There was a brief time in my childhood when my father and I rooted for the Oakland A’s. He spent most of my life cheering against any team that I loved, but we were united in our respect for the boys in green and yellow. We would sit down together at the television on some afternoons during the post-season, and we would chatter away, mostly about nonsense having to do with this idea of his that the A’s should have been my team of preference instead of the lowly San Francisco Giants.
Despite all of his evidence, my loyalties would never waver away from the orange and black. He would even taunt me whenever I came home, especially from a ballgame. Before he would let me in the house, my father would pull aside the tiny curtain of our front door and shoot his dentures out of his mouth after yelling, “GIANTS LOSE!” It never mattered that he never watched or listened to a Giants ballgame. Making me mad was his thing, and most times he would be right. The Giants did lose more times than they won back then.
Oakland had the bright young stars while my Giants were true believers of fire selling off their old and young talent. While the Giants rotated through managers whose careers seemed to begin and end with the team, Oakland had the advantage of Dick Williams and Billy Martin. They had Charlie Finley for an owner, whose creativity seemed to overflow with different marketing ideas. He paraded out a donkey mascot, loved orange baseballs and even employed a young M.C. Hammer as a bat boy. Meanwhile across the bay, Horace Stoneham was old, tired and losing money. He would sell the San Francisco Giants team to another city, but MLB held out for a local buyer to rescue the team.
The Giants of those days never had the success of the A’s. Nonetheless, I would cheer for my hometown team because Oakland was just this place with many BART stations, a smaller zoo and a polluted lake in the middle of town. If I looked across the bay, I would see nothing but large mechanical shipping devices and factories along the water, evidence of a hardcore labor class town far different from a changing San Francisco, where old warehouses and decaying docks stood empty, the only evidence of our own working class past. Ours was a city that was a tourist favorite, the center of my universe and a million miles away in both style and class from Oakland.
No matter how much more adored the City by the Bay was, Oakland had the sports teams. San Francisco enjoyed one miraculous season of success with the Warriors, but Oakland had the Raiders and the A’s. They had champions that consistently won or came close to winning the big prizes, and their fan base admirably flaunted their working class roots. The Oakland fans swung black socks at Raider games or appeared in raucous droves for the A’s. They drew the crowds that were missing at San Francisco sporting events, but no one I know seemed to hate them. All of us had a respect for the A’s because they kept the Bay Area relevant in sports, which was important when our true rivals were the big monied franchises in Los Angeles.
My father liked the A’s only during the post-season, because he was primarily a wrestling fan who could not be bothered to sit still for nine innings of baseball. He would wait for me to sit down on the coach before opening the windows to let out the blistering heat during Indian summer. Stripping down to a simple t-shirt and Bermuda shorts, my father would hunch over in his favorite chair, resting his elbows on his knees as he’d played with this dentures while watching the game. He would provide commentary about the game that was never accurate, and once tried to convince me that Campy Campinaris had parents who hated him for allowing such a campy name to exist. He made up stats and liked to call Curt Gowdy an idiot for his choice of sports jackets. He would laugh at me when I got mad at a play call, and would sigh and shuffle away from the television if Oakland lost.
We liked the A’s until they seemed to fall apart at the seams, frayed edges of a franchise that lost all their key players. Reggie Jackson and Catfish Hunter seemed to become the biggest stars on the brightest stage of New York, while Rollie Fingers and Joe Rudi went on to play for other teams. The fabulous franchise from across the bay dissipated like a puff of smoke, and my father never mentioned them again.
Over the years, the A’s would switch on and off in directions dictated by their revolving door of owners. During that time, I would live in Berkeley for a few years. I soon developed a great love for the East Bay and their soul food restaurants, the mixture of cultures and the quiet rebellion against San Francisco that seemed to rise up whenever a new high rise would sprout to create a new mini Manhattan. There was nothing self-loathing about the East Bay because it had plenty of its own color and character. They just did not like the comparisons to the prettier city across the bay.
There was still the baseball thing. Over time, the San Francisco Giants began to improve under different ownership. With Oakland hiring Tony LaRussa, the Bay Area teams began to find mutual success, bringing about the Bay Bridge series.
On one particular warm evening in October, when the air was too still, inviting the humidity to climb, I made an early escape back towards Berkeley. I remember being trapped on the BART train beneath the bay for what seemed like fifteen minutes, listening as the other commuters rustle their papers or converse in hushed tones with the stranger seated next to them. Sometimes we would look at each other and shrug, but most of us had gotten used to the delays. After a long wait, the BART conductor announced that our train would be delayed as there was a long line of trains before us waiting to arrive at West Oakland.
There was something suspicious in his voice, a bit of hesitation when making his excuse. I knew there could be no long line of trains holding up our commute. This train was particularly crowded for a pre-after work commute run because the scheduled train before it had never appeared.
Once our train slowly eased its way out of the BART tube, we all noticed the thick plume of dark smoke rising from the direction of the Cypress freeway. Since it was the Bay Bridge World Series, I had been carrying a nice Sony radio to keep track of the game. I put on earphones but only found bits and pieces of broadcasts that faded in and out. Fiddling with the dial, I sped through different AM channels but heard nothing. Something had gone wrong somewhere.
Instead of waiting for the train to make its way to Berkeley, I jumped off at West Oakland and ran out of the station, blindly running past people who were speaking of an earthquake. I made my way to the AC transit bus stop beneath the station, clutching my radio to find every bit of information available. Instead, panic began to set in as streams of people made their way down the escalators, a sign that the train had emptied its passengers. BART had shut down.
Groups of AC transit buses began powering their engines once there were enough lost and wandering passengers milling around, wondering what their next move towards home would be. I was directed towards the bus that was set to stop in downtown Oakland, hanging onto the metal pole as the nervous commuters began exchanging rumor after rumor. I felt as if someone were ringing a bell in my ear once a lady began crying, seeking comfort anyone close by.
Aware that I was the only one on board with a radio, I delivered the news whenever it came over the airwaves. Information came in bits and was far too sparse in detail, other than to say that a powerful earthquake had shaken the Bay Area. Questions flew, but I was too stunned to offer any other information. The bus driver began yelling at everyone to no avail as the volume of chatter elevated, each person speaking nonsense as necks craned to see the damage on the Oakland streets.
I was let off at downtown Oakland into a sea of broken glass that had fallen from the old office buildings that were being redone as part of the city’s facelift. For many long minutes, I stood alone, watching as cars drove past, honking their horns as if it was all part of some invisible Super Bowl parade. Finally, one well-dressed gentleman, a tall and blonde businessman with nicely blow-dried hair, approached me, the only other living human on the street.
We chatted for a bit, he more than I, his nervous speech wandering between different points of information that I had a hard time absorbing. We had to repeat ourselves because neither of us could concentrate. He told me that the Cypress Freeway had fallen, and I could see the shattered look of disbelief on his face as he tried to absorb the weight of what was already too difficult to state. I knew of the Cypress Freeway but had a hard time recollecting details. He repeated himself several times, almost as if it were a mantra, each time delivering the news as if weights were being lifted off his psyche. This continued even after boarding the bus to Berkeley. No one seemed able to focus, and the crowded bus seemed to be filled with people screaming personal information.
I was lucky to never feel the earthquake, but the impact was felt by everyone who lived in the Bay Area. The destruction was massive, and the papers were filled with photos of buildings that had collapsed, including one particular apartment in the Marina that I used to visit. My uncle, a structural engineer who had flown in from Japan, had requested that I bring him to the fallen Cypress Freeway. We managed the drive, crossing both the Golden Gate and Richmond/San Rafael bridges to reach Oakland, where the acrid smell of smoke, burning metal and flesh wove emanated from the rubble. My uncle looked upon the destruction with such sadness, trying desperately to make notes that he could bring back to his colleagues. He could not do so without becoming emotional.
A few days later, then Vice President Dan Quayle visited Oakland to survey the damage. Instead, he hid behind a paper and darkened windows as his limousine drove through Oakland, a long line of angry residents offering their singular thoughts by way of one raised middle finger.
Somewhere in all this, MLB offices in New York began to discuss resuming the World Series. They discussed possible schedules to resume the World Series, and no one I know wanted the games to continue. There were still bodies that needed recovering and the commutes were already a nightmare without the Bay Bridge to help sustain the traffic between Oakland and San Francisco.. No matter how many times MLB offices said the community needed the games, they were wrong. Baseball needed the games to resume to reap advertising money. So long as their own offices were not affected, there was a major series to be played amidst the mayhem of recovery and heartache.
The bitterness of those days are now fragmented memories of a failed World Series appearance by the SF Giants, and none of us seemed to care much about it beyond flashes of anger at baseball’s own greed. We believed our team lost because the players remained in San Francisco to help the community rebuild while the Oakland A’s went off to Arizona to keep in playing shape. Later, we would become angered by the steroid fueled play of LaRussa’s squad against our own players. Somehow, somewhere, the friendly Bay Area rivalry began to grow fangs and claws.
These days, San Francisco and Oakland fans seem to hate each other, no doubt helped on by years of internet forum flame wars and the Mossback-type trolls who lead the charge. Even as sports teams have managed to experience equal measures of success, more or less, the flame war offenders still use the A’s and Giants to fuel their resentments. Oakland does not like that city across the bay that gets all the attention, while San Francisco seems to believe that everything east of the Bay Bridge fulfills its stereotypes against the filthy labor class. There is no in-between on the internet, where the only true statement on social media based computer life is found in the wise words of the specimen-bound space alien in “Independence Day” who uttered “…NO PEACE…” I would like to believe that I am too far away in Southern California to get involved in these skirmishes, as my knowledge of old Bay Area territories and behaviours have slowly disappeared somewhere in the smog, but I am like anyone else wanting to defend their team.
Yet somewhere in the middle, my own fragile childhood memories have preserved the fondness. I still remember Reggie Jackson in his green and yellows, Rollie Fingers coming in to close a tight playoff game and my father smiling as he delivered yet another insult about the San Francisco Giants while watching the A’s turn a doubleplay. At least he would be happy to know that my husband has taken up the “GIANTS LOSE!” taunting.
Here’s to the Bay Bridge series. Let there be no earthquakes.
(c) 2014 Slow Suburban Death. All rights reserved.
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