Category: Oakland Athletics

From left, lobbyists Alfredo Alonso and John Griffin, Oakland Athletics owner John Fisher, President Dave Kaval and lobbyist Jessica Ferrato inside the Legislature in Carson City on May 31, 2023. (Nevada Independent file photo)

By Amaury Pi-González

OAKLAND–For years now I have heard executives and even baseball so called “experts” call the Oakland Athletics a “small market team”. According to the Official US Census in 2020, the Bay Area has a population of over 7 million people in nine counties and 101 cities.

If that is a small market, then I must have been born yesterday on planet Mongo. Major League Baseball generate great part of their overall revenues via Television, that’s where the money is, forget radio. For the past several years, Nielsen has ranked the Bay Area market, the sixth largest TV market in the country. Actually throughout the 1980s and 1990s it had been the fifth largest.

Not everybody that attends A’s games live in Oakland, just like Giants fans are not only those that live in San Francisco. There is a reason we are the “Bay Area”. Leaving Oakland for Las Vegas is indeed leaving a 7 million people market to a market with a population of 640,000.

The Las Vegas media market is #40 in the US; the Oakland-Bay Area is #6. These are the facts. Yes, Las Vegas (according to the Las Vegas Statistics Bureau) is one of the most popular places to travel not only in the US, but in the world. And according to their statistics, the city has approximately 32 million visitors every year.

The Oakland Raiders have been successful as well as the last and current Stanley Cup Champions Las Vegas Golden Knights. In the NFL you play a 17 game season with about half played at home, in the NHL is an 82 game season with 41 games at home.

In MLB is a 162 game season with 81 home games. To sell most games during an 81 game season at home inside a 30,000 seat stadium, you have to sell out most of the time, to make it around 2 million in attendance.

The ‘powers to be’ in Las Vegas are counting with tourism to buy tickets for baseball, but that is a stretch. Good luck with that. However, I can see Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers and other fans of big teams that travel well to see their teams for a three day weekend in Las Vegas, where most people go to watch shows and participate in gambling.

It is also a favorite spot for honeymooners. You can still get married at the Elvis Chapel and if it doesn’t that work, drive north to Reno and get a divorce. Finally, and of course, I wanted the Oakland A’s to stay in Oakland where they had won four World Series and were their roots really are.

But if they leave, as it looks today, even with all the thousands of people and reverse boycotts at different parks, including the two games coming this weekend at Oakland against the Giants, that is all nice and entertaining, but in the end I do not think Mr. Fisher is shaking and sweating when and if he seen those demonstrations, because he still owns the team and at the end, with all respect to the people demonstrating, in this country, under our free enterprise system, you cannot force a private citizen to sell if he/she doesn’t want to sell. It is as simple as that.

I have heard all scenarios by now on this debacle, and all I can go by is what is happening, we all live day to day. Some people are speaking like 2028 is just “around the corner”. 2028 is the projected year for when the Oakland A’s become the Las Vegas A’s.

Construction companies, baseball owners, lawmakers in City Halls in different cities and others maybe in the Stock Market as investors usually can plan for five years ahead, but most people I know they cannot tell you where they are going to be five years from today. Can you?

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the lead play by play announcer on the Oakland A’s Spanish radio network on 1010 KIQI San Francisco and 990 KATD Pittsburg and does News and Commentary at http://www.sportsradioservice.com

Former Oakland A’s outfielder Jose Canseco seen throwing out the first ball in previous years ago game at the Oakland Coliseum was one of the key stars of the A’s World Series teams in the 80s (AP News photo)

By Amaury Pi-González

The Oakland Athletics won three consecutive American League pennants from 1988 to 1990 and made it to the World Series annually.

These three years were the pinnacle of success for the Oakland A’s during the Walter Haas ownership and Tony LaRussa as field manager, the best time since the Charlie O Finley Athletics won three consecutive World Series in 1972-73 and 1974.

The A’s did not win three World Series in a row this time, but these were some of the greatest baseball teams the A’s ever put on the field. The teams had power, speed, pitching, and everything, including very exciting players, but as we know, the World Series is genuinely unpredictable.

• 1988 I considered the best of these three consecutive World Series teams. They won 104 games and finished 13 games over the Minnesota Twins in their division and then beat the Boston Red Sox in four games to win the American League Championship Series.
• The World Series matched the A’s vs. the Los Angeles Dodgers, only the second time that two California teams met in the October Classic. Previously was also the Oakland A’s in 1974 when they beat the Dodgers. This time the Dodgers took the Oakland A’s in five games, and pitching star Orel Hershiser won the series MVP. José Canseco won the MVP of the American League and the Silver Slugger Award. Dennis Eckersley won the Rolaids Relief Man of the Year, and in 1988 Tony LaRussa won the Manager of the Year. The first game of the World Series at Dodger Stadium culminated with a home run by pinch hitter Kirk Gibson (he could not take batting practice due to his physical condition), yet he surprised the world with that dramatic ninth-inning home run vs. Eckersley that landed in the right field seats. Eck threw “one slider too many.” Although it was just Game One, it had the feeling that this was a precursor of what was going to happen. Famous artist Leroy Neiman was present doing his paintings. The great Spanish opera singer Placido Domingo, who sang the National Anthem at the inaugural game at Dodger Stadium, came into our booth prior to game three at the Oakland Coliseum. He was very much curious about baseball and specially asked questions about José Canseco, who that season became the first 40-40 player in history.
• 1989 Was not only Oakland A’s fourth World Championship title but the most historical as a powerful earthquake stopped it. As Evelio A.Mendoza and yours truly were doing the pre-game show Game 3, less than a half-hour before the game was to start, the quake hit, shaking Candlestick Park. I will never forget that October 17. The Loma Prieta earthquake was a strong 6.9 in magnitude. The series resumes ten days after the quake, which killed 67, injured more than 3,700, and caused billions of dollars in property damage. The Oakland A’s won games 1 and 2 at Oakland by scores of 5-0 and 5-1, then ten days after the earthquake, the series resumed in San Francisco, where they won game 3 by a 13-7 score and game four by a 9-6 score. Dave Stewart, who won games 1 and 3 was named the MVP. Nobody in Oakland history did what Stew accomplished from 1987 to 1990; he won 20 to 22 games in each season consecutively. The four World Series trophies for the Oakland A’s are the best for a Bay Area team. The 1989 World Series is historically unique and shows the leadership of the interim Commissioner Fay Vincent, who, after the earthquake, made the decision as he was sitting at his box at Candlestick Park and ordered the game to be postponed. According to Vincent, he had already made the decision to postpone Game 3 without telling anybody first. As a result, the umpires filed a formal protest of Vincent’s decision. However, the game had to be postponed due to trouble with gas lines and the power issue. Vincent made the right decision, and in the end, the World Series was played in its totality. Dave Stewart was more than the MVP for this World Series. Stewart was active working and helping first responders in the Cypress Freeway area of Oakland, which had collapsed during the quake, an area that caused many of the fatalities.
  1990. The A’s played the Cincinnati Reds. The first two games were scheduled to be played at Cincinnati. There was a large contingency of Oakland A’s employees, their families, that followed the team east. The Mayor of Oakland Lionel Wilson and his wife were present among other Oakland leaders. All the rooms in Cincinnati hotels were sold out. My wife and I stayed in Kentucky along with the other staff people, including broadcasters. The bus ride was about hour from the stadium. Later when I was traveling with other teams, I discovered a friendly bridge that I would walk a few times across the Ohio River from Riverfront Stadium to Covington, Kentucky. Everything went the Red’s way as they won the two games in Cincinnati and the last two in Oakland; A’s were swept. As if often happens in baseball, a player that was young and ineffective during his career with the Oakland A’s from 1985 to 1987, Dominican pitcher José Rijo who was traded from Oakland three years before, was 3-0 in the postseason and 2-0 in the World Series came back to haunt his ex-team and won the MVP.

Years later (when he was not managing the A’s), I spoke with Tony LaRussa, who used to have a pregame segment before each of our A’s games in Spanish, and told him I believe the A’s should have won the three World Series, he agreed with me. But such is baseball.

1990 was the last time the A’s were in a World Series. Thirty-three years ago and counting,

Famous Quotes: “May God give you, for every storm, a rainbow; for every tear, a smile; for every care, a promise; and a blessing in each trial. For every problem life seems, a faithful friend to share; for every sigh, a sweet song, and an answer for each prayer”. -Vin Scully.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the lead play by play voice for the Oakland Athletics Spanish radio network at 1010 KIQI San Francisco and 990 KATD Pittsburg and does News and Commentary at http://www.sportsradioservice.com