Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Oakland barely ready for prime time

OAKLAND, Calif. -- Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.

The Oakland Athletics belatedly returned home Friday, playing their first true home games after opening the 1996 season in Las Vegas due to continuing renovations to the Oakland Coliseum.

But on this festive "Grand Opening Weekend," what the A's returned to was a gigantic mess of a construction site and a continuation of their struggles on the playing field.

The Athletics, who dropped their first three games of the season at Cashman Field en route to a 2-4 homestand, didn't fare much better right off the bat in Oakland. The Chicago White Sox put a damper on the A's weekend by taking two of three games.

In an appropriate gesture, the A's gave fans at the opener a plastic hard hat, a reminder that the projected mid-August completion of stadium construction is still far away.

In fact, were it not for near-heroic efforts on the part of Coliseum personnel, playing in the ballpark even now would have been impossible.

The warning track surrounding the field was not put in until the day before the opener, as were temporary ticket booths. The hitter's background -- an item considered so vital that Cashman Field's had to be repainted four times to meet American League specifications -- was not put up until until just hours before the first pitch, and even then it was nothing more than a giant piece of kelly green gauze.

And the list goes on.

Conditions were so below standard that A's catcher and player representative Terry Steinbach said he considered filing a grievance with the players' association, fearing conditions were unsafe. However, AL president Gene Budig toured the stadium and declared it fit -- barely -- for play.

"Obviously, it needs a few more things done," Oakland manager Art Howe said.

"The playing surface looked pretty good. If everything went smooth, I would have been surprised, because there's been so much to do. It's home, and we'll make the best of it while everything gets finished."

While Howe was willing to be patient, some of his players were not nearly as charitable. Among them was Friday night's starter Ariel Prieto, who made two starts during the A's stay in Las Vegas.

"I don't like it," Prieto said through an interpreter.

"I'm disappointed that we have to play in a stadium in this condition. I like it here better than Las Vegas, at this moment, only because the field is larger and there's more room to pitch. This wasn't opening night for me. It was just another start. For me, opening night was in Las Vegas."

Oakland third baseman Scott Brosius tried to be diplomatic, preferring to reserve judgment until renovations move further along.

"It was different," he said. "In many ways it was like playing in an away park. The backdrop was strange and the lighting wasn't nearly as good as it should be or has been in the past.

There's just a lot of little things that aren't up to speed right now. They really tried hard to make it feel like opening day."

Amid the celebration of a return home, the Athletics continued to draw heat for choosing to begin the season in Las Vegas. They were dubbed the "Vegas Vagabonds," in the Oakland Tribune, which insisted the "faux-pseudo-pretend-fake Opening Day in Las Vegas on April 1 (was) just a cheesy desert mirage in the sand."

However, considering the last-minute rush it took to make the Coliseum even remotely playable, most close to the A's said the decision to play at Cashman Field easily was justified.

"One thing that was definitely proved was that there was total validity to the A's decision to take the actual opener to Las Vegas," Oakland broadcaster Bill King said. "It would have absolutely been a joke to try to play here three weeks ago. As it was, they barely got this one in."

A's slugger Mark McGwire agreed, and pointed a finger at the NFL's Raiders, for whom the construction was undertaken.

"It proves we were right by going to Vegas," McGwire said. "It's unfortunate, and we didn't want to, but we had to. This isn't the Oakland A's project. This is the Oakland Raiders' project. There's no reason for anybody to get on the Oakland A's because of this. Period."

Extra Innings

* THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES: The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority took out a full-page advertisement in the Oakland Tribune Friday thanking the Athletics for opening the season at Cashman Field. The black-and-white ad showed a full moon shining over selected Vegas hotels and read, "Thank you A's for playing in our backyard. Like us, you're in a league all your own."

* A LOOK BACK: The Athletics took time to look back on their stay in Las Vegas during the opening ceremonies Friday night. After introducing the visiting White Sox, a video piece entitled "A New Era in A's Baseball" was shown on the Coliseum's twin Mitsubishi boards, featuring A's highlights from the six games at Cashman Field.

* CROWDS JUST SO-SO: After much was written regarding attendance for the A's games at Cashman Field, the Athletics drew a respectable 31,320 for Friday's opener in the drizzle, but managed only 16,480 and 16,125 in mostly sunny conditions Saturday and Sunday for a weekend average of just 21,308 per game at the Oakland Coliseum. For the six games at Cashman, the A's drew 54,986, including 31,296 for the final three weekend games. During this period of construction, capacity at the Coliseum is only 39,875.

archive