By L.E. Leone
JULY 14, 2014 – Last week I read (on ESPN.com, if you must know) that Raiders new running back Maurice Jones-Drew thinks London should get an NFL franchise. He played there last year as a member of the Jacksonville Jaguars, and this year he will tear up the Wembley Stadium turf with the Oakland Raiders, who are pitted against the Miami Dolphins week 4. In London!
The Raiders will be the designated home team in that game.
Insert sip of coffee here.
So: London, which (to review) is in England, deserves a full-time home team, according to at least one Oakland Raider. According to at least another Oakland Raider — their owner Mark Davis — the O.Co Coliseum needs to come down by 2015, or (to paraphrase) else.
Not always but often in major American sports history, “or else” has equalled a change of scenery; in many cases, a whole new city. What I particularly like about London, in this context, is that it is farther away than Dublin. California, I mean, although, it’s also farther away than Dublin, Ireland, turns out. And Los Angeles (where the Raiders went the last time they ran away from home), and even Portland, Oregon. And any of the other cities that have come up in connection with a possible Raiders rerunaway.
London! You are on to something there, Maurice J.D.
Insert sip of tea here.
Wait, but why tear down the Coliseum? Didn’t the A’s just sign a 10-year lease to keep playing there?
They did! But that lease sucks for the hopefully soon-to-be London Raiders, who would prefer to build their new stadium in one of O.Co’s parking lots. All part of Coliseum City, a pipe dream shared by Davis, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, and a handful of other powerful nut jobs. The gist of it is, as I understand it: if we can’t have a downtown stadium, we will bring downtownishness to the Coliseum.
What they want is restaurants and bars — you know, to draw more people and keep them around before and after events, I guess because there just isn’t enough eating and drinking going down at Raiders games.
The Warriors and the A’s, I am proud to say, are not on board.
The Raiders, hopefully, will just … go away. And to think, until yesterday, I didn’t even hate them. I didn’t care one way or another about the Raiders before this talk of demolition. They have sucked for over a decade. They have an uncanny knack for turning high draft picks into continued suckiness. But 4-12 records alone are no reason to not love a team. If so, I would have given up on the 49ers in the 70s … and missed my favorite-ever decade of sports fandom.
No, the Raiders are assholes, is the problem. The Raiders are assholes for raining on the A’s parade. It’s a question of timing. Right now, the A’s are on top of the world. More importantly, they’re on top of the AL West. At the All-Star break, the A’s have the best record in baseball. With one of the lowest payrolls in baseball, they manage every year to field an exciting, likably eccentric, and often even winning team. This year, the emphasis is on winning. They are 58-34, and are sending six players to next week’s All Star Game. Seven, if you count Jeff Samardzija. By comparison the Giants, whose opening day payroll was almost twice that of the A’s, have two All Stars. The Yankees, who spend even more than the Giants, have three — and one of those is only there because he’s Derek Jeter.
In other words, you gotta love the A’s! And you gotta love their chances this year — even before the blockbuster trade that scored us Samardzija (one of the game’s best pitchers), and Jason Hammel (who’s having the best year of his career).
I love Jeff Samardzija. He’s Hedgehog’s favorite pitcher, so we watched all his starts for the Cubs this season. I loved that he was consistently awesome, and consistently lost – because the Cubs never scored when he started, and/or their bullpen could never seem to hold one of his leads. As it happens, the A’s have the best bullpen in baseball, and only the Angels have scored more runs so far this season. So, though Samardzija was 2-7 with the Cubs, expect those numbers to flip and then some, second half.
I love that in the past two years the masterminds of the A’s awesomeness, Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, have traded for my favorite player (Jed Lowrie), and now Hedgehog’s.
First thing we did when we heard the news, we went online and bought tickets for last Sunday’s game, his first start as an A. A game the A’s won, 4-2. Against the heavy-hitting Toronto Blue Jays, Samardzija looked awesome. He looked like an Oakland A. He looked happy.
You could see it even better the day before, in his face, in the dugout, on TV. They showed him in the parking lot, walking into the stadium, game going on already. They showed him shaking hands with his new teammates in the dugout, between innings, settling in, and the look on his face was like this: yay, I am going to the show!
The Cubs are loveable losers. The A’s are loveable losers that win.
Seriously: People shouldn’t want to play in Oakland. Tim Hudson didn’t. He had the opportunity to re-sign with the A’s, his original team, during the offseason, and he didn’t. He signed with the Giants. And he’s one of the few Giants I like. But I love that the A’s spanked him last night, 6-1, to take the Bay Bridge Series three games to one.
In the midst of this, all of this – best record in baseball, big trade, Bay Bridge Series, six-All-Stars-plus-the-Shark, new lease on baseball – you are going to drop a bomb on the O.Co Coliseum, Oakland Raiders?
Boo! Hiss!
It’s the easiest stadium to get to in the whole Bay Area. It’s an old, shitty piece of junk, no doubt. It may be the least destinationish stadium in all of professional sports at this point, but I’ll tell you what: it’s not about the stadium, you boneheads; it’s about the game! The team that you put on the field …
We’ve been to one game apiece this baseball season so far. Our AT&T seats were, on paper, much much better. Right behind the home team bullpen. But from the last row of the O.Co Coliseum, way down the leftfield line, I swear we saw the game better. Maybe because A’s fans are more into the game than Giants fans, or Raiders owners, tend to be. Somehow from ten miles further away, I swear, we were closer to the field.
