We went to the final home game for the Oakland Athletics on Thursday, and we’re heading to final game ever for the Oakland Athletics today in Seattle. We have been going to baseball games in Oakland and San Francisco since 1974, and this brings along 50-plus seasons of observational expertise—in addition to the decade we spent in MLB press boxes across the nation covering the sport for CBS and its regional affiliates.

We did not get emotional at the Coliseum on Thursday, simply because this was inevitable if anyone examined the factual trails of both MLB and Oakland itself: since 1992 when the A’s had the highest payroll in a then-competitively balanced sport, the Commissioner’s Office did everything it could to make the Bay a single-team market, and due to Oakland’s regressing socioeconomic demographic status, it chose the Giants.

That has paid off for MLB, in the sense of profiteering at the expense of ethics and morals—but modern fans obviously don’t seem to care about that shit anymore. Kudos to MLB for imagining a future where desperate fans didn’t care if their teams had to cheat to win … they just wanted to win for once. After his Commissioner Coup in ’92, Bud Selig engineered it all, and that’s just what happened. Follow the money.

So, from 1968 to 2024, Oakland lost a professional sports franchise six times, and this leads us to the final thought before the game today in the Emerald City: no major sports league is ever coming back to Oakland. The city has no money to offer a team for incentive, and the demographics have proven the fans don’t have enough money to spend to make it worthwhile, either. There will be no revitalization of MLB here, period.

Fans were still holding out hope on Thursday, thinking the deal in Las Vegas will fall through, or that MLB would grant an expansion franchise to the East Bay. Don’t bet on it: Oakland has blown chances with the ABA, the NHL, the NFL (twice), the NBA, and now MLB. We hate to say it, but Selig was “right” in his own selfish aims to anoint a sad-sack Giants organization with just four Octobers in 35 years. Follow the money.

It’s the new world order in America, and fans need to stop deceiving themselves about that—for good.