The Coliseum Still Stands
One ballgame in Oakland
Off the bat, there was no doubt. Even from the bleachers, about 440 feet from home plate, we knew what the Coliseum crowd was witnessing. For a brief moment — that split-second that can take root and grow into a lifetime memory — I thought the ball was coming to us. A’s right fielder Lawrence Butler, who had the best view in the house, knew it wasn’t coming to him. He became a spectator, too.
Behold Ohtani.
Leave it to Shohei to steal the headlines. Six hours exploring the Oakland Coliseum, and I lead off with Ohtani’s rocket of a round-tripper.
Even in a loss, the Dodgers have a way of demanding our attention, don’t they? This A’s ballclub, though, no matter the circumstances or matchup, refuses to be overshadowed. It’s part of their charm. I hope that spirit travels.
I went to the Coliseum to bear witness. I wanted to walk the concourse where fans had celebrated no-hitters, pennant-clinchers, and World Series victories. I hoped to sit in a lower box seat on the third-base side and imagine what it was like to watch Rickey Henderson steal one of his record-setting 130 bases in 1982. I wanted to step onto the field, feel the warning track below my feet and smirk at the expansive landscape that is foul territory.
I wondered what it would feel like to stand under Mt. Davis, the massive 22,000-seat addition foisted upon the ballpark in 1995 to accommodate the desires of the Raiders’ owner as his team returned from Los Angeles. I was determined to sit among the fans in the right field bleachers who drum, chant, and wave flags in support of their team.
I entered the ballpark with my friend, a former college teammate and the designated WTP photographer for the day (dreams do come true!). We arrived at the same time as many stadium employees, about three-and-a-half hours prior to game time. There’s a tranquility to many venues before gates open. On-field activity is beginning, while concessionaires start to prepare for hungry, thirsty and licensed-apparel craving masses. Behind the scenes, routines dominate. Game-day professionals rely upon order and structure. Focus is inward. The Coliseum was wide open.
Walking around the lower concourse, I was hoping to find answers to questions I had yet to imagine. Instead, I stumbled across Tejada’s Tacos.
Miguel Tejada was a critical part of the Moneyball A’s everyday lineup. He won AL MVP in 2002. Then he left Oakland after 2003 and embarked upon three consecutive All-Star seasons in Baltimore. Eventually, he was traded to Houston, returned to Baltimore, was traded to San Diego, and played for San Francisco in 2011 before finishing his career in 2013 with — lest we forget — the Kansas City Royals.
None of those other teams, however, named a stadium taco stand in honor of the man.
During the nine seasons that followed Tejada’s tenure in Oakland, he was involved in at least three steroid-related controversies — even more if you consider Jose Canseco a reliable source. Excuses varied and included reports of a vitamin B-12 regimen. Wherever steroid accusations abounded, Tejada’s name seemed to appear. Remember the Mitchell Report?
The six-time All-Star couldn’t outrun his past. In February 2009, Tejada was charged with lying to Congress. Earlier testimony before a House committee about PEDs was fraudulent. Facing up to one year in federal prison and deportation, Tejada squeaked by with probation.
In 2013, amphetamines in the form of Adderall showed up in two different drug tests. There were more excuses, but MLB is not as forgiving as the Feds. The infielder was hit with a 105-game suspension, effectively ending his career.
That taco stand in Oakland speaks to more innocent times, the halcyon days in East Bay when attendance routinely exceeded two million and a commitment to on-base percentage was still proprietary information.
Long live Tejada’s Tacos & Nachos.
We were in no hurry on the way to nowhere in particular. Good thing. Locating the elevator to the press level proved more challenging than it should have been. We took a ramp up (first mistake), took another ramp down (though maybe it was the same ramp), and silently expressed an understanding that we weren’t lost, we were just exploring the building.
Have you ever temporarily lost your car in a garage? Swore that you parked on level four — you even remember it was the blue floor, a thoughtful trick used by the developer to ensure you don’t misplace your vehicle — but you don’t recognize a single car in any of the spaces? You canvas the area where you thought you had parked before venturing into other aisles even though you know you didn’t park there? Maybe you press the panic button on your key, hoping that your car honks back? You walk down one floor and wander around, eventually questioning if you actually drove anywhere that day? Do you even own a car? It was all just preparation for a trip to the Coliseum.
Eventually we found the press elevator, just like we all ultimately end up back in our cars. The access point, it turns out, is tucked behind the vendors on the concourse, roughly between home plate and first base, just beyond an A’s merchandise area. There’s a roped-off walkway with temporary curtains that hide, well, nothing other than more walkway. It felt like we had walked through the wrong doorway of a convention center — it was both bland and mysterious.
The single-lift elevator bank, used by everyone entering the press box, sits just outside of the visiting coaches’ locker room on the concourse level. Dodgers coaches were loosely huddled on their stools, reviewing notes or advance scouting reports, as we waited for the elevator to arrive. On more than one occasion, active players passed by, presumably returning to the clubhouse from the visiting weight room, located — naturally — beyond the center field fence.
I had flown to Oakland to experience the Coliseum. This was more than I knew to ask for. Standing at the confluence of auxiliary locker rooms and credentialed media, I remembered that the Oakland Coliseum is the fifth oldest active stadium in baseball; Camden Yards is ninth. Consider that. Retrofitting a decades-old venue to meet the needs of the modern game is limited by the adaptability of concrete.
At a certain point, all you can do is play ball.
A Familiar Starter
For the second time this season, I found myself watching Joey Estes start a game. When he faced the Padres back in June, he looked like a pitcher who had found himself in the right place at the right time. One-hundred-loss teams have opportunities for guys like that to take the ball every fifth day. Well, the A’s fortunes have changed since they visited Petco Park; the team is currently on pace to go 70-92. What does that say for Estes, who threw a complete-game five-hit shutout against the Angels last month?
The more I watch Estes, the more I find myself rooting for him. His stuff seemed short across the board against San Diego: His fastball velo was in the low 90s, the secondary stuff didn’t stand out, and I didn’t see an outpitch. Game on the line, what’s he throwing?
Yet two months later, there he was, taking his spot atop the Coliseum mound in the top of the first to face the Dodgers. Greeting him in the left-handed batter’s box: Shohei Ohtani.1
By the time Estes delivered the first pitch of the game — a fastball that Ohtani lined to A’s center fielder JJ Bleday — I had already spent three hours inside the Coliseum. If we sounds like we’d been walking in circles, it’s because we had. The stadium is a set of concentric circles, not much different than Angel Stadium or many of the now-demolished ballparks built in the ’60s and ’70s. For such a large slab of concrete, there’s really only so much to see. I found it refreshingly free of distractions.
Now look, I love modern ballparks. PNC in Pittsburgh is my favorite. I love Camden Yards, Petco Park and Citizens Bank Park, but there’s something to be said for artifacts like the Coliseum. It provides a reset, a glimpse to the past when the only action was on the field, when ballpark food was a pejorative term, when your choice of beers was domestic light or domestic heavy, and when team payrolls often didn’t top $50,000,000.
Apparently, I’m not the first to appreciate the structure for what it is. In 2021, the Coliseum was honored with an award from the California Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, celebrating that the venue “has retained its central form and character, with the architectural integrity intact.” The stadium has held up well, they assert. Those glass-half-full architects, I want to party with them!
The trouble in Oakland, I suppose, is that Candlestick Park, which isn’t winning awards for longevity and structural integrity, was replaced in 2000 by Oracle Park, one of the most beautiful cathedrals in the game. That the Coliseum is still standing, really, is part of the problem. City planners don’t map out a parade route for trophies hoisted from the American Institute of Architects.
Yes, the Coliseum’s integrity remains intact — something that can’t be said for the team’s ownership.
Alas, there was a ballgame.
Estes yielded a two-run homer to Teoscar Hernandez in the first inning, and then held the Dodgers scoreless for the next five frames. At one point, he retired 15 batters in a row. Though Estes was facing a Los Angeles lineup missing Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman — don’t start building the taco stand yet — big-league outs are big-league outs. He pitched well enough to win, and he showed above-average command of his fastball. I was looking for weapons, and he obliged. That fastball also looked to have a little extra movement on it, just enough life through the zone to cause problems. Might Mr. Estes offer a little deception, too? Don’t bet against it.
Similarly, don’t bet against the A’s.
Oakland was 30-56 at the end of June. They’ve gone 23-14 since, a sustained stretch of good baseball that I, for one, did not expect. With a roster befitting a franchise skipping town, it’s a second-half surge that the fans and players deserve. (I wrote about it before, and I’ll say it again: Mark Kotsay deserves Manager of the Year consideration.)
I would have loved to experience the Coliseum on an uninspired weeknight. Twenty-two times this season already, the A’s have played in front of fewer than 6,000 fans. The Dodgers travel in groups larger than those numbers, though. On this night, the game was played before an announced crowd of 21,060. The A’s had cracked twenty grand for the first time all year!
It didn’t feel like a hopeless situation. The stadium had modest energy with bursts of excitement from both sides, equally represented. Then again, it wasn’t a Wednesday night against the Rockies.
With the game in the eighth inning, we moved to the right field bleachers. Perhaps it’s because A’s fans have learned not to get too attached to any one player, perhaps it’s because the franchise’s happiest days are in the past — and likely a strong combination of the two — but the names and eras represented on jerseys spotted around the stadium tell the story of better days in Oakland: Jackson, Fingers, Henderson, Stewart, Chavez, Crisp, Treinen (now on the Dodgers roster). Those vintages of the green and gold live on in the bleachers.
The A’s held a 6-2 lead entering the top of the ninth. Ohtani was due up fifth in the inning. Three of the four Dodgers batters ahead of him were hitting under .200. While statistically unlikely that Ohtani would bat in the inning, I don’t think anyone was surprised after pitcher Tyler Ferguson issued a two-out walk to James Outman, who was hitting .149.
And look who’s coming up!
There’s a comfort in seeing Ohtani come to the plate when the math is on your side: a four-run lead with two men on base. Ferguson might disagree.
The pitcher’s one-ball, one-strike fastball was up in the zone. In the end, I moved as much as the right fielder did. The only difference was that, off the bat, I thought I might have had a chance. In reality, neither of us did. Ohtani’s 116 MPH screamer landed well beyond right fielder Lawrence Butler. It also cooked and hooked a full section to my left.
As Ohtani circled the bases, we laughed. Four months ago, the world awoke to breaking news regarding a massive gambling story concerning the likely NL MVP and his translator. What seemed at the time like a full-season distraction is barely hanging on as a footnote.
The inevitability of Shohei Ohtani’s greatness is joyous. When he calls his shot in Game 3 of this year’s World Series, the only thing that should surprise us is that the Dodgers actually won the pennant.
The home run injected the right amount of tension to make the final out of the game nerve-racking for all fans: Will Smith grounded out. A’s win.
Long live the Oakland A’s. Long live the Coliseum.
Ohtani certainly does not fit the traditional leadoff-hitter profile. This is a story about the Oakland Coliseum, though; I will address the Dodgers lineup with Ohtani at the top in the coming days.