Now the outrage has mostly died down. The criticism has died down, the vitriol has been spat out, the jokes about the dopey owner being born on third base and thinking he hit a triple, and the Oakland Athletics will soon be history, which means it's time to move on from the funeral and celebrate life.
In that spirit, we should say this: Thank you, Oakland Athletics.
For 57 summers, Oakland had its own team, and by extension, kids like me got more from baseball than just a fun distraction. This game made me feel even more like I was a part of a team.
In retrospect, the tensions that came from growing up in opposing cultures made perfect sense. My parents had immigrated to the East Bay from the Philippines in the 1970s, but each had different ideas about fitting in. My father had little interest in Americanizing his children, and his enjoyment of sports seemed to depend mainly on his ability to predict the outcomes of bets. My mother, on the other hand, seemed intent on keeping us connected to our roots. We ate the food, and at least understood the language.
These are great thoughts, and they're always in the back of my mind, especially now that I have a daughter and son of my own. But at the time, it made me feel like I didn't belong. The families on TV didn't look like my family, we didn't eat the foods my family ate. It all felt strange.
Then, when I was 9, an older cousin introduced me to baseball by showing me a newspaper taped to the wall, with splashy headlines announcing the 40/40 Club and a picture of a man in a green and gold uniform holding up a base. It was hard to miss Jose Canseco.
There must have been something that piqued my interest. From that moment on, the A's became a gateway to a new world for me. It gave me something to watch after school and talk about the next day. I just Got Baseball was so good that other sports quickly became must-watch. This was the late '80s, and the Bash Brothers were dominating the American League. Rickey Henderson could run, Dave Stewart stared down opponents before crushing them, Mark McGwire hit the ball far, and Dennis Eckersley took the mound and threw a flurry of pinpoint fastballs and nasty sliders to end the game. Baseball didn't require cultural agility, it didn't need translation to understand.
We spent our summers buying baseball cards, hitting grand slams on Nintendo, doing our own play-by-play commentary, and peppering in phrases like, “Oh my goodness!” Because that's what Bill King did. And as we all knew, Bill King was the best. As my siblings got older, they started watching baseball, too, which made it even more fun. Years later, baseball gave us one more thing to share:
But more than anything, baseball gave me something to chase, and it wasn't until later that I came to appreciate this as a great gift. do not have I knew where I wanted to go. I couldn't play, but writing about baseball at least seemed within reach. Soon my goal was to get into the press box. Luckily, that happened.
Every fall, my Hall of Fame ballot arrives in my mailbox. I was there when Derek Jeter got his 3,000th hit. I was there when Dallas Braden gave Alex Rodriguez an impromptu lesson about workplace boundaries. I was there when the Chicago Cubs won their first World Series since 1908. And, of course, I was there when Bartolo Colon hit a home run.
It may sound silly, but no matter what happens from now on, I can always say that I know what it's like to be in touch with my dreams.
Without the Oakland Athletics, it wouldn't have happened.
When I look back at the blessings I have received, it is clear that many of them come from baseball. Baseball has been a constant presence in my life, in the background of many conversations with my brother. It was there when I crouched like Rickey and swung like Carney Lansford, imitating the batting stances of the 1988 Athletics starters, during a family camping trip this summer. It was there when I lost one of my sisters 20 years ago, way too soon. We have done everything she would have wanted. That is why she wears the number 3 jersey of Eric Chavez, her favorite Athletics player.
I think about my sister a lot, especially now, and how she would feel about how this all turned out. In journalism, being a fan has to be left outside the press box door, so it's been years since my mood was affected by the outcome of an Athletics game. But baseball helped me meet my wife, a Yankees fan, and I'm sure she once took me to “Moneyball” to rejoice in the heartache her team inflicted on my team. It worked. Our kids are growing up in a house with baseball games constantly playing, so I know I can handle at least that part.
One recent morning, as I was reading aloud an article about Shohei Ohtani—an article declaring him the best player in baseball—my daughter looked up from breakfast and noticed something: She's only 6 years old, but she's already showing signs of an unusually affectionate personality, much like my older sister, who shares her name.
“Excuse me,” she said. “What happened to Aaron Judge?”
My wife and I could only laugh.
So, thank you, Oakland Athletics. Thank you for existing. Thank you for 1989. Thank you for being (mostly) good at baseball. Thank you for the Big Three. Thank you for 20 straight wins. Thank you for Sunday afternoons in right field with my brother and best friend. Thank you for inspiring a very lucky kid, who will grow into a very lucky man, and hopefully some kid somewhere in Sacramento or Las Vegas will be able to be touched by the awesomeness of having his own baseball team.
(Pictured above: Oakland Athletics celebrate after defeating the Giants to win the 1989 World Series: MLB via Getty Images)
