The baseball owner who betrayed his own team, fans and city

Oakland A's owner John Fisher starved the team, got rid of its best players and turned them into the worst team in baseball. Now he wants to move them to Las Vegas

This past week, the Texas Rangers won the World Series, defeating the Arizona Diamondbacks in five games. Twenty-eight other teams failed to reach the Fall Classic. One of them, the Oakland A's, never had a chance.

Diehard A’s fan, Dennis Biles

Opening Day in baseball is an annual rite of renewal and hope. Fans have faith that maybe, just maybe, this will be their team's year, however improbable. Baseball has a way of defying expectations and expertise as it unfolds over the long, long season. Neither Texas nor Arizona were favorites to reach the World Series. When the season begins, anything is possible. Except the impossible. The Oakland A's were doomed to failure from Opening Day. John Fisher, the team's owner, made sure of that. He made no effort to field a competitive baseball team. He didn't try. He didn't care. Oakland A's fans were betrayed and abused. And it was intentional.

On a warm summer evening, the sun moved slowly behind the Oakland Coliseum, bathing the sky in pastels of orange and magenta. It was a lovely night for a baseball game and about 3,000 people agreed. It was one of the smallest crowds of any team all year but there they were, even though the A's were mired in last place in the American League West Division with the worst record in all of baseball.

The right field grandstand is home to a group of hardcore fans who call themselves the Oakland 68's, named for the A's first season in Oakland after moving from Kansas City. Some of them come to every single one of the team's home games. That's 81 games. They've become good friends. From their lonely perch, they exchange greetings, ask about family, wave banners and flags, beat drums. They cheer for the A's even if it sometimes seems like praying to a god you don't believe exists.

I found Dennis Biles, 40, seated in the first row behind the right field fence. He has been coming to A's games since he was 15. I asked him why he keeps coming to games.

"I love my team," he told me from his seat in the first row behind the right field fence. "I love the game of baseball. I love my friends. I've made a lot of lifelong relationships. I'm dedicated to the team and dedicated to my friends. But part of it is I have hope that it could be what it was a long time ago because I've seen it is possible here."

A few innings later, he and his friends were delightfully barking out obscenities aimed at John Fisher. Wherever he was, Fisher could not hear them. 

The A's got off to a horrific start, which was not at all surprising. The team's roster was stocked with minor league players and major league castoffs. Some games drew as few as 2,000 fans. In a cavernous stadium that can hold 45,000, it's a nightly tableau of quiet desolation.

Early in the season, the Oakland 68's had an idea. They would send a message to A's management, not by refusing to come to games, but just the opposite - by turning out en masse to show that the team really does have a large and loyal following. It would be a "reverse boycott."

On June 13th, more than 27,000 fans - nearly three times the average attendance - came out to see Oakland play the Tampa Bay Rays game. All the sweeter, the A's won. The Reverse Boycott was a huge success.

But when asked about it, Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred was all but mocking.

"It is great to see what is this year almost an average Major League Baseball crowd in the facility for one night," Manfred said.

A's fans were outraged. 

Undeterred, they staged a second reverse boycott in early August. This time, attendance exceeded 37,000. Once again, the A's won. Three weeks later, the A's submitted their official application to relocate to Las Vegas.

John Fisher, 62, is an enigma. He is rarely seen in public and almost never does interviews. He was born in San Francisco, the son of Doris and Donald Fisher, co-founders of The Gap retail empire. He inherited his fortune, currently estimated by Fortune magazine to be in excess of $2 billion.

According to Wikipedia, after earning an MBA at Stanford University, he went to work for a real estate company that did business with - you guessed it - The Gap. The Wikipedia bio says, "The business was not successful." So, he became president of - guess again - his family's investment management company.

In 2005, Fisher bought a majority stake in the A's. He became its sole owner in 2016. Under his management, the team's purse strings drew ever tighter. For quite a while, the A's managed to have some success on the ball field. They advanced to the playoffs seven times. As recently as 2020, they reached the American League Divisional Series even as Fisher discarded their best players year after year after year to reduce payroll.

"Where other teams are really trying to win and make a splash and go all in all the time, and maybe dip into their own revenues or pockets to put out a good product, the A's have never done that," KGO-TV sports producer, Casey Pratt, told me. "They've always done the bare minimum in terms of spending to win."

Starting in 2022, that penurious approach began to yield its inevitable consequences. That season, the A's won just 60 games and lost 108. This year, with a team with a total payroll of $60 million - for perspective, that's less than what the New York Yankees pay Aaron Judge and Gerrit Cole - they went 50-112. Attendance slumped in lockstep with their self-induced misfortune, which the team then cited as a reason to leave Oakland.

"Fact is, A's fans are the best fans in Major League baseball," wrote San Francisco Chronicle sportswriter, John Shea. "It's tough being an A's fan. It's tough supporting a team that Fisher has ruined in a stadium that Fisher has ignored in a town that Fisher has betrayed. That at least 2,000 come to every game is not a debacle. It's a miracle."

Pratt told me, "I use this analogy all the time. If you go to a restaurant and the restaurant takes all the best food items off the menu, and the wait staff treats you terribly, and they don't take care of the upkeep of the restaurant, would you ever go back there?"

It wasn't so long ago that it appeared the A's would stay in Oakland. Fisher and the city of Oakland went round and round, trying to strike a deal for a state-of-the-art stadium/real estate complex on the waterfront. But the negotiations ultimately collapsed with each side blaming the other. Fisher announced this year that he would abandon Oakland and move the team to Vegas after 2024.

Pratt suspects Fisher's hidden agenda is to relocate the A's in Las Vegas and then sell it for a tidy eight-figure profit.

"What I think John Fisher is doing right now is purely to up the team's value and sell," he said. "I think he's trying to pump and dump this thing."

Many Oakland fans want the same thing: for Fisher to sell the team. But they want him to sell to someone who will keep the A's in Oakland. This season, the 68's began selling green tee shirts bearing the single word Sell. They sold thousands of them. Many fans wear them to games.

SELL tee shirts are selling well

"We need ownership that cares about the game," said Biles, as a solo trumpet played the pre-game National Anthem over the loudspeakers. "It's not just about the A's but the integrity of the game itself that is at stake now."

Will "Right Field Will" McNeal, who has attended approximately 1,500 A's home games since 2005, said, "(Fisher) is trying to rip them away from Oakland. People are going to lose their jobs, People are going to lose their team. It's the worst thing in the world. Every time I come to the ballpark, I know it's getting closer to my last game in the stadium. It keeps me up  nights, honestly."

Esperanza Ureña

Esperanza Ureña sat in an aisle seat with a kettle drum nestled in her lap and a cowbell at her side. She would whack the cowbell with a drumstick each time the opponent team's batter struck out. 

Ureña is a tiny, relentlessly cheerful woman. But she turned serious when asked about Fisher and her beloved A's.

"Sell the team," she said. "Keep us in Oakland."

Oakland, a city of 430,000, has forever existed in the formidable shadow of bigger, glitzier San Francisco. The writer, Gertrude Stein, who grew up there, famously said about Oakland, "There is no there there." (although it was probably not meant as the put down it has come to be known). Over the years, pro sports teams have come and gone. Four years ago, the Golden State Warriors basketball team moved from Oakland to San Francisco. Three years ago, the pro football Raiders relocated to Las Vegas. It was the second time they'd deserted the city. Soon, baseball's team owners will vote on Fisher's application to move to Las Vegas after the 2024 season. It is widely expected to be approved. A's fans and the city of Oakland deserve better.