Attendance woes reaching historic, embarrassing stage
Ex-executive blames owner Fisher for Oakland's major league-worst numbers
Those expansive, dark green tarps covering Mount Davis at the Coliseum do more than pay homage to the A's glory days. They help hide part of the most unflattering story during the team's five-plus decades in Oakland.
Besides displaying the names and numbers of the A's greatest players, the tarps exist to provide permanent cover for thousands of the ballpark's empty seats. But it would take a lot more of that vinyl mesh to mask the A's current crisis-level attendance problems.
There's no secret why people aren't showing up to their aging, dilapidated home. It's A's ownership dismantling a playoffcaliber roster in the name of future sustainability, while drastically raising season ticket prices amid an ongoing threat to move to Las Vegas, if it can't get a new stadium at the Port of Oakland. To A's fans, that's three strikes — and all but the team's most
imperturbable followers are out.
It's been so bad in Oakland that former team executive Andy Dolich found himself compelled to see firsthand what's happened to the franchise he once helped transform from one with 326 season ticket holders in 1980 into the envy of baseball in the early 1990s.
“A voice was calling. I don't know whose voice it was, other than it said I've got to go,” said Dolich, who may have wished he'd been sent to an Iowa cornfield last month rather than to a Tuesday night A's game against Baltimore. As Dolich sat in the Coliseum among an intimate gathering of just 3,700 fans, he was consumed with pain and anger.
“To see nobody there …,” he said as his voice trailed off. “What we accomplished as an organization, to see that get washed away now in this Bermuda Triangle to wherever is gutwrenching.”
Even saying the A's are last in attendance among baseball's 30 teams fails to properly illustrate
the depth of their issues. But this may help: the A's drew a paltry 13,884 fans throughout their just-completed three-game series against the Twins — and it was a nearly 30 percent improvement over their attendance from their previous three-game series.
So far, nearly half of the A's 20 home games have had crowds of fewer than 5,000 fans. Their tiniest crowd was shameful — the A's drew a major-league low 2,488 fans earlier this month against Tampa Bay. It was their smallest Coliseum crowd in 43 years but, because MLB uses tickets sold rather than tickets used for its attendance figures, the true numbers from their 6-1 loss on May 2 were even uglier.
A Coliseum source told this news organization there were actually only 1,452 fans at the stadium during the A's game on May 2. That 1,452 number is even more stunning when considering nearly twice as many fans showed up the next night in Stockton for the A's Low-a affiliate's home game.
Dolich, a former president for business operations and marketing for the A's, doesn't blame fans for the turmoil at the turnstiles. He said many of the team's issues lead back to reclusive A's owner John Fisher.
“This is all self-inflicted. To me, he doesn't represent what an owner should be about in sports now,” Dolich said. “Has anyone ever heard from him? He's owned the team for 17 years now and it's his prerogative not to speak on behalf of the organization, and to have Lew (Wolff) and now (president) Dave (Kaval) speak for him.
“But even though franchises are privately held organizations, they are public trusts. The fanbase is paying good money for seats, suites, parking, brats and beer. You should be communicating with them.
“I do find (Fisher's silence) somewhat problematic because he's in such a significant position. You may be the last team that leaves a marketplace where all three pro sports teams will have left Oakland, never to return in our lifetime.”