Leading up to Thursday's final A's home game at the Oakland Coliseum... I was feeling both anxious and excited. I left physically and emotionally exhausted.
This is one of those posts that I sat down, wrote and rewrote several times... only to revise it one final time by completely starting over. As a result, I'm torn between posting this in a timely manner... and capturing how I feel and what I want to write accurately. The result is a quick (actually not so quick) post documenting a key moment in my Oakland A's fanfare.
It started off with me leaving my house at 6:41 am and arriving at the Berryessa BART station forty minutes later.
My brother and his wife met me there and we hopped on the next train. Thirty-five minutes later we were across the street from the Coliseum. Part of the anxiety I had leading up to the game involved being crammed into the train... but there was plenty of seats available on the way up there.
I knew the game was sold out and I wanted to make sure that we were early enough to receive a voucher for the stadium giveaway. It's a good thing we arrived over three hours before the game, because the line we waited in wrapped around a quarter of the Coliseum.
My nephew and his girlfriend were coming from Alameda and joined us a few minutes later. We didn't have to wait too long for them to open the gates. And as the line started to move... I quickly captured the backside of the Coliseum scoreboard that features the Rickey Henderson Field and Oakland Athletics logos.
Once inside... the five of us walked around the entire ballpark to soak everything in (but mainly to see what kind of food we were going to eat). Our first stop was the stamp station. As we walked into the stadium, we were handed these commemorative tickets:
We thought it would be cool to get them stamped. Unfortunately, the guy wouldn't do it because they already have the game date on them, so I whipped out my wallet card and had him stamp the back:
When I left my house, I had one of my 2019 Topps Oakland Coliseum cards that I had hoped to get stamped as well... but I dropped it somewhere along the way.
Afterwards... we walked by the wall of fame featuring athletes from a variety of sports:
If you look closely, you'll even see plaques for Willie Stargell and Curt Flood who both attended high school in the East Bay.
2019 Topps #126
I really wanted to get a photograph of the Coliseum from behind home plate (because that's the same angle featured on the 2019 Topps card), but we had walked too far and I didn't want to hold everyone up.
At least I was able to capture a photo of our seats from across the stadium.
As we headed back to our section, there was this crazy guy making a lot of noise:
We would run into him again, but not before standing in line for 30 minutes for some nachos:
They were pretty good. But honestly when it comes to nachos, I prefer to keep things simple: chips, cheese, and jalapeños. The only reason I went for the "super" version is because of the souvenir helmet. I got about 70% into these before tossing in the white flag and setting it under my seat.
We got to our seats a little over an hour before the game. According to my phone the temperature was only in the the low 70's, but sitting in direct sunlight I could feel the burn by the time Henderson and Stewart tossed out the first pitch:
I figured Rickey was going to get the call... but Smoke was a nice bonus. A few minutes later Barry Zito started singing the Star Spangled Banner and right before he wrapped it up this soared above the stadium:
Can't see anything? Sorry... I'll zoom in a little:
After a little research and a quick text to SumoMenkoMan... I confirmed that this is a Lockheed U-2. Two MLB games this year... and two USAF flyovers. Pretty darn cool.
Once the game started, I put the phone away to focus on the game. But I did pull it out in time to catch Krazy George storming by:
The game itself was awesome. There weren't any home runs, but there were two fantastic defensive plays made by Zach Gelof and JJ Bleday, lots of Let's Go Oakland chants, several attempts to get the wave started, and of course an A's win in their final game at the Coliseum:
We stuck around twenty to thirty minutes after the final out... long enough to hear Mark Kotsay's speech. Then headed to the exit to exchange our vouchers for the stadium giveaway:
It's a nice trinket to cap off forty-six years of attending games at the Oakland Coliseum. I'm glad I was able to experience it with the same brother who took me to my very first A's game back in 1978.
As for my A's fanfare... I'm still not sure which direction it's headed. I know that I will always be an Oakland A's fan, but after tomorrow they won't be representing Oakland or the Bay Area on the field anymore. So we'll see. I will say that I am leaning towards supporting them as a franchise... but will likely boycott buying any gear until John Fisher sells the team.
If you've made it this far... I appreciate you taking the time to check out this post. I hope I was able to capture the event well enough, so that years from now I can read it again and relive this happy, sad, anxious, and mad experience.
Happy Saturday and sayonara!
