Entering the Coliseum

Wheels up

It’s time to go to Oakland. It’s time to enter the Coliseum.

I’m prepared. In fact, to establish a deeper connection to the venue, I’ve even been listening to tracks from “Live’r Than You’ll Ever Be,” the bootleg recording of The Rolling Stones concert at the Coliseum on November 9, 1969. There’s nothing left to do other than walk through the turnstiles.

With regards to my visit, I’ve realized I need to be sensitive. Today, I am the outsider. I am a guest in someone else’s house. While it’s my first game at the Coliseum, it might also be the final game for a local family that’s been rooting on the home team for 55 years. The team, the stadium, the culture, the history — it belongs to Oakland. Gawking would be rude.

I’ll be entering the sacred ground of lifelong A’s fans. It’s the home of a franchise that delivered four World Championships to Oakland between the years of 1972 and 1989. A 20-game winning streak happened there.

In each of the first four years this century, the team lost in the final game of the best-of-five ALDS. They blew two-games-to-none leads twice. All told, they played in — and lost — nine potential series-clinching games.

This fanbase knows agony and disappointment. Over the past few years, their pain has been on public display. Losing games stinks. Losing your team is a different level of heartbreak. Gawking would be rude.

The wisdom I’ve gleaned this week from those who have worn the A’s uniform points to the past. “Just know that the stadium holds a lot of great history from many decades and dynasties of Oakland A’s baseball,” former shortstop Mike Bordick wrote in an email.

I recently told Jim Marshall, manager of the 1979 A’s, that I was traveling to the Coliseum. “Those were the days,” he said, mentioning Charlie Finley and evoking a different era of the game.

There’s a Major League game taking place tonight. It’s a rematch, in fact, of the 1988 World Series, the year that was so improbable (in Los Angeles) that the impossible happened.

I’m not expecting the impossible tonight, just excited to see a big league ballgame.

Life is short. Throw strikes.