A Tale Of Two Cities

 We went to San Francisco last Friday night. To be more precise, we went to San Francisco's baseball stadium, also known as Oracle Park. Formerly known as Pac Bell Park, SBC Park, and AT&T Park, this was the venue our family went to see local punk heroes, Green Day. We have a history of making this trip, with the most recent being just two years ago. Before that, we have attended shows of theirs in many and varied sports arenas around the Bay Area. Green Day is something we can all agree on, even though my wife has on occasion expressed mild frustration with being hectored by Billie Joe to get her hands up in the air. Nevertheless, our fandom is a family affair, and we rocked into the night and stayed up way past the parents' bedtime. 

Somewhere along the way, the lead singers of one of the opening bands who also hail from 'round these parts, Tim Armstrong of Rancid, noticed a banner hanging from the stands that expressed displeasure with the pending move of the Oakland Athletics to Las Vegas. It was a pretty straightforward punk expletive directed at John Fisher, the owner of the baseball franchise directly across the bay. Not to be outdone, Billie Joe Armstrong included similar sentiments as he shared his feelings about coming home to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of his band's major label debut and the twentieth anniversary of their epoch defining rock opera, American Idiot. Billie was happy to be home, but very unhappy about the A's moving away. 

As it happens, my family of three also had tickets to go see one of the last ever home games of those same Oakland A's the following night. We piled into our son's car and drove down to the Oakland/Alameda Coliseum, formerly known as Ricky Henderson Field as well as any number of corporate shills willing to pay for the privilege of having their name stapled to the scoreboard for a limited amount of time. We went to the ball game for a chance to see our team, the one with whom our son had grown up, one last time. For many years we had made a practice of attending at least one home game, my son and I, usually around Father's Day. It was always a treat to sit in the stands and wile away a day, having a hot dog and shelling some peanuts. And in all those years, we compiled a solid streak of attending games that the A's won. This isn't to suggest that we were lucky charms or anything, but in sports we know it's best not to mess with a streak. 

That streak came to a crushing end as we watched the Yankees dominate the home team ten to one. It was hard to get a full accounting of the attendance, but in a fairly full stadium, the Yankee fans seemed to outnumber those of us in our green and gold. It wasn't like in the olden days. It wasn't like with Brad Pitt and Moneyball. It wasn't like when the Oakland A's twenty game winning streak back in 2002. It was almost as if the ownership was trying to make it easy to just slink out of town unnoticed. 

We noticed. It brought tears to my son's eyes. It was the only baseball he's ever known. As we were invited down to the field with the rest of the faithful to watch the postgame drone and firework show, we tried to console him. This place would always be part of him, part of his story. Just like the music of Green Day. Just like the hills that rise up behind the stadium. Just like the bay around which we live. 

Welcome home.