The Odd Couple Wasn't so Odd Once Upon a Time

needs his own baseball history blog on SBN…one post every week or so is not NEARLY enough

Go Raiders and Go A’s.

Tiny “big Screen” No discernible clubhouse. its not very good for the theatrics of a football game.

As I remember it, if Oakland/Alameda County had approved a lousy $0.5M in improvements to the Coliseum 30 years ago, the Raiders would’ve stayed put (at least for a while). The old Coliseum layout seated only around 50000 for football, and Big Al wanted to raise revenue with luxury boxes (the income from which is not shared with the other teams). The city and county refused, then the city wasted 10x the amount they would’ve spent on the stadium improvements with a very poorly thought-out eminent domain lawsuit to try to condemn the Raiders as public property.

After the Raiders left after the ‘81 season (a bad one), at the start of preseason, the Raiders were playing the Niners. I decided, "screw those guys, I’m gonna root for the Niners". This attitude lasted almost one play, when I realized that even though my team had moved 400 miles south, they were still my team – there was Kick ‘em*, Lester, Plunkett, Branch, Guy, and an exciting rookie named Marcus something-or-other. If and when the A’s relocate (hopefully in the bay area about 40 miles south), I will feel exactly the same way.

* By the way, no true Raider fan of that day ever referred to Ted Hendricks as “The Stork” – his Raider nickname was Kick ’em.

is here

http://www.athleticsnation.com/2010/9/3/1668059/dld-9-3-10-when-youre-going-bad

That football team is messing up our baseball field! :)

Note the lack of the BART bridge.

football and baseball teams sharing the same stadium was quite common. Just some examples: Mets/Jets, Giants/49ers, Yankees/Giants….and there were others as well.

After the scars and evidence of the Raiders ever leaving are gone. There should be a new generation of both A’s and Raiders fans, mostly those born after 1994.

In 1981 I was only 8 years old, so all of the stuff that happened with the Raider’s moving didn’t really mean much to me at the time. Looking back on the situation now I wish that the Raiders had never left, but it really is neither here nor there as it is history and there is nothing we can do about it now.

There is no way to answer this question, but I really wonder what the situation would be today had the Raider’s never left Oakland back in 1981? I am guessing that the fan base would be far less divided, I understand it, but I still think it is weird when I see A’s fans who are 49er fans and Giants fan who are Raider fans. What was different back in the 70’s when they also shared the stadium? Why was the issue of the baseball field being ruined by the Raider’s back then not an issue as it is today? Ray Fosse talks about how much he dislikes seeing the field after a Raider game, he played under those conditions on this same field back in the 70’s and I am guessing back then that it was just accepted?

From your post it seems that there was not mass hatred of the Raider’s by some A’s fans back then as there is today. I am assuming that many of the people here on AN who are A’s fans who just 100% despise the Raider’s were Raider fans before they moved to L.A., and then were upset about the move, which is what spurs all the Raider hate? If that is not the reason for the negativity towards the Raider’s then I guess I just don’t understand, especially since this relationship worked well in the past.

I became an A’s fan in 1972- the year the dynasty began in Oakland. 3000 miles away on a little farm in rural North Carolina- I wasn’t really much of a baseball fan until this wild haired odd looking team hit the sports magazines- and man was I hooked. I really didn’t follow the Raiders until much later and admittedly being an East Coaster, the Redskins became the team I’d cheer for- but the Raiders were always a team that deserved outright respect. You knew when the Raiders were playing , some heads were going to get knocked. Oakland can be proud of the history of both teams- but there are fans around the country (and the world) who feel the pride too.

and I’m one of them. I don’t understand it, and I don’t like it. I tried to get into the Raiders one season by watching a bunch of games on TV — I’ve never been to a professional football game — but it didn’t take.

is that, before the A’s season ended, the Raiders played their exhibition games and first couple of regular season games with the Coliseum seating in the baseball configuration. The football field was turned 90 degrees from the way it runs now; one end zone was down around home plate and the other was in center field. No seating was constructed over the baseball field. That’s also the way the stadium was configured for every game the USFL Oakland Invaders played in the stadium in the early ’80’s.

Once the A’s season was over, they would build those football bleachers running from the left field corner to the right field corner in front of the baseball bleachers, as shown in doctorK’s picture above, and the football field was turned around to its normal configuration. Due to the time and expense required to do that (and, honestly, the dumb design which required so much work), that conversion was only done once per season.

So the only damage to the baseball field resulted from football cleats (relatively mild damage) and not from the construction of bleachers atop the outfield grass. Not that playing a football game out there never caused any damage. Check out film of Games 3, 4 and 5 of the 1972 World Series. The Raiders had played a game in the Coliseum a couple days earlier in the rain, and the rain continued for a couple days (postponing the first attempt to play Game 3 for 24 hours). The Coliseum field, which had a very ineffective drainage system at that time, was a horrendous mudhole.