Yesterday, the Oakland Coliseum was Baseball’s Last Dive Bar

By Matt Werner

“The night was electric. I even met a guy who drove all the way from Grass Valley for the game,” said Mission District resident Joe Sciarrillo.

On June 13, 2023, fans organized a “reverse boycott” of the Oakland Athletics, where instead of staying away from the games, fans showed up in force. Half protest, half celebration, it was truly an “Only in Oakland” type experience. In Lot B hours before the game, hundreds of fans gathered at a tailgate organized by the right field drumming group the Oakland 68’s. They crowdfunded $30,000 to hand out 7,000 t-shirts made by Oaklandish with “SELL” on them. These were distributed to fans for free in the parking lot, and were a hit with fans wearing them throughout the coliseum.

Anson Casanares (left) and Jorge Leon (right), members of the Oakland 68’s wearing the “SELL” t-shirt their group handed out on June 13.

“The idea for the reverse boycott came from Stu Cleary. It was to pack the coliseum on a Tuesday night,” said Jorge Leon, founder of the Oakland 68’s. When asked what he’d like to tell the Oakland A’s ownership, Leon replied, “Sell the team to somebody who cares. Sell it to a Bay Area local, who can enjoy this… almost 30,000 people out on a Tuesday night. Sell the team, leave Oakland. Make your money. You bought it for $180 million, and you stand to make $1.2 billion dollars from the sale. Just sell the team to somebody who cares.”

Also at the tailgate, Anson Casanares, a member of the Oakland 68s told us, “The reason why we don’t show up to games is because the ownership doesn’t care. If the ownership actually kept a team together or cared about the fans, we’d come out in force like tonight all the time.”

Oakland A’s fans with homemade signs reading “Oakland Deserves Better” and “Make Fisher Pay [for] Relocations”

The A’s win last night over the best team in baseball, the Tampa Bay Rays, put them on a 7-game win streak. But the game was not about what was happening on the field, but in the stands. Hundreds of homemade signs dotted the coliseum with creative slogans.

Fans with signs encouraging A’s owner John Fisher to not move the team to Las Vegas.

Lukas Brekke-Miesner, Executive Director at Oakland Kids First, told us before the game: “A reverse boycott isn’t a silver bullet but it will hopefully send a strong message about who we are and what we deserve. And at the very least, it will be a raucous family-filled last hurrah at baseball’s last dive bar.“

Also on June 13, the Nevada’s State Senate voted to approve $380 million in public funding for a Las Vegas Strip stadium. A’s fans want the team to stay in Oakland, although plans for a new waterfront ballpark at Howard Terminal have stalled. Despite the bleak plans and the impact of losing the A’s will have on Oakland, fans were upbeat and relished this night at the coliseum.

East Oakland resident John Gannon said, “I’m just glad that my last memories of the A’s, if they truly are leaving, was with a game that was this much fun, like the old ballpark experience. This is a great way to go out, if this is my last game.”

Matt Werner is a writer from the Bay Area. He’s the editor of Oakland Unseen, a satirical news site