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The Oakland Athletics won their final home game at the famous Coliseum, followed by heartfelt remarks from the staff and the players. Owner John Fisher released a somber letter to Oakland’s fans. This bitter moment was felt by all baseball fans coast to coast.

This isn’t the first time a team has moved, and it won’t be the last. It might not even be the last for the Athletics. They’ve already abandoned bereft fans first in Philadelphia, then in Kansas City, tearing gaping holes into each city as they went.

Oakland was different. The Athletics made plenty of history during their nearly 60 year tenure there. They had their share of World Series titles, league pennants, and washout years, with more variety season-after-season than most any other team. From Spring Training to the postseason, you never knew what you were getting as an A’s fan. They were the center of a renaissance, when managers started building teams with hard math instead of the folly whimsy of feelings, featured in the wonderful movie Moneyball. The team had so much culture and history that it almost gave Oakland an identity as something other than an island of Bay Area rejects.

And now they’re gone. Goodbye.

It makes one wonder why teams leave, and why that’s even allowed. It all boils down to the private ownership system, meritocracy, and whether or not cities care about their people. Today, we get philosophical about sports.

America’s Unique Sports Culture

Craziest part of American sport culture is the team leaving the city. The sports team is symbolic of the city. that's lindy. It's not supposed to be a regular business. It's not supposed to be McDonald's. It shouldn't be allowed to leave. https://t.co/kNu2Stgeis

— LindyMan (@PaulSkallas) September 26, 2024

Why do American sports teams move so much? This doesn’t happen in the UK, which has a similar private ownership system. It doesn’t happen in Argentina, where sports are managed by the state.

I pick these contrasts because they all work. The UK’s soccer leagues are the most viewed worldwide. Argentina regularly spits out the best players. Major League Soccer in the U.S. has the most money. That’s where David Beckham and Lionel Messi chose to earn their paychecks, after all.

We’re talking about baseball here, but this makes an interesting point that between three effective methods of doing sports, there clearly isn’t a right or a wrong way. The difference must then be cultural.

I’ve heard the terms “thick” and “thin” cultures to describe the attachment people have to their homelands, and the United States has the thinnest culture there is. Here, a man is seen as a culture in himself and not a product of where he came from. If he thinks he can get a better deal out of life by hitting the road, he will, his hometown be damned. In a culture where people don’t have deep roots, and are always looking for the best possible option for themselves, mobility becomes a high virtue.

I think this explains a lot about American life. It brings downsides like our high divorce rates, high job turnover, frequent career changes, hostile politics and frequent elections. It brings upsides like high social mobility, unlimited tries in failed ventures, and the ability to move to a new city and start anew. A thin culture isn’t a bad thing, it’s simply a thing. Let’s bring this idea back to baseball.

Suppose the King has decreed that baseball teams are no longer allowed to move. It does too much damage to a city’s fabric. If Mr. Billionaire has enough money to buy a baseball team, then by gum, he’s got enough money to help out around town. Taking away Mr. Billionaire’s escape route means he’ll have skin in the game, and no choice but to solve the problems that would push him away. It’s a great idea to redirect a proven stream of income right to the neighborhoods that need it most.

Editors Note: This is part of a larger problem I call the Scrooge McDuck fallacy: people assume billionaires store their wealth in secret vaults full of gold coins, and can solve every problem ever with dump trucks full of money.

Now the mobility is gone. Not only is this un-American, it’s a major liability for a nine-figure investment. Nobody would ever buy a team under these conditions, and the team owners are stuck. This won’t be a problem in most cities, but in a place like Oakland, the owner will be stuck holding a bowling ball in a sinking canoe. He can either flush a hundred billion bucks down the toilet trying to “fix” Oakland, or sell to the only person willing to buy: which would have to be the City.

Given time, I think every franchise owner would sell to their city. Baseball teams would fall under municipal control. It’s the only way to keep a team in a city forever. That’s even more un-American, and the idea of baseball being under the power of DMV-esque paper pushers makes my soul sore.

The Benefit of Nomadic Teams

Mobility and meritocracy go hand in hand. It’s a chicken-or-the-egg sort of thing, and a key part of a hyper-individualistic culture. People constantly move around looking for the best job, the best employees, girlfriends, car dealerships, anything you can think of. Baseball, that good old American pastime, represents meritocracy better than anything.

Ball players have to work their way up through a network of Minor League farm teams. Only the best make it to the elite echelon of the Majors. On another layer, once in the Major Leagues, players are bought and sold between teams for unholy amounts of money. Every once in a while you get a demigod like Shohei Ohtani, who blasts past the farm system like a shrieking homer and lands a salary that’ll make a tech CEO blush.

Managers, coaches and front-office types go through a similar competitive meat grinder. When teams have a lousy year, managers are first to the guillotine. When they perform well, they get contract offers halfway across the country. Teams with more money can attract better performers, and the talent starts to accrue around those perennial playoff attendees.

Owners are sort of exempt from this, but if you have enough money to buy a baseball team, you’ve probably excelled elsewhere in the capitalism machine.

The possibility of a team leaving their city adds a new layer of competition to the mix, one on a municipal level. Now, cities themselves have to compete in order to retain teams. Cities that give a team incentives to stay, like building new stadiums when they need them, are more likely to keep a team or attract one on the run.

It’s not just about baseball teams, but the nomadic nature of sports forces cities to be competitive about their own culture. A city that works to keep a baseball team in town is one that cares about its citizens having something to do on the weekends. That’s a city where more people will live and work and be happy about it. If you’ve been to Oakland recently, you’ll know that none of this is a priority for the people in charge.

An example of a city doing it right would be Chicago. The Cubs will probably never leave, because Wrigley Field is so iconic. The city put up plenty of money to get the new Comiskey Park put in for the White Sox (which now goes by a name so corporate and bland I refuse to acknowledge the change). Today there’s an ongoing debate about whether or not the city should pay for the Bears’ new football stadium.

Everyone freaks out when stadiums are built with taxpayer money instead of Mr. Billionaire’s checking account. I thought improving a city was the whole point of taxpayer money. Besides, if the owners had to buy their own stadiums, you could expect teams to be a hell of a lot more nomadic than they already are.

Why The Athletics Left Oakland

Let’s assume, controversially, that John Fisher is actually a human being who bought the team because he likes baseball. He doesn’t want to leave Oakland, but he has to weigh the options of staying in a dying city or trying his luck elsewhere.

It’s not an easy thing to move a baseball team. He needs a unanimous YES vote from the other 29 owners, and the approving nod from the all-powerful Commissioner of Baseball. Then he’s got to get a stadium built and gather a whole new fanbase from scratch. If these nearly impossible tasks become easier than making a deal with the city, then there is truly something rotten in Oakland.

I believe Fisher when he says that “staying in Oakland was our goal.” I believe that he wanted to stay and give his fans something to be proud of. Fact was that he couldn’t remain in the Coliseum because it was too dilapidated. He tried multiple times to get a new stadium, and the city gave him the finger. The Athletics put in the effort to make a deal, and the city made no effort to keep them. It was a one-sided relationship that anybody with brains would hurry out of.

I’ve called Oakland the American favela. It’s different from a Brazilian favela in that it’s completely empty. The only people on the street are the drugged up nightstalkers. Jack London Square is devoid of life. Every storefront is for rent and every building is for sale. Historic monuments are covered in graffiti and nobody cares. If the people of Oakland couldn’t be bothered to stick around, why the hell should the team? You don’t get to leave your crippled city and then demand that the A’s stay so you can root for them through your TV screen.

To the loyal fans of the Athletics, I say this- John Fisher didn’t abandon you, Oakland did. The scum in charge have stuffed their pockets with tax money and let the city die. They care too little about the public to keep any kind of culture within the city limits. Oakland has become a place where broken dreams and broken needles lie together in gutters, and you, the people who live there, voted for it.

That’s why you can’t have nice things. ■