Photo credit: sportsradiopd.com

By: Amaury Pi-Gonzalez

In 1978, A’s owner Charlie O Finley gave the broadcast rights for free to the UC Berkeley campus radio station, KALX 90.7 FM, with Larry Baer and Bob Kozberg at the microphone, calling the action. That same season I was calling the weekend games in Spanish for the old KBRG 105.3 FM San Francisco, with studios in the Merchandise Mart in Market Street. Carl Finley asked me to give the score every half inning in English because our signal was covering the Bay Area and the UC Berkeley campus station could not be heard at the Oakland Coliseum parking lot. By the way, if the name Larry Baer sounds familiar; yes, he is the same Larry Baer running the San Francisco Giants today.

The A’s ended their partnership in 2018 with 95.7 FM The Game, and as of today, there’s less than one month until pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training in Arizona, and the team has not signed a new flagship station. Could it be that the A’s will not have a radio station to carry their games? How can they find sponsors if they might just go into Spring Training with no radio signal? They could even be broadcasting the games on the A’s website, but no commercial over-the-air radio station? Can history repeat itself from 1978?

Of course, the A’s will have full coverage of all their games on television, but if they cannot secure a local radio signal, that would be news that they are not looking forward to announce. At this time last year, the A’s were already advertising their Fanfest at Jack London Square. But today just a week and days away (their Fanfest is on January 26th at Jack London Square) and that fan favorite is not advertised on a their radio station because they simply do not have a carrier.

Unfortunately, it’s embarrassing and ridiculous, but these are the times we are living these days, radio is not the medium that it once was back in the day. With the advent of social media (Facebook has done live MLB games in recent years) and local team television, the absence of local radio in 2019 is very possible. The A’s have their network station aligned, but no local flagship station to provide the coverage

Welcome to 2019!