MESA, Arizona — Baseball fans attend Cactus League spring training for a multitude of reasons. For some, they take spring break vacation to watch their favorite team play in the desert heat. Some fans come to games as part of a work event. For the Berk family, attending A’s spring training games is a family reunion.
The Berks plan a weekend every year to have a reunion during spring training. Part of the family lives in the East Bay, while part of the family lives in the greater Phoenix area.
“We’ve got a group of 50 or 60 people here today,” said David Berk, a diehard Athletics fan since 1974, when he attended his first game as an infant. “We’ve been doing it so long where the A’s kind of call us in January, and we figure out what weekend we want to do this, and we get group tickets.”
The group was the first in the grassy Hohokam Stadium parking lot for Saturday’s game against the Milwaukee Brewers.
Berk was brought into the fandom as a kid in Castro Valley by his father, John, who became an A’s fan after getting a job in the Bay Area after college. John passed down his love for Athletics games to David, who then passed down the love to his sons, who both were at the family reunion.
For the first time since 1967, the Athletics will not be playing regular season games at the Oakland Coliseum. The team will temporarily play games at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento before making its official move to Las Vegas — joining another former Oakland franchise, the Raiders — in The Entertainment Capital of the World.
However, for all the Oakland fans, this means decades upon decades of memories and fun times at the Coliseum have come to an end.
“I’ve probably been to a thousand A’s games,” said John Berk. “That is a lot of games.”
Fans at the Brewers-A’s spring training game Saturday had mixed opinions on whether or not they’d go to Sacramento to watch the Athletics play. Both John and David Berk said they’d attend an A’s game in Sacramento, but they wouldn’t make the trip just for the game.
“I do have some friends and relatives that live in the Sacramento area,” John Berk said. “So it is possible that we’ll go spend a weekend visiting my sister-in-law or my brother-in-law and catch an As game in Sacramento.”
On the other hand, some Athletics fans, like longtime fan James Ibbeson, who now lives outside of Reno, Nevada, are excited to watch the A’s play in Sacramento. Ibbeson used to live in Oakland and watched the second game in the Coliseum’s history on April 18, 1968. Ibbeson says his son is already looking at buying tickets to Athletics games in Sacramento.
“No improvements were going to come in Oakland, they had to come to Vegas,” said Ibbeson. “I think that park will be filled every day … no doubt in my mind.”
The Berk family expressed similar discontent to what many Oakland fans have showcased over the years. Fans expressed their displeasure with how owner John Fisher ran the team by holding boycotts and demonstrations around games.
“They don’t really have a reason to move,” said Felix Berk, one of David’s sons. “They’re doing it not for baseball, but for money. It’s not really a baseball decision.”
For a multitude of reasons, A’s games will still be on in the Berk household this spring and summer. John Berk is a member of a fantasy baseball league that only includes American League players, so he’ll follow the Athletics for the stats.
For David Berk, he thinks his passion for the team will supersede any frustration about the team leaving the East Bay.
“If you asked me a year ago, I would have said ‘No, I’m done with this,’” Berk said. “I’m a huge A’s fan, and I don’t know if I can just turn that off. I’ll have a hard time supporting them financially, but I will still follow the team.”
Even if he continues following the team, David Berk admitted it’s “really depressing” that the A’s 57 seasons at the Coliseum, including four World Series championships and 21 playoff appearances, are over.
“I grew up 15 minutes from the Coliseum, I’ve probably been to a thousand games there in my life,” he said. “My kids are 14 and 16 now. I threw them out here for spring training when they were two months old. They’ve probably been to two or three hundred games at the Coliseum in their lives.
“All of that’s over. It’s just a big part of our lives.”