Oakland Athletics: Looking ahead to 2018
By Jason Burke
Keep the good news comin’
A’s fans have been waiting on a new ballpark for well over a decade at this point, and just a couple of weeks ago the team announced the location that they have chosen to be the next home of the Oakland Athletics. Of course there will still plenty plenty of red tape to cut through, and securing the land is no gimme, but all that the fans ask is to be kept in the loop this winter.
All season there has been tremendous effort to let the fans know that the A’s aren’t leaving Oakland. They started a “Rooted in Oakland” campaign that came complete with a mural of the A’s elephant and some lighthearted ribbing of the cross-Bay Giants. They promised a ballpark announcement, and delivered. There is long term hope for A’s fans for the first time in quite a while.
It’s going to be a time consuming process, getting all the t’s dotted and the i’s crossed to secure the land needed for their ideal ballpark location, but going dark at this point would be a little rough on the fanbase that they’ve been building up all year. It’s also not likely that they’ll stop sharing updates with the A’s faithful altogether, with Dave Kaval and company being very open with their expectations throughout the process to this point.
With the Raiders and Warriors headed out of town in the coming years, the A’s could be positioned quite nicely to reap the rewards of setting their roots in Oakland. With fewer options to choose from, the A’s could become the big ticket in town and start bringing in the fans that have eluded them for many, many years. One way to do that would be to…