The biggest sports podcast in America is talking about Last Dive Bar and hates John Fisher

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What started out as a genius marketing campaign from Last Dive Bar has become a national news story.

Barstool Sports’ Pardon My Take, the most downloaded sports podcast in America, published a new episode late Tuesday night and spent about 15 minutes talking about the A’s situation in Oakland, while also giving a lot of love to Last Dive Bar.

Hosts Big Cat and PFT Commenter are dialed in on the A’s this year, as they are betting the runline (-1.5 runs to the other team) against Oakland all season long. PFT has been tweeting out daily reminders to his 1 million followers before every game. If you were to bet $100 with this strategy since opening night, you’d already be up $292.

“This is not a, ‘We’re betting against the players,’” Big Cat said. “This is a, ‘We’re betting against John Fisher because he’s a piece of shit.’”

“And he’s gonna do everything in his power to make sure we keep winning our bets, which is crazy,” PFT said.

Pardon My Take’s mission is two-fold. Sure, they wanna make money, but they also wanna shed light on A’s owner John Fisher for the way he is flipping a middle to Oakland on his way out the door.

“Credit to A’s fans, because they have organized boycotts, they’ve organized reverse boycotts, they’ve organized protests,” PFT said. “They’re doing everything they can. Normally when a team gets moved, people are upset about it, but you don’t have this big uprising against it like you saw in European Soccer for SuperLeague, where people flipped their shit. The A’s fans are actually going out there and having their voices heard, it just stinks to have a guy that just is outwardly hostile to your fanbase. And they turned their replies off on their tweets.”

The A’s front office turned the fan hatred up a notch on Monday, when they optioned outfielder Esteury Ruiz to Triple-A Las Vegas. Ruiz went 3-for-7 (.429) with a double, triple, stolen base and two runs scored in the opening series against the Cleveland Guardians, making two starts in four-game set. Ruiz led the American League in stolen bases as a rookie last year, but A’s GM and manager Mark Kotsay said he needs to get on base more.

The move happened on April Fool’s Day and Last Dive Bar started pumping out the #WristbandGate conspiracy theory: that players who support LDB have been blacklisted by the A’s front office.

Ruiz? He gone. All-Star Brent Rooker? He benched. Outfielder Cristian Pache? He traded. Right-hander James Kaprielian? He gone.

The guys at LDB are marketing geniuses and kept it up for the past couple days, getting the attention of Pardon My Take in the process.

“So they’re punishing their own players, allegedly, for going up against the ownership,” PFT said. “I’m gonna get a little bit serious, but there’s nothing more evil than an owner of a sports team that treats their fans like shit, and this guy’s the king of it. It should be illegal what he’s doing. He’s taking away joy from an entire city. He’s taking away families growing up and becoming fans of a team and memories you’re going to have with your families going to these games. He’s taking away the community, because he wants to make a little bit more money.”

“This fuckhead John Fisher has basically robbed them — not only of their team – but kinda of their dignity,” Big Cat said. “Because the way they’re going out is so sad, and what he’s putting out on the field is so sad that he’s like, ‘Oh, no one’s showing up.’ No, you did this. You created all of this and you’re a piece of shit. We stand with the city of Oakland and the fans of the A’s and it’s so petty — we don’t know for a fact that he made these roster moves because of the Last Dive Bar bracelets, but a coward like him would make that type of move.”

Turns out that Big Cat started perusing through LDB’s website and bought a shitload of gear for the Pardon My Take gang. LDB co-founder Bryan Johansen saw the order and initially thought it was a mistake, so he emailed Big Cat.

It was a legit order. Big Cat is gonna be sporting the wristband soon and putting up some Coliseum prints in the Pardon My Take studio.

“I bought a lot of stuff,” Big Cat said. “So we’re going to be wearing their stuff, we’re going to be wearing their bracelets and we wanna support the city of Oakland. Because owners like this are pieces of shit. They should just sell the fucking team. Sell the team to someone who wants to keep it in Oakland. We’re at a point now where fans are smarter than they’ve ever been. We know what’s going on.”

Johansen also told me that he sent this blog I wrote to Big Cat, which explained how the A’s ghosted Last Dive Bar abruptly after the 2022 season.

Don’t expect Pardon My Take to let this story die down anytime, especially with their money riding on the A’s opponent for 162 games. Later in the podcast, Pardon My Take interviewed ESPN’s Jeff Passan about the situation in Oakland.

“If you’re the Oakland Athletics, how is this not a crime to just not even try to be competitive in the sport?” PFT asked Passan. “What’s the motivation for the other owners to be OK with certain teams not even trying to put forth a competent product?”

“Because the second that there are constraints that are put on one team,” Passan said, “all the owners worry that it’s going to be put on them, if at some point they try to move a team, they try to lose games to get higher draft picks, etc. etc. Think about it, billionaires don’t like regulations. That’s essentially what you’re asking for here and it’s a reasonable thing. I’m sorry. As somebody who grew up in Cleveland and who worshiped the movie ‘Major League’ I’d never thought I’d see it in real life. That’s exactly what’s going on here. They are sucking as bad as they can possibly suck, in order to facilitate a move that necessarily shouldn’t have been made in the first place.”

A’s fans have an ally in PFT, who is a long-suffering Washington Redskins/Football Team/Commanders fan. Oakland fans can only hope to replicate the situation that played out in DC.

After years of torturing his fanbase, and reportedly fostering a terrible workplace environment, Washington owner Daniel Snyder was finally ousted in July 2023. New owner Josh Harris has re-energized the fanbase, selling out all the luxury suites and restoring sanity for fans who hated to support Snyder financially.

A’s fans can dream, right?

For now, the stadium limbo continues as the A’s are currently in negotiations with Oakland and Sacramento to determine their temporary home from 2025 and beyond.

In other words, this year is gonna be another wild one for A’s fans.

Stay tuned, because later this summer the Pardon My Take guys might be coming to Oakland to check out the Coliseum and meet LDB and the Oakland 68s. They might even try to get the elusive Fisher on the pod.

“It has me juiced up, too,” Big Cat said. “We have an awesome platform that we’re very lucky to have. If we can stand up for the regular fans, like fuck John Fisher. This is a fuck John Fisher podcast. Unless he wants to come on, then we’ll have him on. Again, softballs only, John. We’ll be so nice.”

Watch the full segment here: