It must have been 1996. I must have been 8. And I must have been sitting at the kitchen table, poring over the newspaper box scores, like I did every morning for years. It must have been early in my box-scoring reading days because I remember being outraged.
Why, I just couldn’t understand, Was Mark McGwire, the best player in baseball, batting seventh?
My dad had to explain to me how box scores were annotated, how pinch-runners and pinch-hitters were added in. McGwire, fortunately, it turned out, was batting fourth.
Oakland A’s baseball has been the throughline of my life. I’ve had impeccable timing — mostly, at least — but more on that in a bit. My entry into the sport coincided perfectly with the beginning of the Moneyball era. I first started attending games in earnest in 1999 thanks to a marketing genius at the club who decided to offer field-level tickets for just 99 cents. It was a home run for my mom, a great way to fill a summer afternoon with three boys.
My dad would take us to spring training each year in Arizona. We’d even stay at the A’s hotel so that we could run into members of the team, which we invariably did. Once, when I’d just entered high school, I found manager Ken Macha in the elevator, or maybe it was the lobby, and began confidently explaining to him that, actually, Esteban German should be his second baseman in the season to come.
Another spring, a few years before that, my brothers and I somehow managed to get a photo with Jason Giambi, perhaps my favorite Oakland A of all time. The photo has long since been lost, or at least misplaced, but in my mind’s eye, we were sitting on the padded railing right next to the third-base tarp at the old Phoenix Municipal Stadium, the A’s legend standing on the field, his arms draped over all of us.
Because one game a day simply wasn’t enough, each morning we’d descend on Papago Park to watch all the minor league action, behind nothing more than a chain-link fence, the four fields fanning out in all directions. At the office of the old minor league complex, we’d grab the daily rosters — which in those days were still printed out — so that I could see which players had been assigned where.
Back at the Coliseum, I was fortunate enough to attend all the playoff classics. The matchups with the New York Yankees — most prominently the loss highlighted by Derek Jeter’s “Flip” play — and then later meetings with the Minnesota Twins, Boston Red Sox and finally the Detroit Tigers.
I remember sitting, and mostly standing, in the third deck for Game 5 of the 2013 ALDS with 46,598 other fans, the gold rally towels waving, everywhere. At the time it was the O.co Coliseum. So much energy. So much noise. So much hope. Only for Justin Verlander to extinguish another season.
That summer was the first time I walked into a press box, the first time I covered an MLB game — at the Coliseum, no less — for a website that no longer exists. I went on to report on the A’s, and every other Bay Area team, for the better part of a decade. I simply couldn’t get enough baseball. One summer, when I was writing about both the A’s and San Francisco Giants for a local paper, I covered 78 games at Oracle Park.
Another time, in the early days, I was standing in the old Coliseum clubhouse when Brandon Moss, as gregarious of a player as there’s ever been, walked past me and said: “Hey Sogie, are you playing second base today?” I was dumbfounded, caught off guard. I had to laugh. I’d never met Moss. But with my beard and glasses, I must have looked enough like Eric Sogard, the A’s bespectacled utility infielder, for Moss to crack a joke.
The last game I’d ever cover — not that I knew it at the time — fittingly, was an A’s October collapse, the 2019 Wild-Card Game. 54,005 fans. The last time Mt. Davis was open. I remember being particularly proud of the story I wrote that night, especially the way I ended it:
Back-to-back 97-win season. Back-to-back wild-card exits. There's always next season.
"See you on March 26," the public address announcer said, as the crowd, with just one thought in its collective mind, spilled out of the Coliseum and into the night.
Holy sh--. They did it again.
Covid came and attending games — never mind covering them — wasn’t really a thing. I almost entirely fell out of touch with baseball, with the Oakland A’s. Ken Korach and Vince Cotroneo pulled me back in. During the summer of 2021, I was on the East Coast, not working in sports for the first time in nearly a decade. But late at night, as I would fall asleep, I’d pop in my AirPods and listen to Ken and Vince on my iPhone, the modern-day equivalent of the old transistor radio. There was a comfort, a familiarity in listening to Oakland A’s baseball, drifting off to sleep.
It was a slow burn.
By spring training of 2023, I was all the way back in. I started writing on Substack — A’s Unleashed, I called it, Honest, independent coverage of MLB’s forgotten team. I aimed to be unapologetic. I might be harsh, I conceded in my notes, laying out my vision, But always fair. With the A’s forever threatening to leave Oakland behind, so, too, had most Bay Area outlets left behind the club. Aspirationally, I figured I could get my credential back, write some features. The A’s PR staff declined, but I’ll save that story for another day.
I was crushed. But instead of giving up, I followed some wise advice I’d been given at the time: Just keep going. Writing about baseball was what I loved to do. So, why stop? Very quickly I realized that no one wants to read anymore. Short-form content for short attention spans, I often say.
And so, I leaned heavily into Twitter. And found unexpected success — far more than I’d ever enjoyed when I was doing this professionally, at least in terms of audience and reach. In under two seasons, my audience has boomed by over 218%, eclipsing 2,300 followers. At my height, I delivered 12.7 million impressions in a single month.
It’s been incredibly fun. I’ve been incredibly proud of the coverage I’ve produced, even if certain members of the A’s executive team haven’t always agreed. But recently, if I’m being honest, it’s also been incredibly and increasingly sad.
I’ve been to 13 games since the start of August, including all seven on the penultimate homestand. One night, as I walked through the familiar A Lot after watching the game with my dad and my brother, I remember a feeling of sadness washing over me. It was all coming to an end. After a recent day game, I found myself caught in the crush on the concrete concourse, not particularly minding the snarl. I was in no rush, the opposite, in fact. I wanted to soak up as much time in the stadium as I could. Up ahead, I saw the sign. A simple black background. The text in green, outlined in gold.
IM GONNA MISS THIS PLACE
The “A” in PLACE written in the club’s cursive script.
The next afternoon, my seventh game in as many days, I couldn’t help but notice that I was sad the entire time — even as I was glad to be there.
I’m still tweeting minor-league highlights, as if these players are still future Oakland A’s, as if anyone still is.
At some point this year I began telling people — or maybe just trying to tell myself —that sports energy can’t be destroyed. It can only be transformed. Next year the Oakland Roots will be taking up residence at the Coliseum. Even now, as you filter through the D Gate, you’ll see a couple of employees for the soccer club, camped out at a small folding table, selling membership deposits for the season to come.
Then, of course, there’s the Oakland B’s, across the city, some seven miles from the complex that once housed the A’s, Golden State Warriors and Oakland Raiders. How many games, I’ve often wondered in recent months, Across the decades and between those three teams, have I attended in this one spot, 7000 Coliseum Way? On the final day of the B’s regular season, the first in team history, as I walked up the ramp to the bleachers, I ran into an old friend before I could even find a seat. We’d first met in a pressbox a decade ago when we were both reporters.
We immediately got to talking about the end of the Oakland A’s when he said something that struck me.
“This,” He said, pointing down to the field of Raimondi Park, “Is all different.”
“But this,” He said, pointing up to the crowd, the drums beating, the flags waving, “Is all the same.”
“That’s good enough for me.”
That observation speaks to the power of live sports. It’s one of the reasons why I always find myself going to the games. There’s an electricity in the crowd, in the people you meet and share the experience with. I might miss the people, at the games and on Twitter, as much as the baseball. Who knows? Maybe more.
As I worked my way through the drafts of this story — writing and re-writing and then finally, for almost a week, just letting it sit — I couldn’t help but notice I’ve led a charmed baseball life. It really has been one hell of a run. On September 26 right around 3 p.m., that comes to an end.
I’m reminded of a simple white banner I saw draped over the railing of the right-field bleachers, just above the out-of-town scoreboard, on my last trip to the Coliseum.
GENERATIONAL ROBBERY
And that brings us back to those box scores. Originally, I was tempted to end this by writing about how there won’t be any more outraged kids, sitting at the kitchen table, reading Oakland A’s box scores. But no one reads the newspaper these days anyway so that doesn’t really land.
Like I said, it’s been a charmed baseball life. I’d like to say, I’m excited for what comes next. But I don’t know what does. I don’t have a plan.