The team may be gone, but the memories will live on forever.

On Thursday, September 26, 2024, the Oakland A’s played one last game in front of their home crowd, marking the end of a 57-year relationship.

Fans have been angry and frustrated this season ever since owner John Fisher announced his intent to move the team to Las Vegas after “attempts” to secure a new stadium in Oakland failed to come to fruition. The sentiments are understandable, after all, since ownership failed to do anything meaningful about making headway for a new stadium to come to fruition.

Instead, 2024 was actively billed as the team’s final year in Oakland, despite not having an actual place to play in Las Vegas and their lease with the Oakland Coliseum lapsing after the season. Despite the efforts to cash grab and milk Oakland for as much money as they could before the snake oil salesman Fisher packed up and left disaster in his wake, Oakland fished last in the league in home attendance serving as the only team not to draw at least a million fans to their home ballpark.

A’s fans organized boycotts and protests, including reverse boycotts to pack the stadium, to show just how much they care about the green and gold. Unfortunately, their cries for the team to be sold fell on deaf and ignorant ears, leaving them to mourn the fact that yet another team was ditching Oakland for the mirage of a better life somewhere else.

During their final series, Fisher drafted and released what can only be described as a soulless, disingenuous word soup. As usual, he shifted the blame and claimed he wished he could speak to every fan in person despite taking every opportunity to hide and ignore the Oakland faithful. During the postgame show of their final home game, the Oakland commentators said, “Trying is up for interpretation.” which truly sums up what dribble Fisher pushed out with his letter.

There is no clear answer for the A’s future at this point. While they wait for the Las Vegas situation to get figured out they will play in West Sacramento in a Triple-A stadium in an arrangement that probably isn’t going to work out very well. The future of the A’s is far from resolved and unfortunately the players will still be stuck in the awful circus run by the front office.

The reality of the situation is that owners across the league ultimately care little about the fans or the game in general despite what they claim. When it comes down to it, all they care about is their bottom line on the greed accelerator. 29 other owners and MLB’s commissioner’s office could have tried to step in and put a stop to this but instead, they showed their true colors. This game that means so much to so many average people is subject to the will of billionaires who view it as nothing more than their set of toys to make them money and do as they please.

Growing up in Colorado, I have always had the Colorado Rockies in my lifetime but prior to 1993 there was no major league baseball in Colorado. During my father’s younger years in the 60s and 70s, he recalled the times of listening to and watching the occasional baseball game that reached his childhood home in southern Colorado. While he was a big fan of the Big Red Machine, he also developed an affinity towards the A’s. As I grew up and learned about his interests, I too became interested in the A’s. They always served as an alternative to the Rockies in my eyes, as they regularly showed a model of consistency and success, sometimes what seemed to be in spite of their ownership. They had vibrant uniform colors that are underutilized in baseball and seemed to play with that underdog feel that you can’t help but root for.

While they aren’t exactly my team and I can’t fully relate to the heartbreak of the situation, as a fan I can sympathize and empathize with those that are truly affected by this move.

Lena Howland, reporter for ABC 7News, spoke to fans during the final game and captured the story of Kevin Oneill who came to the final game to honor his wife who died of cancer.

“I have a little vial of her ashes and we’re going to try to get her ashes on the field,” he said. “She’s in a lot of different places, all the places we’ve gone to in all our lives. And this is going to be the last stop, so that makes it really rough.”

“It’s always been a thing that we’ve done as a family and now that it’s ending, it’s really hard to realize that this is it, this is the last game, this is the last time you can ever do this.”

Other fans made sure to make it to the Coliseum one last time to say goodbye and cherish the memories that have lasted generations. One fan on social media, present for the final game showed off a sign featuring a picture of himself in 1968 mentioning he was there for the first pitch in Oakland and now present for the last.

Broadcaster and former A’s pitcher Dallas Braden, who threw a perfect game for the A’s, was on the verge of breaking down about the fact that his youngest daughter would never get to see a game in the Coliseum.

The grounds crew scooped dirt into whatever containers fans could bring so that fans could hold on to a piece of history.

The loss of the A’s in Oakland is a reminder of how much this game means to people. For nearly three hours every night for six months, baseball serves not only as a form of entertainment but an escape from reality. It provides a brief respite for a group of strangers to gather in a location and form a bond focused on a simple game. What Fisher and other owners often fail to realize is that at its core, baseball does not and should not ever belong to them. The teams truly belong to the people who support them.

While the organization may eventually find its footing in Vegas or by some other means, the scars it leaves behind will be heavily outweighed by the decades of memories by those who gathered one last time to bid a bittersweet farewell to their beloved franchise.