Brad Wilkerson remembers feeling “pretty emotional” on Sept. 29, 2004.
That day, Major League Baseball announced that the former outfielder and first baseman’s Expos were moving to Washington, D.C. after years of dysfunction. That same night, Wilkerson and teammates played their final game in Montreal in front of 31,395 devastated fans.
The Expos, who became the Nationals in 2005, went out with a whimper that evening, losing to the Marlins, 9-1. But the real goodbyes came after the game, when Wilkerson and his peers stayed at Olympic Stadium an extra two hours so that they could thank and interact with the people their franchise was leaving behind.
“I think the people in Montreal, they respected me for that,” Wilkerson, now an assistant Yankees hitting coach, told the Daily News. “But it was tough, going around and seeing everybody [and them saying], ‘We wish you could stay,’ that kind of stuff. It was a tough last day.”
It appears that another day just like that is coming for baseball.
The Athletics, owned by John Fisher, are trying to relocate from Oakland to Las Vegas after the Nevada legislature recently approved a bill that would build an estimated $1.5 billion ballpark in Vegas. About $380 million will come from taxpayers.
“You feel bad for the fans,” Wilkerson said, speaking from experience. “The fans of Oakland are probably hurting pretty good right now.”
The move still has to clear some legal obstacles and receive approval from MLB and its owners, but the latter is expected, and the A’s lease at their current stadium, Oakland Coliseum, expires after next season.
They could play the 2025 and 2026 seasons at Las Vegas Ballpark, the home of their Triple-A affiliate, while a new stadium is constructed on the strip.
“They had a nice little ballpark,” Billy McKinney, who played for Oakland and its Vegas affiliate in 2022, told the News. The Yankees outfielder felt that the minor league team attracted strong crowds, but he didn’t know if the venue could temporarily serve as a major league quality facility.
Of course, the Coliseum has long been considered inadequate, and turmoil and turnover have long accompanied the A’s.
Fans, pundits and elected officials have questioned if Fisher acted in good faith in his attempts to secure a new stadium in Oakland, and the team has routinely dumped talented, homegrown players in favor of miniscule payrolls. Such moves have naturally hurt attendance numbers, in addition to the product Fisher has put on the field.
The A’s, who host the Yankees next week, have won just 19 games this season.
“I feel like I don’t know what the best solution is for everything,” Yankees third baseman Josh Donaldson told the News, but “I know that the fanbase in Oakland, like the diehards there, they show up every day with support and love that team. As an organization throughout the years, I don’t know how much they’ve tried to build a fanbase.”
Donaldson began his major league career with the A’s in 2010 and played for competitive teams there from 2012-2014. He remembers Oakland drawing well those years, especially late in the season and in the playoffs.
Donaldson witnessed an appetite for watching quality players. But retaining them has never been Oakland’s M.O.
“You’re talking about one of the largest markets in baseball in the Bay Area,” Donaldson said. “It gets perceived as a small market team, but it’s only a small market because of what the team is willing to put out there. One of the wealthiest owners in all of baseball owns the A’s.
“There’s a lot of different decisions out there that are going on, and to me it’s in the realm of running it according to business and trying to break to a net zero… At the end of the day, as a fan and as a fanbase, you can only see your favorite player traded so many times throughout your generation.”
Steve Yeager, speaker of the Nevada legislature, recently tweeted that Vegas “doesn’t tolerate losing,” and the A’s will face “immense” pressure to invest in the team. He vowed to hold ownership accountable and expressed faith that the club will operate differently in Vegas.
The comments sparked forceful skepticism, ridicule and mockery online.
Donaldson shared similar doubts.
“If you’re gonna relocate and still kind of run the business the same way, I don’t think you’re gonna get people to buy in,” he said. “I hope they’re going into this with a different mindset from a business standpoint.”
As the A’s situation has unfolded, Fisher has ducked the media. Commissioner Rob Manfred, meanwhile, recently scoffed at a reverse boycott organized by fans.
The initiative drew 27,759 roaring critics to the Coliseum on June 13 in an effort to prove Fisher’s lack of investment was to blame for the team’s attendance woes. The desperate collective pleaded for him to sell the team, rather than displace it.
“It was great. It’s great to see what is, this year, almost an average Major League Baseball crowd in the facility for one night,” Manfred, tone-deaf as ever, said of the reverse boycott. “That’s a great thing.”
When asked if the commissioner should show more grace, Wilkerson diplomatically said Manfred is “in a tough position.”
The former Expo, having gone through MLB’s last exhausting relocation himself, also wondered if it’s time for the A’s to skip town.
“They’ve been talking about a stadium [in Oakland] since I’ve been playing,” Wilkerson said. “So it’s been a long time coming that they haven’t got a stadium for some reason. I hate to say this, but it’s probably time that they look for a relocation.”
If Fisher’s plans go accordingly, the A’s will soon leave Oakland, their home since 1968 after previous stops in Kansas City and Philadelphia. Fans will mourn the loss, but many will surely attend the last A’s game at the Coliseum, just like folks did in Montreal.
If not to flip off the owner, than to say goodbye to the players.
While Wilkerson said that any A’s players under contract will have to move on and do their jobs when the team relocates, he also offered them advice for that final game in Oakland: show remorse and engage with the crowd, just like the Expos did.
“I think the fans know it’s not your fault, hopefully,” Wilkerson said. “Give them the time.”
