OAKLAND — For the final time in history, the A’s won a ballgame at the Oakland Coliseum.
In their final game at the Coliseum following a 57-year run in The Town, the A’s, donning kelly green jerseys with “Oakland” inscribed across the chest, beat the Rangers, 3-2, in front of a crowd of 46,889 fans. Now, all that’s left of the Oakland A’s are three games against the Mariners in Seattle before heading to Sacramento.
“I’ve never been to a World Series before, but I feel like today is one of those days that you could kind of experience the emotion of that — the magnitude of it,” said manager Mark Kotsay pregame. “Driving in the gates today and seeing the fullness of the parking lot, feeling the energy and the emotion is something I’ll treasure for the rest of my life.”
JT Ginn, whose major-league career is barely a month old, recorded the final win in the history of the Oakland Coliseum, allowing two earned runs over 5 1/3 innings. All-Star Mason Miller, appropriately enough, recorded four outs to collect the final save in this venue’s history, claiming the final strikeout as well. Seth Brown, the current longest tenured A’s player, collected the final hit with a single to left field in the bottom of the eighth.
JJ Bleday was the orchestrator of the play of the afternoon in the top of the seventh inning, tracking down Carson Kelly’s line drive to left-center field with a full extension dive.
The game, unsurprisingly, was not without its disturbances. In the top of the ninth inning, two fans ran onto the field in the middle of Mason Miller’s battle against Leody Taveras. Following Miller’s strikeout of Taveras, two yellow smoke bombs were also thrown. In the bottom of the seventh inning, the game was briefly stopped on four separate occasions when a green smoke bomb, a beer, a baseball and an unidentifiable object were got tossed onto the field.
The A’s paid tribute to their past in Oakland over the course of the afternoon. Oakland’s own Rickey Henderson and Dave Stewart threw out the first pitches to Lawrence Butler and Miller, respectively. Barry Zito, an anchor of the Moneyball-era A’s rotation alongside Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder, belted the national anthem. “Bernie Lean” by ATM & IMD, a song that encapsulates the essence of the early-2010s teams, played on the scoreboard.
The game, itself, contained flashbacks to another famous late-season contest between the A’s and Rangers.
In the bottom of the fifth inning, Rangers left fielder Wyatt Langford lost Bleday’s fly ball in the mid-afternoon, allowing the ball to drop and a run to score. The play was eerily similar to when Josh Hamilton dropped Yoenis Cespedes’ fly ball on Oct. 3, 2012, allowing two runs to score and paving the way for the A’s to clinch the American League West. And when Tyler Ferguson entered for the seventh inning, he used “One” by Metallica as his walk-out song — the same tune that blared throughout the stadium before Grant Balfour picked up the save against Texas 12 years prior.
The sounds of the afternoon were, in short, hella Oakland.
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Brown changed his walk-up song to “Put Me On Somethin’” by P-Lo for his first plate appearance and to “Super Hyphy” by Keak Da Sneak for his second plate appearance. Brown followed in the lead of Zack Gelof (“93 ’til Infinity” by Souls of Mischief), Lawrence Butler (“Thizzle Dance” by Mac Dre and “Calvin Cambridge” by SOB x RBE) and T.J. McFarland (“Jungle” by Andre Nickatina).
Between innings, there were even more slaps. There was “Tell Me When to Go” and “Yay Area” by E-40; “Let’s Get Down” by Tony! Toni! Toné!; “Since ’84” by Mac Dre; “Ghost Ride It” by Mistah F.A.B.; and “Blow the Whistle” by Too $hort.
And, yes, there were no shortage of “sell the team” chants, the loudest immediately following the seventh-inning stretch.
The vibes weren’t completely immaculate. When a giant, inflatable baseball field landed near the left-field warning track, the security guard who retreived the ball opted to pop it instead of returning it to the crowd, inciting a cacophony of boos. By the end of the afternoon, the packed house swapped out those boos for cheers.