A rare sellout crowd of about 46,000 will be there to witness — and likely celebrate the good memories afterward — when the Athletics put a wrap on 57 years of major league baseball in Oakland with their final home game Thursday afternoon against the Texas Rangers.
Drawing much larger crowds than usual, the A’s have lost four of five on their final homestand. They will finish the 2024 season with three games in Seattle and then begin a new chapter in 2025 about 90 miles away in Sacramento, their home for three seasons as they await construction of a new ballpark in Las Vegas.
Team ownership decided to move after contentious years of not being able to strike a deal with local officials to build a stadium to replace the aged Coliseum.
Oakland manager Mark Kotsay, while disappointed with his team’s lackluster effort in a 5-1 loss to the Rangers (75-83) on Wednesday, knows Thursday’s finale will leave a lasting impression, win or lose. He played with the A’s for four seasons of his 17-year career, including on the 2006 Oakland team that reached the American League Championship Series.
“The ‘Let’s go Oakland’ is ingrained in my brain,” Kotsay said. “That’ll never go away, no matter if we’re playing here or if I’m sitting on a porch somewhere retired. I’m always going to be forever grateful for the fans, the memories and the passion they bring in night in and night out.”
This year’s Oakland fans not only have suffered through a lame-duck six months but also the possibility of the club’s third consecutive season with less than 70 wins. The A’s (68-90), who won four championships in Oakland after moving from Kansas City in 1968, failed to reach the 70-win mark three straight years twice previously — from 1977-79 and 1993-95.
Those who showed up for the series opener with Texas on Tuesday got to witness a walk-off win, the 485th since the A’s moved west, the most in the majors over that stretch, according to Oakland’s researchers.
“I feel for the fans,” said Rangers manager Bruce Bochy, who was a neighbor of the A’s as the skipper of the San Francisco Giants for 13 years. “There’s a lot of die-hard Oakland fans. Believe me, I had to hear it from them over the years. They’re passionate. They’ve had a lot of success here.
“It’s a fun place to play — the atmosphere, the fans. I always enjoyed my time here. It’s hard to believe this is going to be the last series. I’m glad that I’m here for it.”
The final pitching matchup will pit top prospects seeking to start their own historic journeys with a potential first big-league win while adding their names to a page of baseball lore.
The scheduled starters are the Rangers’ 24-year-old Kumar Rocker (0-1, 2.57 ERA) — rated by MLB.com as the No. 2 right-handed pitcher coming out of high school in the 2018 draft — and A’s 25-year-old righty J.T. Ginn (0-1, 4.40), named the 2018 national high school player of the year by USA Today.
Both were first-round draft picks. The New York Mets selected Rocker, then the ace at Vanderbilt, with the No. 10 overall pick in 2021 but didn’t sign him by the deadline. The Rangers took him No. 3 overall the following year. The Los Angeles Dodgers tabbed Ginn with the No. 30 overall selection in 2018, but he chose to attend Mississippi State and re-entered the draft in 2020.
Rocker will make his third big-league start. He has thrown a total of seven innings against the Seattle Mariners and Toronto Blue Jays, allowing three runs (two earned) and five hits.
Ginn is slated for his sixth start and eighth appearance overall — his first against the Rangers. He is coming off the best effort of his young campaign, limiting the New York Yankees to one run in five innings in his team’s 4-2 loss last Friday. Ginn didn’t figure into the decision.
-Field Level Media