What Is A Team To A City?
Yes, I’m angry.
This is a ball that has been dropped for years…and then kicked down the road. People have been hemming and hawing about it for a while. And it’s been a lot of posturing, like the Raiders making a “simple” demand (to kick the A’s out of the stadium) to pretend like they were trying to reach out when that is an obvious not-gonna-happen, and Oakland coming up with a sudden, last minute plan with barely a site map that looks like it was drawn with PowerPoint on Windows 95 to pretend like they were trying to make something happen.
And the things that led us to this moment go back decades. The long-suffering A’s-stadium debate, if dealt with in a timely manner, would have helped it not get to this point. Past Oakland and Alameda County governments trying to make this work would have helped. The two Davis’ not being so hellbent on going anywhere would have helped.
But people who are celebrating this like it’s a win for Oakland are the ones truly missing the point. For a group who, stereotypically, likes to say it’s not all about money…they are hewing to the narrative that it’s only about money pretty closely.
People have psyches, and those psyches can be affected by a number of things…but from national pride to civic pride, they need to have things they can be proud of, things that bring them together. Something that can unite us rather than divide us…
But let’s be blunt: right now, Oakland is many things, but it’s not something a lot of the people who aren’t voted into office are saying they are very proud of. (And I’m pretty sure some of those people are lying.)
For the last 25 years, it’s fair to say that Oakland has become a distant third in importance and attention when it comes to the Bay Area trifecta. Why? It seems like as a center for housing, as a center for business, there are many things that make sense to be in Oakland. There’s a reason it became the Bay Area’s shipping hub after the 1930’s, and not just the geographic reasons. It may not be “Silicon Valley”, but it’s still a big city. It is the true “Hub” of BART, with it being the place where all the lines currently pass through and meet.
But it’s become that city that people just pass through, and rarely go.
Look, there’s a lot of social demographics going on that are above my head, I’m a lowly sports commentator, but I’m also a nearly 40-year old Bay Area native. I remember when 880 was “The Nimitz” and, even, known as 17. I remember that because I’d go there as a place with my family to meet family friends, and enjoy parts of downtown and Alameda. We’d go there as often as San Francisco. (And almost never to San Jose).
Neither family, nor friends, have reason to go there anymore, unless it is a sports game.
Soon, two of those three sports reasons will be gone, and the third…who knows?
I’m not an Oakland resident, so I don’t vote on, nor have reason to say why Oakland government does what it does or doesn’t do…but it, as a Bay Area resident, hasn’t given me much reason to care about Oakland. Both sports and non-sports related. Oakland is just the traffic jam after the Bay Bridge/Headed to Walnut Creek/Vallejo/Sacramento/pretty much everywhere not south.
All this, though, doesn’t mean I blame the government of Oakland more than Mark Davis and the NFL…but right now, I’m focusing a lot of anger that direction. That said…
Football used to be a blue collar town kind of sport. That’s why it involved cities like Pittsburgh, and Detroit, and even Chicago…and yes, Oakland. It’s why they have team names like “Steelers” and “Packers”. The Raiders were a part of that blue collar stuff, the 1960’s teams that were known for being more covered in mud than not. Of playing smashmouth before the band ruined the term.
Now, it’s just another part of the past, given up for glitzy glamour and so much reflection and lens flare in television production that J.J. Abrams thinks it’s excessive. It’s a game moving further away from what we grew up on and loved, and I truly, truly feel this move will ruin a classic franchise.
I don’t know how I’m going to feel about next season. Derek Carr is not just a great player, but truly an amazing guy, and all the team (especially now that it doesn’t include Aldon, potentially) are guys I like to root for. MAYBE I’ll be drawn back into it……..
But I doubt it.
