Death of a Sports Town Part 1: Rooted in Oakland

In 23 days, on the afternoon of September 26th, the Oakland Athletics will play the Texas Rangers in their final game ever in the city they’ve called home for 57 seasons. Following the lead of the Warriors and Raiders, they will be the third major sports franchise to leave the city in just five years.

This exodus is the culmination of decades of decisions, negotiations and missteps. And now, Oakland is in the end stages of its life as a big-time sports town. 

So how exactly did we get here? How does this all look and feel on the ground in the East Bay? And when a city loses all its teams, what’s left behind?

With the help of lifelong Bay Area resident Tim Keown, we’ve been exploring these questions for months. And today, we kick off our five-part series Death of a Sports Town with a look at the ironically rich history of sports in “The Town,” and we unearth the 30-year-old decision that doomed sports in the gritty-city-by-the-bay.  

The multipart series: ‘Death of a Sports Town’ publishes every Tuesday in the ESPN Daily show feed.

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