Contemplating the Oakland Athletics of San Jose in the Long Dark Tea Time of the Offseason

Despite promising to from the very beginning, I’ve yet to write about anything but our Bitter of Choice. The FerneTyranny ends now(!) with a piece about… the Oakland A’s!?

Make no mistake my friends, Your Fernetiquette is no Athletics fan. Nay, the blood in my veins is black as pitch and orange as uh… an orange. I’ve considered legally changing my name to Mrs. Tim Lincecum IV, Esq. I recently saw Pablo Sandoval order a sandwich at a local Subway and freaked out like a little girl and mass texted everyone I knew. Point is I’m a San Franciscan and a Giants fan. I only concern myself with the A’s when I’m talking friendly smack with my A’s fan friends or they’re crushing us in a championship series. Thankfully for me the former happens far more often than the latter. The rest of the time I could not care less about them. I acknowledge that they are a solid franchise with a great history, but they’re also one which is pretty easy for me to ignore (I’m not the only one, as evidenced by their “attendance”. ZING~!)

Fan Appreciation Day at the Coliseum!

To this day it honestly perplexes me as to why Oakland fans in general have such fervent animosity towards the Giants. The clearest example of this was that almost every A’s fan I knew rooted for Anaheim against San Francisco in the 2002 World Series, even though

A) Anaheim and Oakland are in the same division and routinely beat each others’ brains out,
B) they were rooting for effing SoCal over their Northern California brethren, and
C) if another converse World Series happened (A’s-Dodgers), every Giants fan alive would slather themselves in green and yellow while making daily human sacrifices at the altar of Vida Blue to prevent another blasphemous Dodger world title.

Nevertheless, when the Giants ended up losing, I had to put up with more razzing from A’s fans than I did from Dodgers or Angels fans. Which: annoying! (True fact: When I asked my A’s-fan brother-in-law why this was the case, he responded with a straight face that the A’s and Angels “aren’t really division rivals.” Hand to Mays, he said it.)

Blessed be His name

 
Anyway, in general I don’t get it. HOWEVA, when it comes to the whole “Giants-blocking-the-A’s-theoretical-move-to-San Jose” thing, the vitriol begins to make sense. Look, far be it from me to deny that the Giants have legal territorial rights over San Jose under their agreement with Major League Baseball. The Giants paid for them and the A’s didn’t, so neener neener. That said, rather than getting the City Attorney of San Francisco to throw his weight behind preventing the move wholesale, why don’t we just use this to work something out? After all, no one wants to be forced to live in Oakland so forcing them to stay is unnecessarily cruel. We just have to use a little leverage, baby. Leverage. Given that the Giants literally bid against themselves to re-sign Barry Bonds every 5 years I know this is sort of a foreign concept to Sabean, so I’ll lay it out slowly.

Below the jump, allow me to present you with my ransom note list of demands in exchange for relinquishing the San Jose territory and allowing the A’s to move to Silicon Valley. If Beane and the boys can agree to this list, then the Siege of San Jose is over and the entire city of Oakland is free to re-locate south. So without further ado:
1) Rickey Henderson's Hall of Fame Plaque is changed to a Giants hat. Since SF is the only major league team Rickey never played for, this would be somewhat poetic.

Think about it. We can make this happen!

2) The A’s issue a retroactive apology for callously taking advantage of the Loma Prieta Earthquake by starting Dave Stewart and Bob Welch in games 3 and 4 of the 1989 World Series, robbing us of any chance to make it a series. ARRGH ONE GAME THAT’S ALL I ASK FOR ARRGH.

3) Beane has to hire Sabean as an intern for up to three (3) full weeks. Afterwards, Sabes gets an autographed copy of Moneyball, a letter of recommendation and a year’s subscription to Baseball Prospectus.

4) A’s fans universally have to stop being so fucking smug about Barry Zito. Seriously you guys, we get it.

*Sigh*

5) Oakland must retire Jose and Ozzie Canseco’s numbers. In doing so, it forces the A’s to acknowledge that as big a cheater as our guy may have been their guys were a) doing it first and b) not nearly as good at it. Retiring Geronimo Berroa’s number is optional but encouraged.

6) Until which time when the A’s move to their new stadium in San Jose, all interleague games between the A’s and Giants shall take place at China Basin. Because we don’t want to play in the Coliseum any more either. Really, just ew.

Look, with all due respect to my South Bay readers (who almost certainly do not exist), San Jose isn't really all that nice a place anyway. They don't seem to be amused at the Giants power play at any rate. What's more their hockey team has ugly colors and I have it on good authority that they drink their Fernet like huge wussies. So why spend all this energy hanging on to it?

It's not worth it. So long as we can get the above meager concessions, the Giants will come out far ahead. Trust me.

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Filed under: Posts about the Giants, lolsabean, Drink it like a man you pansies, Rickey being Rickey being Rickey, Cities in the Lesser Bay Area, MSPaint Skillz