Watching the final series at the Oakland Coliseum in late September should have been heartbreaking to not just every baseball fan, but every sports fan. The last 2024 home game for the Oakland Athletics was on Sept. 26, and it was an extremely emotional and sentimental day at the Coliseum in California. The grounds crew was filling plastic bottles with field dirt and giving them out to fans. Franchise legends came to say goodbye — Barry Zito sang the national anthem, and Dave Stewart and Rickey Henderson threw out the first pitch. Manager Mark Kotsay spoke to the crowd after the A’s victory, growing emotional as he thanked fans and the Coliseum. 

The A’s will move to Las Vegas in 2028. Until then, they will play in the San Francisco Giants’ minor league stadium, Sutter Health Park, in West Sacramento, Calif. 

It’s a shameful end to an illustrious 57-year run for the Oakland A’s. They won four World Series titles in Oakland. A legion of Hall of Famers have called Oakland home. The movie about the 2002 team, “Moneyball,” remains a cultural staple. Even with a lack of success in recent years, the A’s remain one of the most iconic franchises in baseball, and fan loyalty has never wavered. They have felt mistreated by owner John Fisher, who seems to care little about the city and the team’s success, and have demanded that he sell the team for years. 

It is hard for many of us to imagine our beloved franchises leaving their homes behind, but throughout the history of American sports, plenty of teams have done it, and some several times. In fact, this is not the first time the A’s have moved: they started as the Philadelphia A’s in 1901, and became the Kansas City A’s in 1955, before the move to Oakland in 1968. Oakland has unfortunately become familiar with the feeling of teams leaving in recent years. Three professional sports teams have left Oakland since 2019, starting with the Golden State Warriors moving to San Francisco that year and the Oakland Raiders moving to Las Vegas in 2020. 

Another recent instance of team relocation comes in hockey. The National Hockey League is dealing with a similar situation with the Arizona Coyotes, who spent 10 seasons in Arizona before suspending hockey operations and transferring half of their assets to the expansion Utah Hockey Club earlier this year. Even with one of the smaller fanbases across hockey, the Coyotes faithful was named among the most loyal in the league. The Coyotes never approached the success of the A’s, only winning the Pacific Division once in the 2011-12 season, but their fans remained dedicated. Many were infuriated at being looked down upon as an area uninterested in hockey, when in reality Arizona is a bigger market than Salt Lake City. 

As the majority of sports fans will say, sports go much deeper than just the game. Many fans, like myself, grow up with their team, adopting their love from their families at a young age. Those especially attached to their team might find themselves at so many games that their stadiums begin to feel like a second home. Teams bring cities together. We pour over the histories of our franchises almost obsessively. And while history does live forever, it will also serve as a reminder to many fans that the place where their favorite memories of their team lived is no longer home, and it is a difficult pill to swallow. My grandmother was a teenager when her Brooklyn Dodgers left for Los Angeles, and she still speaks glowingly of those Boys of Summer, but remains infuriated at then-owner Walter O’Malley deserting Ebbets Field. 

Some fans will still follow their team in its new city while some will let their interest in their team die with its old home. The disillusionment that A’s fans will feel is a tragic consequence of something that Major League Baseball personnel and owners shouldn’t have allowed to happen in the first place. It is imperative for the good of organized sports that leagues make more of an effort to prioritize fans who have devoted so much energy and time to the teams they love.