The narrative around Oakland A’s, owner John Fisher is changing

The narrative surrounding the Oakland A’s is changing.

Due to the success of the franchise from the Moneyball era in the early 2000s and its enduring legacy that was captured in the 2011 Hollywood movie, the A’s were often mislabeled. Despite playing in the Bay Area, a Top 6 media market that has been flush with cash since the Dot Com boom of the 1990s, the actions of Oakland’s ownership have led some to believe that the A’s are a ‘small-market’ operation.

Nowadays, the narrative is that the A’s are just cheap. Which is correct. ‘Small-market’ and ‘low-budget’ are no longer being conflated.

The national spotlight is shining brightly on owner John Fisher, who has failed to seriously invest in his on-field product since taking over as majority owner in 2005. During Monday night’s broadcast of the A’s-Angels game in Anaheim, Angels TV announcer Wayne Randazzo offered his candid take on the A’s recent announcement that they’ve put in a bid to buy land in Las Vegas to build a new ballpark.

“They’ve been in Oakland since 1968 and had a lot of success,” Randazzo said. “Those A’s great teams of the 70s, again in the late 80s and early 90s under Tony LaRussa with the Bash Brothers and Rickey Henderson. There’s been a great history of Oakland baseball that has seemingly been discarded by A’s ownership.”

“There’s been a great history of Oakland baseball that has seemingly been discarded by A’s ownership.”

The Angels broadcast weighs in on the Oakland A’s efforts to move to Las Vegaspic.twitter.com/j6UuDfFylC

— The Rickey Henderson of Blogs (@RickeyBlog) April 25, 2023

By now, baseball fans know the story well. The A’s front office somehow puts together a competitive team, before the players prove their value and get traded once they reach arbitration and Oakland has to start – you know – start paying them.

Granted, I haven’t read every piece of A’s news this week, but from The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal to CBS Sports’ Damon Amendolara to all the New York Times headlines about the reverse boycott scheduled for June 13 – Fisher is definitely being painted as the villain by the media at large.

About the only person who is maintaining support for Fisher is MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, who on Monday addressed Oakland’s overtures with Las Vegas.

“I feel sorry for the fans in Oakland. I really do,” Manfred told the Associated Press. “But for the city of Oakland to point fingers at John Fisher, it’s not fair. We have shown an unbelievable commitment to the fans in Oakland by exhausting every possible opportunity to try to get something done in Oakland. Unfortunately, the government doesn’t seem to have the will to get it done.”

Boo hoo. Woe is the billionaire heir John Fisher.

Sure, there is blame to go around, and Oakland historically has been awful at keeping its professional teams in town. But if Fisher really wanted to push the Howard Terminal deal through, he probably could have found enough private funding to close the gap for off-site infrastructure, which was reportedly down to $88 million, per ABC7’s Casey Pratt. 

Beyond that, people around the country are realizing that Fisher has decimated Oakland’s rich baseball history with the A’s franchise. Why Manfred continues to publicly support Fisher is perplexing.

Is the commissioner’s job to protect the game’s best interests? Or a billionaire owner who is determined to erase his franchise’s rich tradition? Maybe Manfred will eventually wilt to the court of public opinion, but he’s still got Fisher’s back for now.

Claims like Randazzo’s will only help to paint Manfred and Fisher in a corner, while reaching more baseball fans across the country. This will probably be a recurring conversation on opposing broadcasts. With five months to play the rest of the season, the noise will only get louder for Fisher in the national picture.