Kiss My A's Goodbye
A word of caution before we begin: This is a sports essay written by a pissed-off sports fan - which means I can guarantee before I even begin it’s going to devolve into a rant. I’m going to make wild accusations, support my points through iffy correlations and probably need to take my headache meds before I’m through.
Fuck it, I’m taking them now. Hang on.
Okay, I’m back. And because I could already feel the tension building in my neck muscles I took a pill for my back pain as well. So I’m pilled up and ready to go - this should be interesting…
I’m a baseball fan. Always have been. I’ve enjoyed brief flirtations with other sports, but baseball is the only sport I genuinely love. And since I was a kid I’ve been a fan of one team and one team only - the Oakland Athletics.
I was an A’s fan before their three consecutive World Series wins in the early 70’s. I was a fan even when Charlie Finley auctioned off his dynasty and condemned the franchise to year after year of failure. I was a fan when the Bash Brothers teams of the late 80’s became the most dominant and entertaining team in the game. I was a fan even when the most recognizable players on those teams were exposed as liars and cheats. I’ve been a fan through years of excruciating mediocrity, flashes of brilliance, heartbreaking playoff losses, constant player turnover and ownership’s never-ending cries of poverty.
In other words, I know the reality of being an A’s fan. I’m not a ‘bandwagon jumper.’ I’m not a ‘fair weather’ fan. I’ve been there since the start. I know the deal.
And I think maybe I need to walk away for a bit.
For the first time I can remember, I don’t love being a fan of the A’s. To be honest, I haven’t loved it since last July, when they traded Yoenis Cespedes to the Boston Red Sox for Jon Lester. Ignore the specific players, I just felt getting rid of a middle-of-the-order power threat who played every day for a pitcher - however excellent - who would pitch every 5th day was not a great swap. Especially on a team already showing signs of offensive struggles brought about at least partially because of health issues.
It felt desperate. It felt dumb. It felt big and splashy and headline-grabbing for the sake of being big and splashy and headline-grabbing.
But whatever! The worth of a trade is what it did for the teams involved, right? Legendary A’s GM Billy Beane went all-in to finally win the World Series title that has eluded him and his teams. Article after article immediately following the trade looked at the A’s pitching rotation and declared them instant October favorites!
They played exactly one game in October, barely squeaking into the Wild Card game against the Royals, during which Jon Lester gave up 6 earned runs in an extra-inning loss. Hey, man. Scoreboard. They lost their only playoff game with their big trade piece on the mound. That’s a failure - especially after going ‘all-in.’
Beane has repeatedly said he doesn’t think the team would’ve even made the playoffs without Lester, which can be debated forever because it’s an unprovable statement. But one thing is provable - Beane isn’t supporting Lester with that comment, he’s supporting himself. When he says the A’s wouldn’t have made the post-season without Lester, what he’s saying is they wouldn’t have made it without him. Without him making the Lester-for-Cespedes swap at the end of July.
A trade that - analyzing what it was meant to accomplish versus what it actually did accomplish - was a complete and utter disaster.
Scoreboard. Provable. Fact.
Something weird happened to me after the Cespedes/Lester trade - I stopped caring. About the A’s, about baseball, about all of it. It took me about a month to realize I hadn’t watched a game - any game - since the trade. I completely quit paying attention to the scores and stats and all that (usually) fun stuff.
Keep in mind, the A’s had a 2.5 game lead in their division at the time of the trade, and in the immediate afterglow were christened prohibitive World Series favorites. I didn’t walk away when they started to tank, I walked away while they were still on top.
Although they did start to tank. Holy shit did they tank.
During the press conference following the Cespedes/Lester trade, Billy Beane made a joke about not needing any offense because no one was gonna score on this amazing pitching staff he’d assembled. That joke rang pretty hollow when it turned out to be his offense that never scored again - even more so when Cespedes’s average performance with the Red Sox would’ve made him a world-beater in the limping, anemic A’s lineup.
So, okay. Bad trade. Even if you don’t think it hurt the team, it certainly didn’t help get them to their intended goal. What’s done is done. They still have a strong nucleus moving forward.
Or not.
A week after a team spokesman declared it would be “stupid” to trade All-Star third baseman and team leader Josh Donaldson - 2nd in the American League in W.A.R. behind the baseball-playing cyborg that is Mike Trout - Beane did just that. Traded him to Toronto for a third baseman with a history of ribcage injuries whose top-end potential peaks at somewhere around half the player Donaldson is. Oh! And who is under team control for less time than Donaldson. But never fear, the A’s managed to snag some minor league prospects as well… none of whom were even ranked in the top 5 in the Blue Jays organization.
I’ll give Beane credit, if he’s trying to make the Cespedes/Lester deal look smart in comparison it’s a brilliant goddamn move.
Next to go would be slugging All-Star first baseman Brandon Moss, a home run hitter whose late season power outage was a big part of the A’s collapse - but which could also be attributed to a painful hip injury which was surgically repaired at the end of the season. The power-hitting Moss, who cracked 76 home runs in his three years with the A's, was swapped straight up for an iffy Double-A 2nd baseman. Straight up. For a guy who - at best - may top out as a utility infielder. As salary dumps go, they don't get much more blatant or cynical than this.
Then they cut loose All-Star pitcher Jeff Samardzija, who they’d acquired in another mid-season trade which saw the A’s give up the top prospect in their organization, shortstop Addison Russell. (The centerpiece in the trade for Samardzija was a shortstop, because the A's had a hole there - it’d be hilarious if it wasn’t so ridiculous.)
Columnists and fans like to point out this isn’t the first time the A’s have had an off-season fire sale. In fact the last time they traded away three All-Stars they went on to make the playoffs the following year!
Stop right there.
I’ve heard that little trivia fact repeated again and again and again by those hoping to find a bright side, or some justification in Beane’s moves. Yes, they traded three All-Stars after the 2011 season and went on to win the AL West in 2012. But it’s almost like no one actually remembers 2012.
2012 was great because it was an abberation. The team was terrible early then rallied to come on strong and take the division on the last day of the regular season. It was magical! It was a blast! It was truly a miracle season!
You don’t bank on repeating a miracle season by gutting the team for a second time. That’s like picking the correct lotto numbers after suffering a head injury, and assuming the way to keep winning the lottery is to keep bashing your head. To act like one guarantees the other is whistling past the graveyard.
So what, right? None of this is new to A’s fans. The team has given away its stars since Charlie Finley unloaded Reggie Jackson and Catfish Hunter. Why does it feel so different, and so crappy, this time?
I can only speak for myself, but I think it’s because this has been an especially stark reminder that the face of my team isn’t a great player, it’s a businessman. It’s a guy in a suit, not a guy in a uniform. It’s a guy whose bottom line is more about payroll than about batting average or ERA. It’s a guy willing to publicly throw his players under the bus following a loss in the Wild Card game to defend himself.
Let’s be very, very blunt - if the public face of your sports team is the owner or general manager? That team has problems.
There’s a lot made about how free agents won’t sign with the A’s, or won’t waive no-trade clauses to play in Oakland. And why would they? To toil in a half-empty stadium famous for sewage problems that would be embarrassing in 18th century London? To play for a team with a history of playoff flameouts? To come to an organization whose actions consistently demonstrate that players aren’t particularly valued? Given any choice at all, I wouldn’t play there, either.
Given a choice, I don’t think I’ll watch there, either.
It’s stopped being fun for me to be an A’s fan. I can only revel in the role of the underdog so long before it starts to feel like a form of self-abuse. I can only be told to eat my vegetables so many times before I begin to demand dessert. I’m tired of the ownership and front office behaving as though fans should be as invested in their financial bottom line as in wins and losses.
When I saw the A’s had made the Wild Card game last season I wondered how I’d feel if they defied the odds, went on a miraculous run and somehow won the World Series. Would I be able to shake off the negative feelings that had prompted me to walk away from the team and the sport in late July? Would a championship fix what felt broken inside me?
No.
I’ll tell you how I know: I was glad when I heard they’d lost the Wild Card game. It felt like the inevitable was no longer being put off. It felt like the misery of the season had finally come to an end. It felt like a mercy killing.
Little did I know Billy Beane hadn’t even started to load his shotgun. It’s time for me to get out of the line of fire for a while.
