakland's social team tried to reference her hit song "Friday" on Twitter.

She voiced her displeasure with team co-owner John Fisher and echoed the fanbase's wish for Fisher to sell the team.

I DONT HAVE A COUSIN FROM PHILLY? SELL THE TEAM https://t.co/tDLI2E3BFd

— Rebecca Black (@MsRebeccaBlack) June 17, 2023

Black, 25, is a native of Irvine, California, a few hours outside of Oakland and may be taking umbrage to the recent exodus of teams from the town. In recent years the Warriors and Raiders have each left and built new stadium in other cities, San Francisco and Las Vegas, respectively.

When the A's leave, Oakland won't have any professional sports teams left, which would leave a sad legacy. Not exactly the same feeling as hitting play on "Friday," a song that has become legendary for good vibes.