'Are We Alive Back There?'
The A’s Wednesday day trip to the Vegas Chambers’ annual Preview Las Vegas event went about as disastrously as would be expected for an organization that has mastered the art of delivering embarrassing optics.
John Fisher, the club’s owner, told reporters that he “gave everything he had” to keep the team in Oakland after, inexplicably, beginning his answer by detailing that he’d actually been a fan of the cross-bay rival Giants before purchasing the East Bay team.
The on-stage keynote, improbably, was even worse.
After Fisher had been announced to the crowd, the emcee of the chamber of commerce event proceeded to drown in real-time:
EMCEE: The Las Vegas A’s!
CROWD: *Small clap*
EMCEE: We like the sound of that right, Vegas?
CROWD: *Silence*
EMCEE: Yea? Yes? Are we alive back there? Las Vegas, how we feeling? *Laughs awkardly* Ok.
Watch the exchange for yourself right here.
There is perhaps no better way to appreciate how impeccable the comedic timing of this exchange was than to consider that it’s quite simply laugh-out-loud funny, even as it’s just the latest flashpoint in an ongoing saga that is profoundly heartbreaking.
As I tweeted after watching this clip (repeatedly), nothing says “dead on arrival” in a louder, more resounding fashion than the silence of the Las Vegas chamber of commerce crowd upon the literal arrival of the A’s to town.
Hopefully, this new marketing slogan for John Fisher’s Las Vegas Baseball Team (JFLVBT) will find its way onto a t-shirt:
FRONT: Are we alive back there?
BACK: John Fisher’s Las Vegas Baseball Team
Coming to a ballpark to be designed later (BTBDL) in 2028, probably.
Or better yet, I’d love to see this as a right-field bleacher sign in 2024 at the Coliseum.