The Oakland A's haven't been drawing many fans these days. For their Opening Day loss to the Cleveland Guardians, they drew even less.
That was by design, as thousands of fans gathered in the Oakland Coliseum parking before the game in protest of the team's ownership and the plan to move the franchise.
The A's actual team then got trounced by an 8-0 count.
Some opening night, huh?
Anyway, the protest consisted of A's fans waving large flags that read "SELL" and listening to live music, ESPN reported. The announced crowd for the game was 13,522, but it was nowhere near that. The majority of them stayed in the parking lot until late in the evening.
"This will be the first time since 2006 that I've missed Opening Day," Jorge Leon, the president of the Oakland 68s, an influential fan group, told ESPN. "Opening Day used to be a holiday for all of us. We'd take the day off and celebrate from 11 a.m. to the first pitch. This is hard."
MLB owners unanimously voted to approve the A's planned move to Las Vegas, with A's ownership aiming for a 2028 opening of a new stadium. It will be located at the site of the Tropicana Resort and Casino, which will soon be demolished. The A's haven't decided where they will play in the meantime, though Sacramento and Salt Lake City are reported options if the A's can't agree to extend their lease after the season.
For now, though, Oakland fans have decided to stay away. And seem to be having fun doing it.
"The fans partied on the cracked asphalt of the Coliseum parking lot, in the shadows of the crumbling bleachers once rolled into the stadium for Raiders football games," ESPN wrote. "The longest line was for the tent manned by members of Schools Over Stadiums, a political action committee of the Nevada State Education Association, which is attempting to stop the allocation of $380 million in public funding to help A's owner John Fisher pay for a new ballpark on the Las Vegas Strip."
