by Amaury Pi Gonzalez and Jerry Feitelberg

(photo credit Joe Salvatore CBS Radio)

OAKLAND–A couple of hours before the LA Angels-Oakland A’s game Monday night at the Oakland Coliseum the grounds crew spray painted the huge brown patch in centerfield green that was once was the bleachers that came out into centerfield and killed the natural grass that was once there.
It signified the start of the NFL season for the Oakland Raiders and pre season.

It also had Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis saying what he’s said time and again each time this year that something has to be done about the Oakland Raiders stadium issues. The grounds crew took to centerfield and sprayed it all green, the patch extended out from center toward rightfield a spot that former A’s centerfielder Dwayne Murphy once roamed and probably can tell you about. Yes the same brown patch to green spray experience during his days with the A’s in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

This look resembles grass but it’s a really a bad look because the stands cover the field during Raiders games. That’s where the temporary stands go out there. For the fans there’s a little wear and tear for that section of the outfield. You have to give the Coliseum grounds keepers as much credit as they do. They do as good of a job as they can keeping centerfield tidy.

This is the only facility in the country that is shared by a MLB club and an NFL team everybody has to live with it. MLB figured it out in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Cincinnati and others that they can make a duel stadium venture work and shared stadiums just don’t work and they can’t figure it out in Oakland. Oakland business man Floyd Kephart had submitted his final plans for a Oakland Raiders stadium.

This was at the Oakland Coliseum City project meeting which nobody attended. Their was nobody at the meeting that was of any importance other than members of the media and Kephart ended up virtually talking to himself at the meeting for 20 minutes. Amaury had the chance to talk with some former Oakland mayors like the late Lionel Wilson and former mayor Jerry Brown. Brown was not a sports guy and discussing public monies for saving the A’s was not even on his radar. Wilson talked to Amaury about a new stadium for the A’s.

At the time that Wilson was mayor of Oakland the A’s were winning in the mid 80s with the A’s owners the Haas Family as team owners. Nobody during that time cared where you played all they cared about is if you were winning World Series and winning pennants and now it’s a different story. In terms of the Raiders if you looked at the places they played in Northern and Southern California there were so many different things people could do during those days. The question is if they don’t win their not coming out to the park.

This week Amaury is torn as the Angels visit the A’s, Amaury is the TV Spanish voice for the Angels, the radio Spanish voice for the A’s, and does News and Commentary each week and Jerry Feitelberg is an Oakland A’s beat reporter at http://www.sportsradioservice.com