A’S RAISE A STINK OVER STADIUM
Sewage leak renews calls for new home
The Oakland Athletics live in a dump. They know it. The city of Oakland knows it. Everyone who stops to play a few days worth of games at the Oakland Coliseum knows it.
This is an eyesore nobody wants to fix.
We didn’t need a massive raw sewage leak Sunday to tell us the A’s need a new stadium. Yet by the time Major League Baseball, the A’s and their neighbors, the San Francisco Giants, come up with an answer, outfielder Yoenis Cespedes might be collecting his pension.
“It’s all a bunch of crap,” A’s owner Lew Wolff told USA TODAY Sports. “It’s a sad situation.
“I’m not the one in charge of raw sewage. “Then again, maybe I am.” Wolff was not laughing at his seemingly coincidental wordplay. He was the one left shoveling the, well, junk, by apologizing to Seattle Mariners officials and reminding folks in MLB offices that the situation is untenable.
The sewage leak was so bad Sunday in the clubhouses of the A’s, Mariners and umpires that no one could shower. They had to go up a level to share the Oakland Raiders shower room.
Mariners manager Eric Wedge skipped the shower and held his postgame news conference in a hallway while sewage flowed on the floor.
“I don’t know if it was cool, but it was interesting,” Mariners closer Tom Wilhelmsen said about showering with the opponents who just vanquished his team. “I bet it would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
“That’s definitely the most weird thing I’ve seen in a big-league clubhouse. We were all pretty bitter because we lost. But at least we didn’t have to clean it up.”
It would be humorous if this was the first time this occurred, but it happens with such regularity, Wolff and A’s general manager Billy Beane say, they’ve almost become immune to having that can of Lysol close by.
“It was just a matter of time,” says Arizona Diamondbacks reliever Brad Ziegler, who spent the first four years of his major league career with the A’s. “When I played there, four or five times a year you smelled sewage. You never saw it dripping. But when it smelled that way, you knew it had to be leaking somewhere.
“You feel bad for the guys there, because that place has zero amenities for the players. In a lot of ways, you preferred the road. I enjoyed my time there, but the worst thing about it was that stadium.
“And when it gets to August and the football team starts playing games, it just shreds the field and guys diving for balls in the outfield are diving on spray-painted dirt.’’
But the A’s — and the teams they host — continue to endure the elements while the franchise and the Giants merely stare each other down across the backyard fence.
The Giants refuse to entertain the A’s pleas to move to their territory in San Jose, saying the lucrative relocation would create tumbleweeds and dandelions in their beautiful AT&T Park, eroding the franchise’s stranglehold on the Bay Area market.
Baseball’s blue-ribbon task force, formed four years ago, this year presented Wolff with guidelines that could possibly make it work.
If Wolff was on board with the recommendations, he’d have a shovel in his hand in San Jose today. But Wolff gets nauseous at the idea of giving the Giants a dime.
Then again, that feeling of nausea might be from dining at his Westside Club at the Coliseum on Wednesday, only to be told that sewage leak emerged in the kitchen.
“We couldn’t serve food where many go to dinner, let alone mine,” Wolff said.
Wolff again was left apologizing to his fans, and he lost his appetite.
The heartbreaking aspect is that the A’s are a good team. Maybe a great team. They have the best record in baseball over their last 162 games and are 99-55 since July 1, 2012, 17 games better than the powerful Texas Rangers.
“If we keep this up the next few months, I’ll start to get cocky,” says Wolff, whose team had a three-game American League West lead on the Rangers entering Monday.
Then again, that cockiness could disappear in a heartbeat if the A’s reach the World Series, bringing sellout crowds — and having baseball’s dignitaries flush toilets at their own risk.
“We’ll try to patch it up,” says Wolff, who vows to install new carpeting by the time the A’s return from their trip.
But it won’t solve anything. It won’t go away.
“I was really hoping by now that we’d be going into a new venue.”
Oh, and when asked to describe the wait so far?
“It stinks,” Wolff says.