MLB owners have approved the Oakland A’s move to Las Vegas, paving the way for MLB’s first franchise relocation since the Montreal Expos moved to Washington and became the Nationals in 2005.
Here’s what this means from a Uni Watch standpoint:
- The A’s have one year remaining on their current stadium lease, so they will play a lame-duck season at the Oakland Coliseum in 2024.
- Speaking of: MLB teams often wear a “Final Season” patch for their final year in a given stadium, but that’s when they’re tearing the ballpark down and building a new one. Will the A’s wear a similar type of patch when they’re leaving town, or would that just be salt in the wound for the fan base?
- The team’s new stadium in Las Vegas will not be ready until 2028, so the team will play at a rotating series of sites in 2025, ’26, and ’27. Per USA Today columnist Bob Nightengale, “They will play games in Summerlin, Nevada, home of the A’s Triple-A team; Oracle Park in San Francisco, where the San Francisco Giants play; and perhaps also the [Oakland] Coliseum.”
- It’s not clear, at least to me, what the team’s official name will be during those three interstitial seasons. Will they be the Oakland A’s? The Bay Area A’s? The Las Vegas A’s? The Nevada A’s? The Swingin’ A’s? If they change to anything other than “Oakland,” will they get new road jerseys?
- The A’s are among the 10 MLB teams that do not yet have a City Connect uniform and are therefore assumed to be getting one in 2024. It’s hard to see how they can have a city-based uni design when they’re basically going to be itinerant, but I imagine Nike will come up with something just as a retail placeholder.
- The A’s also do not have a sleeve ad. I’m hoping that the team’s state of flux will make them unattractive to potential advertisers, at least until they set up shop in Las Vegas.
- It’s not yet clear whether the team’s relocation will also prompt a redesign. Personally, I love their current look and don’t want them to change it, but it’s easy to imagine them switching to something more glitzy, more Vegas-y, right? Hmmmm.
- Once the move takes place, the A’s will be, I believe, the first MLB franchise to have operated under the same team name in four different cities: Philadelphia, Kansas City, Oakland, and Las Vegas.
That’s everything I can think of at the moment. If there are any other uni-related implications I’m overlooking, feel free to post them in the comments.
Finally, to our Oakland readers: I’m really, really sorry for your loss. With the Raiders and Warriors also leaving the city in recent years, this is obviously a rough time to be an Oakland sports fan. My thoughts are with you.
I for one don’t think that they really need a redesign for their move to Las Vegas, but I wouldn’t mind seeing an alternate LV wordmark for the caps.
The way this has gone down, they should play as the F*ckin’ A’s.
For many former fans they are …
You are correct, the A’s will have relocated four times, when the settle in Vegas. That will tie them with the LA Rams for the most relocations. Rams: Cleveland- LA – St. Louis – LA
The Tri-Cities Blackhawks/Milwaukee Hawks/St. Louis Hawks/Atlanta Hawks and Rochester Royals/Cincinnati Royals/Kansas City-Omaha Kings/Kansas City Kings/Sacramento Kings have also played in four cities each, and more if you count each of the Tri Cities and Omaha.
And the Hawks started out as the Buffalo Bisons in the NBL.
Don’t forget the Raiders
Chicago Packers/Chicago Zephyrs/Baltimore Bullets/Capital Bullets/Washington Bullets/Washington Wizards. That’s a lot of uniforms.
Don’t forget the Raiders: Oakland – LA – Oakland – Vegas
Unfortunately, it’s hard to see them keeping the historic green and yellow scheme in glitzy Vegas.
I would support a return to their old, brighter hue!
I think the Green and Gold work in LV. Lots of gambling tables have green felt. And the A logo could be somehow tweaked (at least in marketing) to look like an playing card Ace? Or maybe play up Midcentury retro look?
The first thing I thought of was the felt tables. Also, think of the “Star” on the Welcome to Las Vegas sign. You could Incorporate the A into that logo.
I can see them using a Vegas gold similar to the golden knights, instead of the yellow (or whatever name it’s called) they use now. Might not look too bad.
If they do that, I hope they stick with the darker green. That gold wouldn’t mix well with kelly green.
I can see a lot of road games for the A’s starting 2025. They should look at playing at Allegiant. Would be odd dimensions, but it would make for some odd baseball. UNLV stadium would make sense, but summer in vegas, ugh.
UNLV plays at Allegiant.
The baseball team?
No, the football team
UNLV’s baseball team plays at Earl Wilson Stadium, which is where the A’s will be playing some of their games for those three years.
Sorry, misspoke, meant to say it’s a place they could potentially play games, but unlikely considering it only holds 3000 people (still bigger than some of the crowds they drew this year, though.)
I feel for Oakland fans losing the Raiders and A’s, but I don’t think they “lost” the Warriors. The Warriors moved ten miles away as the crow flies, returning to the city where they first played when moving west. In any other geographic region, this wouldn’t be seen as a loss for the team’s fans, although still a loss for that particular town’s civic pride. The 49ers moved 45 miles south to Santa Clara and, besides people joking about tv networks still showing shots of SF during games, no one is shedding a tear for their fans because their team is still local, even if it is a bit further away. Yes, no teams will play in Oakland anymore, but the Ws were never just Oakland’s team – they were the Bay Area’s team.
…and yes, the Cow Palace is in Daly City not SF, but it is less than 200 ft from the City’s border. It’s more SF than Oakland.
Interesting. I was wondering about how the warriors to SF was perceived in Oakland. Mainly because i was a life-long San Diego Charger fan but when they packed up for LA I disowned the franchise immediately. Different geo-cultural factors in play i suppose, or maybe I’m just petty.
The Athletics name never should have left Philadelphia in the first place. Hopefully they get a new name when bailing on yet another community.
I was just coming to post that I hope they don’t change their name. They’ve stuck with the name through all their previous relocations, so I don’t know why they’d change now.
The Athletics leaving Philadelphia was odd because in other circumstances when two team cities lost clubs in the 1950s, the legacy club stayed and the weak sister left. Boston and St. Louis kept the much more successful Red Sox and Cardinals while the poorer Braves and Browns departed. Even in New York City, while certainly not weak sisters, the Giants and Dodgers were not as successful as the Yankees.
In Philadelphia the Athletics were the team with the successful legacy while the Phillies were almost always doormats. In the late 1940s, Connie Mack’s two eldest sons bought out their younger half brother with whom they had a poor relationship.
They heavily leveraged the A’s and possibly the ballpark as well, expecting good teams in the late 1940s to lead to a boom period. Instead the A’s fell to last place in 1950 while their tenants the Phillies made the World Series and nearly quadrupled the A’s attendance.
From then on the A’s were in increasingly dire financial straits due the heavy debt and interest until the Mack family sold the club to new owners that moved it to Kansas City while the Phillies bought Shibe Park.
I’m not sure I agree. The Athletics’ move pretty much cements Oakland’s status as an appendage/suburb of San Francisco, rather than as a city in its own right. If anything, the Warriors’ move might sting more than the others’.
I think the fact that Bay Area residents refer to San Francisco as The City and Oakland as The Town cemented it’s status as “not being a city in its own right” a long time ago.
I know quite a few Warriors fans who essentially stopped watching the team after the move to SF, not the least of which because they simply couldn’t obtain tickets anymore.
Don’t ignore the thousands of East Bay faithful who continued to attend games when the team was dreadful for decades who have now been completely brushed aside for rich bandwagoners.
The A’s have been given approval to move, but a lot has to happen before they do. A referendum is being established via signatures by a Nevada teacher’s union to block the $380M in public money earmarked for the new stadium. If it passes, that’s a huge blow to the A’s. This could drag on for another 12 months. I hope the move falls through and the team is sold to someone who keeps them in Oakland. A long shot for sure, but here’s hoping. Nothing about this relocation and approval makes any sense to me.
In that same article by Bob Nightengale, he said the mayor of Oakland is saying they are trying to keep the A’s (Athletics) name and colors in Oakland, and will be trying to get an expansion team to come there in a few years. So the LV team could be a whole new team that has nothing to do with the A’s.
Here’s hoping – maybe the mayor can tie that to any type of lease extension the A’s ask for while they’re trying to get the new stadium built in Vegas.
Closest patch I can think of? The New Jersey Nets had a 35th anniversary in NJ patch that totally felt like “and not a moment more, counting down” with the subtext of Brooklyn
I remember really digging the patch design at the time too. Loved the incorporation of an ABA basketball. link
I hope Mayor Thao holds strong to her intention to only extend the A’s lease at the Coliseum in exchange for retaining the A’s brand (name, colors, uniforms, all of it) for an expansion club. Let them be known as the Las Vegas Traitors, wearing black, purple (for Paul’s sake), and old gold.
That’s should make for an interesting court case.
The Giants would never allow another team in the bay area, and there are better expansion cities that are completely separate markets. This is it for Oakland.
Mazel Tov, O-town! Cripes, that was bleak.
What I find interesting is that the ESPN article on the move noted MLB officials saying moving from the large market in Oakland to a smaller market in Las Vegas didn’t make a lot of sense. But essentially in Oakland they share the 9th largest CSA with the Giants, and assuming a 50/50 split of that market really puts them down towards the 15th market. Meanwhile Oakland and SF are in the same smaller metro area market ranked at 13th. The CSA includes the San Jose market which is ranked 36th.
So the MLB is concerned about the Athletics leaving such a large market that they are sharing with another team, but wouldn’t let them move from Oakland to San Jose, which is in the same overall market but actually a different submarket than Oakland/SF.
That was the real solution here, keep them in the Bay Area, but move them south to San Jose. A lot of the blame falls on the Giants and MLB for blocking that move. There was an easy path a decade ago to keep the Athletics in the Bay Area, and MLB allowed the Giants cancel that plan.
The SF/Oak/SJ combined statistical area is the fifth biggest, after NY, LA, Washington/Baltimore, and Chicago. The metro area (SF/Oak but not SJ) is 13th.
Yup. A’s should be in San Jose. Unfortunately, the A’s did what was best for MLB and sweetened the pot to keep the Giants from leaving SF in the mid 90’s. Surrendered territorial rights. Should have been greedy, petty bastards like the Giants at that time. They’d be in a new stadium in San Jose right now…and have the Bay Area to themselves. Lesson learned.
And that entire area around Diridon could’ve been revamped and turned into something walkable and lively. Instead, it’s still a bunch of parking lots and now that Google isn’t doing anything currently, it’ll stay that way
Until the stadium in Vegas is complete, they should be called the Homeless Athletics.
Their color scheme is already pretty glitzy and Vegas-y, as much as I don’t want to admit it.
Swingin’ A’s is kinda perfect for this Vegas-bound vagabond franchise.
Curious to see your thoughts on this dbacks rebrand that is happening
I’ll be happy to share my thoughts when it actually happens.
The owners voted for two things today.
1) Being able to visit Vegas at least every other year and call it “business.”
2) Clearing the way for the sweet, sweet expansion cash in 5 years, since the Rays figured out how to have an equally nonsensical stadium “solution.”
There needs to be some serious lawfare waged against MLB to force their hand (anti trust exemption anyone?) and require Fisher to sell. Then Vegas can have an expansion team and name it something alliterative and nonsensical, like the Vegas Verve.
If they take a new name, my vote is for Las Vegas Craps.
Land in the Bay Area is extremely valuable. The Coliseum site is near a BART/Amtrak station. It will be redeveloped soon and bring in millions of dollars a year in property/sales tax revenue without any taxpayer subsidies. Oakland will be fine.
That area is a dump and will require a patient visionary with incredibly deep pockets to turn it around.
All those businesses laying off tech employees in San Jose are definitely looking to buy very valuable land in Oakland to re-establish their offices. With the plethora of Oakland sports teams they can sponsor.
Sounds like you’ve never actually been to that part of Oakland. One of the most run-down parts of the East Bay, and the stadium is situated on top of a canal filled with human excrement and trash.
Granting that any discussion of rational or reasonable business decisionmaking is moot, because the A’s organization is run by one of American capitalism’s premiere idiots. That said, I don’t see a case for bringing any of the A’s identity to Vegas. Existing Oakland fans have mostly checked out already, and the number who can be expected to follow in brand loyalty after the move surely numbers in the low four digits. The team has been so long in Oakland that there is no appreciable body of A’s loyalists left in KC or Philly. And Vegas has not been exclave of A’s support before, not in the way that, say, the Tampa area has long been a hotbed of Yankees fandom. Also, the team is not carrying any recent memory of successful play with it to Vegas; the team’s last meaningful playoff series win came in 1990, before the average-age sports fan was even born. The conduct of the team’s current ownership has stripped the team’s existing brand identity so thoroughly of value that it almost makes Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase look like a success. And Vegas itself is probably the weakest market for an MLB team of any of the top 100 cities in America; low population, low median GDP, high transiency rate, basically no exurban or hinterland population, unusually high proportion of shift-work employment and thus lots of night-shift workers. To the extent that there’s an appreciable audience for baseball, that audience is more interested in seeing other teams from distant cities. All of which makes a top-to-bottom rebrand the most sensible plan for the team upon the move. All the negatives attached to the A’s brand equity can be seen as opportunities for a new identity to put down roots and succeed rapidly.
Which leads me to expect that any visual identity changes will be exceedingly minor, at least unless/until the team is sold. For 2024, I expect the team to adopt Athletics or A’s marks on all of its jerseys, and leave that configuration in place until at least 2028, with no further changes to acknowledge either the team’s temporary transience or its new home city. And rolling out an Oakland-inspired City Connect uniform in ’24 or ’25 is so obviously the wrong thing to do that I can’t assume the team won’t do it. At any rate, the team’s current leadership has a nonzero chance of wanting to go ahead with a CC uniform; Nike and the league may be able to prevent that if the team tries to push ahead.
“And Vegas itself is probably the weakest market for an MLB team of any of the top 100 cities in America; low population, low median GDP, high transiency rate, basically no exurban or hinterland population, unusually high proportion of shift-work employment and thus lots of night-shift workers.”
I used to share this opinion as well. But you see the success of the Raiders and the Golden Knights attendance Grant it, the NHL and NFL have the draw of let’s go to Vegas to see our team play. MLB’s balanced schedule will help this to some extent. But Vegas is literally filled with hundreds of thousands of tourists, conference attendees, and eventgoers every single day who are looking for things to do, and going to a baseball game is going to be a significant draw that going to bring people in. Not sure to what extent. But from my previous experience, I’ll bet getting 20 group tickets to the A’s for my firm is going to hell of a lot easier and cheaper than trying to go to Raiders or Golden Knights game.
I don’t think the Raiders or Golden Knights are successful because fans from other teams are coming to Vegas to see a game. From what I’ve seen, having attended games for both teams, the local support is legit for the Raiders and Knights, as well as the Aces. It helps that the Knights and Aces have been competing for championships from their inception, but I think Vegas will muster up at least as much support for an MLB team as half the existing franchises do.
Oakland will always have Hieroglyphics.
Del the Funky Homosapien is threatening a move to Las Vegas unless the city of Oakland buys him a new PA.
Love this.
If you count Cobb County as a move from Atlanta (I do), then the Braves have a 4th hometown as the Braves.
So the SF /Oak will have the biggest homeless shelter when the As season starts
Unfortunate. All the Big 4 leagues have left Oakland now. Can’t forget NHL’s Oakland Seals/California Golden Seals left the city for Cleveland.
I really want them to keep the Athletics name. Long tradition with the name and they have kept it through all the relocations.
Interesting that you brought up the Seals/Barons…while the Sharks ‘cosplayed’ the Seals with their RR, no one pays homage/recalls(?) the Barons. Luckily, franchises such as Carolina NHL and Tennessee NFL hold onto their legacy identities and celebrate them occasionally to instruct, remember and, yes, cash in.
I too hope the Athletics live on…may the branding and all that goes with the team history survive this brief period of uncertainty.
Yet the Sharks are the direct descendants of the Seals, having merged and unmerged with the North Stars!
“no one pays homage/recalls(?) the Barons”
Well, they only existed for two years, which probably is the biggest reason nobody remembers them. Even the original Seals had close to a decade.
Yes, the Cleveland Barons. Were here for not a good time and not a long time. Gilles Meloche’s awesome Cleveland Barons mask definitely memorable.
link
Ironically the AHL Cleveland Monsters have been around for 16 years and are more popular than the Barons ever were.
I think the most likely scenario is that the team becomes the Las Vegas Athletics for the 2025 season, even if they are only playing a smattering of games in Summerlin. If Nightengale’s report is accurate, and they are investing the reportedly considerable amount of money in renovating that AAA field to meet MLB/MLBPA specs, they are not likely to strike a deal with Oakland to use the Coliseum for some games.
But if the LV/SF plan falls apart, maybe they do stay at the Coliseum from ’25-’27 and cede the team branding to the City of Oakland. Then they would start fresh with a new brand in 2028.
But my money is on a place name change after the lease runs out. It’s kind of like how the Chargers switched to Los Angeles immediately after leaving San Diego, even though the NFL field wasn’t ready and they were playing in a soccer stadium.
I feel sorry for the fans. But, this was out of their hands and on the city of Oakland. The Oakland Coliseum had deteriorated so bad. If I was a fan, I would be disappointed too. But, I would understand why the A’s didn’t want to stay there long term. Especially when you see so many teams that have gotten modern ballparks. Or done like Fenway and Wrigley, and spend a LOT of money to make their ballparks a venue fans will want to come to for many, many years.
The beginning of the end was Oakland selling their souls to the Raiders by destroying to Coliseum. They made a deal with their hearts instead of their minds. They should have forced Davis to build a football only stadium (it wouldn’t have needed to be domed, so the $500M he financed for LV stadium would have covered most, if not all of it). That would have left the A’s to either reconfigure the Coliseum to baseball only (like the Angels did) or build another stadium side by side (like KC or Philadelphia).
Mt Davis did ruin that place too….. The A’s packed that place full back in the late 80’s and early 90’s.
Mount Davis is an overly expensive eyesore without a doubt. However, even if it had never been built, Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum would still need to be replaced and the A’s would be in the same or similar circumstances as now.
The whole thing is really disgusting. I have liked the A’s since I was a kid….I don’t live anywhere near Oakland – for some reason, I really liked Gene Tenace.
I have a few A’s caps that were given as gifts over the years.
I decided to grab a jersey. Well, it seems that MLB, Fansided and Lids are all using the same “store”. Same products load, same sizes available. It’s just icky. Yes, that may be old news to some, but it’s new news to me.
It might be best to look on vintage shops / thrift sites / auction sites as you can find a good quality A’s Majestic jersey for under $50
While it would never ever happen(?), I’d love for the Philadelphia to open its’ arms and ballpark to the A’s…even if it’s just for a season or 2.
The Phils and A’s shared space for decades, and I’d wager there’s plenty of old timers who would gladly welcome the A’s back.
Hmmm.
The A’s left Philly in what, 53? 54? Let’s call it 1954.
2023 – 1954 = 69 years (nice).
So, people under the age of 69 were born after the A’s left town. People under the age of 75 probably have no recollection of ever seeing the Philly A’s. So that leaves folks 76 years and up (roughly) who might remember the A’s in Philly.
I don’t know that there’s “plenty” of old timers with such fond memories of the A’s playing in Shibe, but there are probably more than a few.
I like the idea, but I’m not sure there’d be the nostalgic demand for it.
Great points, Phil. Thanks for running the numbers!
Not many may remember the Philadelphia A’s … but an opportunity for the franchise to celebrate what was before they resettle could be worthwhile. It an interesting ‘what if’ nonetheless.
Heck, I can envision the A’s going back to something throwback-y blue/white while playing in South Philly (their stuff would sell well regionally?), then resurrecting the green/gold when they get to Vegas.
The Phillies surely don’t need competition, but short-term I think the town is big enough for the 2 of them again.
> People under the age of 75 probably have no recollection of ever seeing the Phillies.
Did you mean the Philadelphia A’s? Because I remember the Phillies, just saw them last month.
Yeah. Should have read (and is now fixed to) “Philly A’s”
It might come full circle for Oakland if they realize their bad decisions, and fix it. It seemed to work out for Washington after numerous relocations of their teams. Would there be a possibility that Oakland could work out a similar situation that Cleveland did with the Browns????????? Hmmmmmm, stirring the pot a little bit. Keep the history/team name and let the A’s discover a new name in Las Vegas. Then, maybe (as we have heard MLB is looking to expand) work out a deal in Oakland and let the A’s be reborn (with a new stadium).
I’ve always thought it was an interesting freak of history that the A’s were the team to leave Philadelphia. For virtually the entire modern era the Phillies were the poor cousins to Connie Mack’s franchise … except for the brief Robin Roberts era, which was EXACTLY when time came for one of the teams to cut bait. By all odds the Phillies should’ve been the team to relocate, and we’d be now debating that NL franchise’s latest itinerant move.
Aw, the Phillies have just become good!
“play at a rotating series of sites in 2025, ’26, and ’27”
I’m trying to wrap my head around how much that will cost – to lease two or three venues on a night-by-night basis for three years, as opposed to just renewing the lease at the Coliseum until the LV stadium is ready.
It has to cost more, right?
I didn’t RTFA so maybe there is some reason why ownership just HAS TO MOVE, like right now.
Maybe they expect Vegas would get an expansion team in the meantime.
I believe what necessitates the rotating sites is that all of these places have tenants who play baseball and it would probably be a logistical nightmare to make the schedules work for two baseball teams.
It’s difficult, but not impossible. You had the Cards & Browns doing it, and the A’s & Phillies doing it.
For two seasons while the old Yankee Stadium was being refurbished, the Mets & Yankees did it.
But those are instances where the teams were based in the same town, so fans didn’t have *too* much inconvenience getting to see their team play “home” games.
This is not really a comparable situation, as the A’s would be a transient team, and they probably won’t find more than a few A’s fans attending those games.
Maybe a Uni Watch redesign contest is in order?
I really, really – like really – hope they keep the same basic color scheme and look. Partly because I think it’s been a solid look (alternate unis excepted) for so many years, and partly because they’ve got the green market pretty much cornered. Why do something new that would almost inevitably force comparisons to another team’s look? I mean, there’s already more than enough red, blue and black in MLB World.
Let me be the first to point out that, short of Las Vegas signing Gehrig, Ruth, and Dimaggio, the glory years of the franchise are Oakland’s to savor. The A’s of the 1970s were no less than titans, and they’d be hard-pressed to replicate that success in any location.
How about just…The A’s. Do we ::need:: a city, where there isn’t a (singular) city involved? However, while we’re getting campy, I prefer the Rambling Athletics. When my dad’s high school didn’t have a football field for the inception of its team, they were colloquially known as the Ramblers. Fast forward now more than 50 years, and it remains their mascot name today!
I don’t really care how much you like the current look – it belongs in Oakland. It’s been in Oakland for 55 years. It’s Oakland’s city colors. Yes, they debuted it in KC – but KC has a team with its own iconic look, and hardly anyone alive is still a fan of the KC A’s.
Change their look to some gaudy, vegas kitsch. After what they put Oakland through – dragging their fans through the mud, budget.com rosters, allowing the stadium to fall into disrepair, announcing a move right after the pandemic and then accepting a worse stadium deal than what Oakland offered – have the decency to leave them their colors.
As a broken-hearted A’s fan: I’ve got some uni-related info I’m looking for. I’m not going to support MLB, but still need to find a new baseball team to root for.
My first thought was Japanese baseball. Where’s the Uni-Watch review of Japanese baseball uniforms? Looks like Phil Hecken did this back in 2017, but the image links are all broken and I’d love an updated version. Korean baseball is another option.
At this point, since I won’t have a local team anymore, I really will just be rooting for laundry, so I want to root for the best damn laundry in the world.
I don’t understand why everyone is leaving Oakland lol. As for new colors, obviously black, white, and red to match the colors of playing cards.
I think the City Connect Should be a Large Elephant balancing on a Trunk with a bumper sticker of Vegas or Bust slapped on it!
Per the ESPN article it seems that the Oakland A’s name and branding will stay in Oakland. It’s possible this could end up being a Cleveland Browns/Baltimore Ravens scenerio where an expansion team comes in to the Bay Area and taks the A’s branding while the former A’s are the new team in LV.
“I have also made it clear to the commissioner that the A’s branding and name should stay in Oakland and we will continue to work to pursue expansion opportunities. Baseball has a home in Oakland even if the A’s ownership relocates.”
link
Yes, that’s what the mayor wants. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it will play out that way.
Not unless Oakland can engineer a very unlikely Stuart Symington play to get a replacement franchise (as happened with the previous move). Having seen the A’s – the first team I rooted for, very young – depart after the ’67 season, one feels terrible for Oakland baseball fans, who obviously deserved much better. But since the KC A’s began my lifelong uni-interest, I would like them to keep the green & gold.
I understand that the A’s have been in a number of cities, but I’m 66 and I only remember the A’s in Oakland. But why leave the name to Oakland if there’s no chance that they could get a new franchise. Are they moving because they have a cheap incompetent owner, or because Oakland is impossible to work with to get a new stadium? If it’s the former, then leave the name. If it’s the latter, then change the name. Too bad “Aces” is already taken by the Las Vegas WNBA team.
“If it’s the former, then leave the name. If it’s the latter, then change the name.”
So in either scenario, the team gets a new name in a new location. It’s just a question of whether the city “retains” rights to the name A’s or Athletics
Yes?
For my part, I’d introduce a bit of Vegas glitz by replacing the yellow with metallic gold. And this swerve towards tradition might not be very Vegas … but any excuse is a good one for removing that damnable apostrophe-S from their caps. So do it, says I.
As awful as this is (I still can’t believe Fisher got away with literally doing the plot of Major League). I will be sustained by praying that they somehow make the A’s get a City Connect uni before fully moving into Vegas. It might actually be the thing that breaks the brain of Nike’s writer that does all the “storytelling” behind the uniforms.
I’m worried about Hal the Hot Dog Guy…
I’d imagine from a uni standpoint, in the interim they do what the Florida Marlins did with their road Florida greys when they knew they were changing namesakes to Miami, but hadn’t yet made the change. That is, on their road greys, they’ll just switch the Oakland to Athletics. They’ll need an official name of course, but for 25, 26, 27 the unis will just be Athletics or A’s everything, no city/state mentioned.
As for retaining the identity they will and should. I’m not in favor of the move but they’re one of the original 16 clubs, the Athletics name has as stated carried across what will be 4 cities once they move. Of course they should keep it.
Retaining the identity in Oakland is pointless. Oakland isn’t getting another team. The Giants wouldnt’ let them move to San Jose, you think once they have the Bay Area all to themselves they’re gonna let a new team into any of it? No way. The expansion clubs will be Nashville and Salt Lake City. It’s nearly a done deal.
Lastly, for colors, I hope they keep them. I know those haven’t come all the way from Philadelphia but they’ve been there for long enough and most importantly, they’re unique. Red/white/blue is done by many teams, silver and black to match the Raiders won’t work in baseball because of the White Sox. Just keep it as is.
Gotta go full-on Hornets/Kings. Embrace the multiple homes. Be the Oakland-San Francisco-Summerlin Athletics for 3 years. The Expos/Nats missed an opportunity to be the Montreal-San Juan Expos while they were straddling two home cities/stadiums before the move.
Thanks for the condolences Paul. If you want the story as told brilliantly by a fellow A’s die-hard, read Dan Moore in The Ringer. Look at Dan’s Twitter and I know you’ll find some guys you’d love to have a beer with. Also, I Got It (TM) drawing the Old English A over and over. My first ‘uni crush’ was the 1969-71 vest uni. My first game? 1968. Just before the great 3-peat team got good. I was 9. An old former outfielder with bad knees played first for the Yankees. So yeah, it hurts.
“My thoughts are with you.” lmao it’s not like they lost loved ones man get a grip
Move them to Mexico City until the stadium in Las Vegas is ready. I feel sorry for the Oakland fans. Always had a weak spot for the team. Must be the green and gold, the 70s teams, the Moneyball book and movie and the elephant.