When movies meet real life; Oakland Athletics relocating to Las Vegas

Owners vote unanimously to allow Athletics to relocate to Las Vegas.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons

My girlfriend and I sat down to watch the movie ‘Major League’ the other day, one of my all-time favorite movies.

Turns out, I didn’t need to watch a movie to see part of the plot play out; it was going on in Oakland this whole time.

Thursday, MLB owners unanimously voted to allow the Oakland Athletics to relocate to Las Vegas.

It’s a sad end to a historic franchise in a city near and dear to me as a baseball fan.

Covering the Pirates over the last couple of years has become more of a job, which I love. Growing up, though, as everyone could attest to, it wasn’t always easy watching the Pirates play.

Living in Virginia for the majority of my life, it wasn’t always easy to watch the Pirates play, and most times, it wasn’t always pretty to do so.

Getting into baseball during the early 2000s, the Oakland Athletics became a late-night escape for me, wanting to watch as much baseball as possible.

I’ve always gotten into pitching more than hitting, so the ‘Big Three’ of Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and Barry Zito were an instant draw for me, especially Zito and his big-breaking curveball.

I have his jersey in storage still, somewhere, to this day, and it is right up there with my favorite non-Pirates baseball players of all time.

That was some of the most fun I’ve had watching baseball, especially growing up.

For a team with so much history to be uprooted like this when there is still an obvious fan base that wants the team to be competitive again, it’s tough to watch.

Especially when you can literally see the plot of Major League being played out in real life, and people in charge of the sport are either turning a blind eye or just not capable of putting two and two together.

I feel for the fan base who want the team and never wanted to abandon them but were forced to. They even put together a reverse boycott, packing the stadium to show that fans are still there and still love their team.

That was one of the coolest moments watching baseball, seeing the fans stick it to the ownership.

“There was an effort over more than a decade to find a stadium solution in Oakland,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in an ESPN article. “It was [A’s owner] John Fisher’s preference. It was my preference… It didn’t happen.”

Oakland mayor Sheng Thao even sent a letter to half of the owners saying how they were able to get $928 million for a new stadium.

Yet here we are.

Major League was one of the best sports comedies of all time, and it’s just too bad that the real-life version didn’t end with the feel-good version we got in theaters.