A Junkie’s Lament

Hurl’s Treehouse has been on hiatus due to a minor car accident Melanie and I were in a few weeks ago. We’re fine, compared to many who suffer great injuries or worse. Our bodies are bruised and her head is still quite concussed. There’s PT, insurance companies, and car repairs still to confront and endure. We covet your prayers. Today, writing is my respite.

April 20, 1968. It was the first day I ever got high. Appropriate, right? I’m talking really high. In fact, it was a sort of a double high, if that’s a thing. The habit persisted until last weekend. No 12-stepping for me. Half a century later, I’m going cold turkey. Call it Involuntary Rehab.

Saturday, April 20, 1968. I was an eight-year-old jammed into a bus full of raucous little leaguers. We were headed from Atwater to Oakland, roughly two hours each way. I recall little of the ride there or back, the personalities or the chaperones who volunteered for a day like that.

What I do recall is the mammoth concrete structure, then named the Oakland Alameda County Coliseum. Larger than any hotel, grander than any mountain I had ever seen, we followed our guides past the turnstiles. Inside the gates, we began to climb. And climb. And climb. When the usher gestured us through the tunnel, third deck, first base side, I was awestruck with the view. We were high. I mean, we were really up there. Bathed in sunlight, the verdant field was dotted with players stretching and jogging. Far across the way stood the million dollar scoreboard and far, far beyond that stretched the Oakland hills. My eight-year-old brain had never conceived of something so glorious.

The game featured the Oakland A’s and the (now defunct) Washington Senators. For the record, the A’s lost 4-1, an irrelevant footnote to a memorable day. If the physical altitude was my first high, experiencing a game in person was the second, and far more potent high. No mere drug could replicate the euphoria of those two hours in the sun. Higher than a kite I was. I was hooked and the addiction stuck.

In the intervening years, I have been to scores of games. I returned to the Coliseum well over a dozen times. I saw Vida in his 1971 MVP season and felt the heartbreak of an extra inning loss to the Twinkies from Minnesota. Summer vacations to Santa Cruz often began with a trip to Oakland, an indulgence from my dad to my green and gold affliction. I saw the Bash Brothers go back to back in ’87 and too many other anecdotes to chronicle.

In 1972, Lanny Witt interrupted my 7th grade class at St. Anthony’s not once but twice, both times to tell me that Gene Tenace had homered in the World Series against the Big Red Machine. Both times, the nun let me go to the door to hear the news. Lanny was well acquainted with my fandom; I suspect the nun knew as well.

Before the Internet and proliferation of phones, I listened to games on the radio. Sitting in my dad’s truck waiting for him to exit a soupa, I heard Catfish finish his perfecto in ’68. In Chicago, I could dial up Milwaukee, Cleveland, Detroit, and Minnesota when the nighttime AM signals traveled far enough to reach my suburban home. I learned the voices of Harwell, Scully, Uecker, and all the Carays. On the print side, I subscribed to The Sporting News, jonesing to get my weekly fix of box scores and stats. My dad sent me weekly clippings from the SF Chronicle, the local angle on the A’s.

Over the years, the Oakland Coliseum has fallen into disrepair, and the surrounding area of Oakland is stricken with poverty and other issues. The structure is cracked and broken, struggles with sewage and too many rodents. All of it, every part of the Coliseum, could be updated and improved. Or a new stadium could have been built. But none of that happened.

Some years, I must confess, my affections have ebbed and flowed, but always, and I mean always, my team was the Oakland A’s. I attended A’s games in Milwaukee, Chicago (Cubbies and Southside), Texas, and Anaheim.Very purposefully, I use the past tense in that paragraph. They were the Oakland A’s.

Over the weekend, the A’s played an end of year lackluster series against the Seattle Mariners. It was significant, really, in a single way. While the A’s will play next year, they will never again wear the jersey that proclaims Oakland A’s. Nobody knows for sure what their jackass owner and greedy MLB will decide about their permanent location. The A’s are orphans and vagabonds under a craven and penurious owner. They will move to Sacramento for a few years, maybe longer, and then possibly settle in Vegas. Or not. Next year, they will be called simply The Athletics. No city or state. Just a hangover from a once-proud franchise.

As for me, I’m not exactly sure what to do. For now, I’ll support the A’s in Sac. It’s still California, and it’s actually slightly closer to Atwater where I grew up. I suppose I can live with that. I’ll cheer the green and gold. But it won’t be the same next season. Not ever.

For decades, the A’s victory tune was Celebrate by Kool and the Gang. The jazzy, upbeat tune would echo off the concrete facades as fans basked in the glory of another W. The chorus exhorts the crowd, over and over to…

Celebrate good times, come on
Let’s celebrate
Celebrate good times, come on
Let’s celebrate.

“Our memories make us rich.” The first place I read those words, those exact words, they were in a Packers blog by a writer (now retired) named Vic Ketchman. An older guy, he was always aware of the transitory nature of time and place. He covered lots of sports, myriad players and coaches. He knew it would all end some day, but he was grateful for the journey. Vic was right; our memories make us rich.

So it is with my Oakland A’s. I possess a wealth of memories, but my fandom for the A’s in Oakland has left a gap and I’m beginning to withdraw. No more dopamine hits, no more sweaty palms or pounding heartbeats. Not from the Oakland Athletics.

Maybe next week or next month, I’ll celebrate good times, c’mon, celebrate the wealth of my memories stored over the course of fifty six years. But today and probably tomorrow too, I’m rich and sad.

Thanks for reading!

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