How to Fight the Cheapest Owner in American Sports

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

Why would they want to give their hard-earned money to John Fisher, Nepo Baby?

Right after this ad.

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So, one of the great pleasures I have hosting this show is that I get to assign absurdly accomplished people to do my bidding.

And so, Joel Anderson, one of the truly one of the greatest podcasters in America, a real superlative that is backed up by awards, Joel.

That's right.

Don't sarcastically nod.

It's real.

It's true.

I mean, you know, I don't like to talk about it often, but I did have the best podcast in America last year.

Yes.

Okay.

So Joel Anderson, if you did not know, is a writer for slate.com and the host of the trophy-winning podcast series, Slow Burn, Becoming Justice Thomas.

But the other thing to know about Joel is that he lives in the Bay Area, meaning that a big story that I've been monitoring from across the country is for him decidedly local.

27,759.

That's how many fans packed to the Coliseum on a regular Tuesday night to show their support for keeping the A's in Oakland.

Instead of a boycott, they called it a reverse boycott.

And if their goal was to get attention, then by all accounts, it worked.

We heard the crowd go silent and now getting very loud at the Coliseum.

And I just need you to wrap your head around the concept of these reverse boycotts here, because typically, when you want to protest something, you refuse to give it money or pay for tickets.

But in Oakland, with the A's, what fans have been protesting is the team's billionaire owner, John Fisher, who has been threatening to move the team to Sacramento and eventually Las Vegas, because the money Oakland has been spending apparently isn't enough.

And when John Fisher was asked directly to address these locals, these customers, who have recently also seen their Raiders move to Vegas and their Warriors move to San Francisco.

John Fisher's bedside manner, let's say, wasn't great.

What's your message to Bay Area fans who can't be happy about losing the baseball team?

A message for them?

You know, I mean, I grew up in the Bay Area.

I started out as a Giants fan before we bought the A's.

You know, there's no words that I can say that are going to make people at home who are really upset about the team leaving feel better about the team or about me.

But the city of Oakland has not yet given up.

This season, the reverse boycotters have only continued to organize.

And most stunningly here, they have convinced some actual A's players to support what amounts to a land war against both MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, who also wants the A's in Vegas, and the player's actual boss, John John Fisher.

One wrist at a time.

The issue is that if John Fisher has to pay a little bit more than he wants, then it's not going to work for him.

So they want to embarrass him.

They want to let people know that John Fisher is abandoning and abusing a fan base that has been really, really loyal.

I haven't.

come across a franchise or a fan base that is more connected than this one, even though things are pretty damn terrible right now.

Right.

And the connectivity, I mean, it's not just a battle between a billionaire owner and this diehard,

downtrodden fan base.

The reason that my curiosity got piqued in the first place, the reason I said, let's get Joel Anderson on this story, is because of something called wristband gate, Joel.

And so what the f is wristband gate?

So a lot of these old diehard fans, they've posited this theory that there's this group of four A's players, a couple of them pretty pretty good, who are photographed wearing these wristbands.

What do the wristbands say?

Some say I stand with Oakland, some say the last dive bar, which we'll talk about a little bit later.

You can imagine that if you work for an employer and he says,

we're moving, we're pulling up stakes, leaving town, and you say, hey, I like this place better, and you say so publicly, it might cause a little bit of friction.

Sure.

So the theory is that the four players that have all worn this official merch, you know, part of the reverse boycott resistance, that all four of them were secretly punished.

People are beginning to speculate that this was actually under the instruction of A's owner John Fisher and had nothing to do with baseball.

And you won't believe the actual reason why.

There's an online shop called Last Time Bar.

Their homepage features apparel encouraging fans to boycott the A's and for Fisher to sell the team.

The website tweeted pictures of four players wearing their wristbands: James Caprillion, who's since been released, Christian Pache, who's now been traded, the A's 2023 all-star Brent Rooker, who's suddenly been benched, and of course, Ruiz.

Among the four released, traded, one player was demoted, even though he's probably, you know, the best thing on the roster, right, in terms of future hope.

And the team's only all-star benched.

And I want to point out that I spoke to a guy who was a former executive at a major league baseball team.

And what he said was, quote, cutting those players is exactly what I would have done.

Was it John Fisher?

The idea is like we cannot tolerate this kind of rebellion among our employees.

Like it's not heard of and it should be punished, even though, of course, to me, that feels like totalitarian government shit.

Like now you're punishing players for sympathizing with the revolution.

And so what we did here was assign you as our Bay Area correspondent, newly titled, to find out exactly what is going on with this story in Oakland with the cheapest, saddest franchise in American professional sports that is up to something that I just have not seen before.

And so,

did you enjoy the luxurious locale that we uh dispatched you to?

I've been to a lot of bad stadiums.

Um, this is the only one that has ever literally smelled like

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so joel anderson before you got to oakland coliseum as someone who lives out of the bay when you think of the oakland days and what they used to be Oh, man.

What comes to mind?

Oh, man, it was just so great.

I mean, certainly as a kid and during the heyday, those loud colors, the green and the gold, and how good it looked in the summer sun.

Think about Ricky Henderson, you know, back in the late 80s, early 90s.

1-0 deficit.

Ricky goes, a pitch ticket.

He's going to have it.

He does.

Ricky Henderson, no contest.

Steals third base, jerks the bag from its borings and holds it aloft.

Representing number 939.

You know, back when the A's spent money and, you know, made all those trips to the World Series, those were some great teams.

Then it gets to Mark McGuire, Jose Conseco, like the Bash brothers stuff.

And there's a drive to center.

Back both Shelby to the wall.

It is gone.

Grand slam home run for Jose Conseco.

And look where he hit it.

That was the height of fame in baseball, I would say, during my childhood.

I mean, Jose Canseco used to date Madonna.

Truly, the boldest face names at the time, Madonna, Jose Canseco.

All of which is to say that even before Moneyball, right?

And Moneyball, to me, look, as sports analytics nerd guy, Moneyball, of course, is what I also think of.

Billy being the GM, starting the Saber Metric Analytic Revolution, all that stuff.

But I feel like the entire time with the A's, underrated in the concept of Moneyball was the word money.

Like it was, it was math, but it was also born out of what?

It was born out of a fundamental cheapness that the A's had in terms of how they operate.

Yeah, I mean, they were fielding a team on discount.

So back in 2002, when Michael Lewis was following the Moneyball A's, their payroll was $39.7 million, which was third last in the league.

Fast forward to last season, almost a generation later.

Now the A's had the lowest payroll in the league at $43 million.

And this season, dead last again at $47 million.

So that's 35% less than the second lowest payroll in Major League Baseball, which belongs to the Pirates.

How can you make the Pirates look like they're balling and you're not?

I mean, that's just how bad things are, right?

It's a very anti-Kenseo, anti-Ricky Henderson server of energy, right?

It's like we are rock bottom cheap.

And so the guy in charge right now, Joel, what makes him remarkable given the arc of how this franchise has

been?

Well, I mean, you know that there are a lot of bad owners in baseball, but this dude probably takes the cake.

He's say the most fed up, aloof, and careless owner in the sport.

If you showed me John Fisher in a lineup, I could not pick him out.

Why is it that he's managed to be this anonymous while also this flagrant?

Well, it helps that he basically doesn't do on-camera interviews.

Avoiding the media since buying the A's in 2005.

Such a public-facing business to own, such a community gem.

Is he cut out to be a sports owner?

I know you reached out to me in hopes that my reporting chops would really help out with the story here, but sadly.

You dangle a podcast award in front of this reclusive billionaire and he'd be like, finally, it's time to go on the record.

Come on out and talk.

Yeah, right.

But no, that did not work.

Clarence Thomas didn't talk to me and neither will John Fisher.

And both of them seem to have a lifetime appointment to the jobs they have it's true i mean it would be very hard for them to lose those positions absent uh them croaking in the job john fisher's origin story his deal where does that begin you know there's just a lot of talk about nepo babies now so uh john fisher is one of those dudes he failed up uh he grew up a giants fan here in the bay he's the son of you know gap clothing he's the son of the founder donald fisher and the way they got involved in pro sports is when John convinced his dad to buy an interest in the Giants.

So, just to be clear, so an empire built upon khakis was immediately interested in owning a baseball team.

Yeah, man.

And so, Fisher also went to this exclusive boarding school in New Hampshire, Phillips Exeter Academy, and then to Princeton.

And Pablo, I know you're a Harvard guy.

I don't know how Ivy League beef goes.

Oh, yeah.

I don't know.

I don't know where they rank, like it's Yale.

You know how it's ranked.

I don't know.

You know how it's ranked.

There's only one slot that's important.

It's the first one, but yeah.

And so John Fisher's looking for a job and his family said, hey, why don't you come and run our multi-billion dollar investment portfolio?

They got into a few different ventures, but one of the funnier ones is that he bought into 235,000 acres of timberland in Northern California, right?

So

they have a timber company.

And that deal actually spurred massive protests and one demonstration that ended up outside the gap in Midtown Manhattan.

At that protest, the environmentalists chained themselves to the store.

So it was

very early, people figured out that they were not very happy with the Fisher family.

Right.

Very early on, people realized that they wanted to fight John Fisher by refusing to leave somewhere.

This is a through line in John Fisher's arc.

By the way, an arc that so far is essentially, just to summarize all of this, a story of a guy failing upwards because he had inherited wealth and connections and power.

And so John Fisher ends up buying the Oakland Athletics How.

So the A's are actually supposed to be owned right now by Joe Lacob, the owner of the Golden State Warriors, who, as we know, spent a lot on those championships.

I mean, nobody would ever call them cheap, right?

Correct.

Except that the commissioner of Major League Baseball back in the early 2000s, Bud Seeley, had been fraternity brothers with a guy who was taking a minority stake as part of John Fisher's bigger bid.

So I just, I laugh at the guy.

I know a guy.

I know a guy.

It's always a guy who knows a guy who knows my dad.

This is how business is done among billionaires, clearly.

And so at this point, now that they're struggling to win games and now that the fan base in the present is largely refusing to come to these games to the point where reverse boycotts are

a form of revolution,

I do want to know who is going, who is actually attending.

Not very many.

I mean, it's very bleak out there.

I mean, consider first, I mean, the A's lost 112 games last year, right?

So that's not much of a draw.

Allegedly, 6,000 faithful souls are showing up a night, but the next worst attendance is the Marlins.

And I know you guys, this is Metal Lark.

I know that it's always terrible there.

More than twice as many people are allegedly showing up at Marlins games and at Oakland A's games.

That's how bad things are.

And so John Fisher, he is mounting an argument that I think must must be on some level correct, which is the team isn't making enough money in Oakland right now and that he needs some sort of a change, right?

This is the whole argument about a new stadium.

He needs a new stadium to convince people to come to these baseball games so that this business that he's running is actually something that feels coherent.

As Kendrick Lamar said to Drake, why would we believe you?

You never gave us nothing to believe in.

So basically what the Oakland fans are saying, hey, of course we're not showing up.

What the hell have you given us to show up for?

You've neglected and abused us for decades.

And yeah, I mean, that is a fair point.

There is a real chicken or the egg dynamic here.

The A's have basically been threatening to leave Oakland for more than two decades.

Actually, you can go back and look this up.

These fans know at this point when they are not wanted.

And the larger argument behind the aforementioned wristbands, the ones the fans gave to those four players, is that John Fisher is not just the worst owner in Major League Baseball, like if, you know, Kendall Roy owned a baseball team.

They are also arguing that John Fisher and his willful tanking of not only a team, but a building and a fan base, is actually the worst owner in major American sports.

You might say, well, what are you talking about, Tim?

They draw 5,000.

Yeah, they draw 5,000.

And you know why?

Because the owner, John Fisher, has wrecked the club.

John Fisher, again, since 2005, has been part of this ownership group.

Who have they signed?

Nobody.

They have not made an impact signing at all.

Let someone who actually likes takes pride in the things they own own something.

There's actually people who give a shit about the game.

Let them do it.

Take mommy and daddy's money somewhere else, Dork.

Fisher refuses to spend on players, perpetually sitting out free agency.

He refuses to spend on toy players, getting rid of bobblehead giveaways.

He refuses to upgrade the stadium, perhaps obviously.

And he even got rid of free parking on Tuesdays.

In so many words, John Fisher can't really read the room, and then he blames the room for being empty.

But none of what I just mentioned is even John Fisher's most egregious self-own.

It's worth noting that in the earliest days of the pandemic in May 2020, John Fisher was the only major league owner to cut the $400 weekly stipend for minor league players.

And so there was a little bit of a hubbub because people in Oakland, they don't take things, you know, lying down, right?

And so he reversed course a week later.

And this was all to save $1 million.

So just as a PR concern, the guy is not good at it.

Like minor leaguers making nothing during the pandemic, a billionaire saving $1 million.

It's, it's, it's the equivalent of like, yeah, here's a sack of puppies.

Watch me roll my car over it.

It'd be harder to be more heartless to a group of professional athletes than cutting their very meager salaries during one of the more difficult and scary times in American history.

And so in terms of the sports perspective here, Joel, who did you go to to get an unvarnished view amid all of this like, again, management versus labor versus fan tension to get a view on what's actually happening in Oakland?

Who is the person who embodies the history of this city that you wanted to talk to?

Well, yeah, I mean, so Oakland is a city that has a great protest culture, right?

You've got Marshawn Lynch.

You've got, you know, the Black Panthers.

So many people that have, you know, found themselves outside of the system and become themselves sort of heroes in a way.

And so I decided Bruce Maxwell would be a real good person to talk to.

New tonight, an A's catcher becomes the first player in Major League Baseball now to kneel during the national anthem.

This evening, Bruce Maxwell took a knee, placed his cap over his heart, and faced the flag.

A teammate put a hand on Maxwell's shoulder.

He was doing doing something that pretty much everybody else in baseball was afraid to do, which was what as of 2017.

Yeah, so he was kneeling in support of racial injustice and in support of Colin Kaepernick.

And he was the only one doing it.

I'd never heard of him before then.

And as it turned out, I never heard much about him afterward either.

Right.

Where is Bruce Maxwell now?

Where did you find him?

So now he's playing and coaching in the Mexican league.

He's 33 years old, and he hasn't been back in the major since 2018.

Thanks, Bruce.

Appreciate it, man.

It's good to see you, bro.

By the way, it was good catching up with you yesterday, too.

Yeah, man.

It's a pleasure, man.

When

Zirin reached out to me about this, I was like, oh, this is exciting, actually.

I love this.

So when Bruce Maxwell gets a call from you, Joel Anderson, and the call is about the Oakland A's.

My instinct is not to presume that he has warm and glowing memories of what he went through.

What was his reaction when you reached him?

Oh, man, he couldn't wait to talk about Oakland in the A's and how much he loved playing here.

The most special part of being in that organization,

it was the people, the coaches, and just the overall, like even in the city, like it was just a camaraderie.

And people are diehard, man.

Like, they don't let anything waver their faith in their team, no matter how bad it's been going,

no matter how bad we were playing.

You know, we very rarely got booed.

They've always been through and through fighting for the team.

I think right now they're just, they're just tired of what's going on.

There was one other thing that I may have made reference to earlier.

He told me about

the stink, especially in the bullpen.

The quality just wasn't there, especially for a big league ball club.

It's probably really good for a AA, triple-A locker room, but for the big leagues, it's not even comparable.

And to hear guys, you know, complain about the bullpens, about the dugouts, about the septic issues that we still have in the Oakland Coliseum.

The septic issue is probably the most notable thing about being on the field as a player.

When they have backups or if it rains a lot or whatever, you can smell the sewage through the vents in the dugout.

And

it's there for days on end.

It's not just some slight smell.

No, it's heavy.

Wow.

It's kind of degrading, honestly.

You just can't really think of another professional or sports organization that would even tolerate something like that.

Like, maybe you do that for gamesmanship to the visitors' dugout or locker room, right?

Right, the piping in the crowd noise.

Piping in the shleep noise.

Of defecation.

Right.

Right.

Or, you know, maybe their hot water doesn't work in the showers at day, right?

But like, when we all have to smell the shit, then it's clear that the problem has gone beyond mere gamesmanship.

Right.

Even though it smelled of shit, even though no one was there to watch this dump, Bruce feels how about the A's leaving it.

Oh, he's pissed.

What's happening with the franchise of the Oakland A's is disturbing.

It's worrisome.

It's upsetting.

to see the game of baseball and the history of that organization be able to be ripped apart from that community and those fans and those workers just because we have some greedy people that don't want to do what's best for the community.

It's very upsetting and it's heartbreaking when you think about it personally.

So the thing that Bruce is waxing poetic about, the thing that Bruce Maxwell misses, the community, I am confused here.

Is that community, the 6,000 people allegedly who are showing up to sit in that stink to show up and watch these games?

Yeah, pretty much.

And of that group, he misses this specific group of super fans he got to know.

And so when he was up and down in the minor leagues and there's a minor league team in Stockton, which isn't too far from here, he would go watch A's Day Games with this group.

And that group of folks, they go by a name, The Last Dive Bar.

And so he went to a bar, you're saying he went to a bar.

called The Last Dive Bar.

No, no.

It's a group of fans that are called The Last Dive Bar.

So you did not go to a bar on assignment for us?

I did hang out at a bar, but not the last dive bar.

Very good.

Okay, so if the last dive bar, Joel, is not in fact an actual bar, what is the last dive bar?

So the last dive bar is actually a reference to the Oakland Coliseum.

And in 2019, the New York Times used the term as a sort of backhanded tribute to the stadium.

The headline for it was, The Beauty of America's Ugliest Ballpark.

And here's how the writer put it in the story, quote, if Marlins Park is the flashy new nightclub and Fenway Park and Wrigley Field are the historic pubs, the Coliseum is baseball's last dive bar.

So the idea that it's the opposite of like a velvet rope ringing this place, it's like, please, anybody, you're welcome here.

We need customers actually to support ourselves.

That idea, that nickname, how did it then spawn what feels like this organized rebellion now of reverse boycotters, the guys who are allegedly too dangerous to associate with if you're a player on the Oakland A's?

Well, if you met Brian Johansson, you might understand.

So, I grew up in the shadow of the billy ball era, you know, early 80s, but then that ushered in the Bash Brothers era, Ricky Henderson, you know, Hendu.

His dad bought season tickets every year, so he's got a lot of, he's a big Bash Brothers fan and all that other good stuff.

In Oakland, in the East Bay, baseball was everything to people growing up in the 80s.

Brian, as the picture, the portrait of

leadership for this organization, paint the picture of him for us.

How does he look?

How does he carry himself?

Big, ball-headed dude with glasses.

When you meet him, you know, one of the first things you notice is that he has the athletics logo.

Pretty sure you guys have seen it before, the one with the cursive script that spells out athletics.

He's got that tattooed on his right forearm.

One of the things that he had started doing

back in 2019 was wearing a gold vest covered in pins.

In that year, he got caught on a game broadcast showing his,

maybe displeasure is the best way to say it, after a guy on the A's got hit by a pitch.

And so if you're not watching this GIF on YouTube or the DraftKings Network, Joel, what is happening here?

What is Brian saying, clearly?

This is a family network, correct?

This is the opposite of a network that any family should want to show their kids.

Brian was saying, what the f man?

When Brian heard the Times had called the Coliseum baseball's last dive bar, a light bulb went off in his head and he knew exactly what he had to do.

I saw that line.

I said, that's the most beautiful, greatest line I've ever heard to talk about Oakland Coliseum.

So I said, we got to make a banner.

We got to make a banner.

It was all about making banners.

My buddy called me.

He goes, I got it.

I'm like, what?

And it was basically, it just says, baseball's last dive bar, Oakland Coliseum.

It's an overhead camera shot of the stadium, which we purchased that Getty image and everything.

And the minute we dropped that, it went nuts.

And so that's how it, baseball's last dive bar started.

And it feels like merch was a big part of his strategy.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, they're a merch collective, basically.

I mean, he and his buddies started printing up shirts, pens, mugs, calendars, all sorts of stuff.

So what's the appropriate venue for a summit with Brian?

Where do you guys meet up?

What is the bar that you alluded to before, the actual dive bar, where you guys had the microphones rolling?

Yeah, so we met up last month at Jack London Square, which was kind of embarrassing because it was only after ordering a drink that i found out that brian was been sober for um about a year

just pretend there's gin in here and yeah okay we'll get through that yeah cheers cheers cheers

great reporting joel yep i ended up drinking by myself and we we met at this cool little place called heinold's first and last chance saloon

All right, so just a quick geographical detail about the saloon where Joel met Brian.

Because this saloon was near the site of an alternate universe.

An alternate universe where John Fisher's Oakland days were supposed to break ground on not just a ballpark, but a new waterfront stadium, which even had renderings and everything.

It is an ambitious plan that does not yet have a price tag, but a tentative groundbreaking is set for late 2020.

The ACE call it a jewel box waterfront stadium to be built at Howard Terminal just north of Jack London Square.

But that proposed ballpark at the waterfront Howard Terminal ultimately fell apart after years of back and forth because that price tag did eventually come in.

And the difference between public money from taxpayers and private money, which is to say John Fisher's, was allegedly too much for John Fisher.

There was a $97 million funding gap for Howard Terminal.

You're telling me a guy worth $3 billion can't sit there and just pay the $97 million, work it into the deal and get paid back later or whatever?

I mean, these guys have shown that they do not want to spend their money and they're billionaires and the fans don't benefit.

It's not like Green Bay where the community owns the team.

Like, we don't benefit.

In 2018, the franchise released a proposal to build a 34,000-seat ballpark.

It's part of this brand new waterfront district.

there in Oakland.

And it's a beautiful spot.

There's a lot of potential there.

A lot of people have wanted to do things with it.

This seemed like a really good fit.

And so the club spent, you know, upwards of about $100 million to clear land for development, getting ready for the day that they could build this stadium there.

Last year, though, the A's walked away from the stadium deal when they couldn't agree on like a $100 million funding gap with the city.

And essentially, they were like, hey, Oakland, are y'all going to kick in on this or not?

And when they didn't, he decided to take the team to Vegas.

Tonight, the Oakland A's are a big step closer to moving to Las Vegas.

The team with the smallest crowds in Major League Baseball is purchasing 49 acres in Las Vegas for a new ballpark.

Yeah, I remember this from afar.

The news breaking was April 2023.

The A's announced they're no longer the Oakland A's.

They're going to be the Las Vegas Athletics, which obviously is devastating to Brian, to the last dive bar, to all these people, which explains why they're reverse boycotting out of desperation last year.

And what we assigned you to go do, Joel, was to also reverse boycott, aka go-to-a-baseball game with Brian.

But that's like, that's the A's PR in a nutshell.

They tried to cover that up.

Like, they're like, well, we didn't know he was getting scouted.

Well, that's because he didn't do anything.

And in all of his veteran savvy, how does he go to a game?

What's that like?

He was smart enough to bring his own burrito from home.

Do you even buy concessions and stuff when y'all go in there?

Do you y'all put I have food that I brought in right there?

Yeah.

So that I had a bed release.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, I got it.

I got a burrito.

y'all won't buy none of the i got a big ass bottle of coca-cola and and the only thing that's safeway i'm gonna

have got me that so look yeah a pro that's a pro i wish he had told me before because i i didn't know i thought we were going to get food there and i didn't eat when we got drinks and i'm like oh we're gonna get a hot dog or something and he was like oh no we're bringing our own food but nobody told me so i had a key part of the reverse boycott is the b yo burrito policy clearly look these folks are not going to pay for any concessions because why would they want to to give their hard-earned money to John Fisher, Nepo Baby, right?

Right, which is, again, threading the needle of what it means to be reverse boycott is, I'm going to give you my money, but not for a fing burrito.

That's where I draw the line in this protest.

I became an age strain because of the s.

I worked an age fan.

Yes.

Yeah, I became an ace fan.

How you doing, man?

Yeah, I'm doing it.

When we were walking to our seats, like, Brian was stopped no fewer than like a dozen times.

The only thing I could compare it to is like, I've hung out with like mayors before.

You've been a mayor at a local event.

Yeah.

And it was just like, hey, hey, and people hugging him and making promises to do things for him later.

I would venture that more people in the stadium recognize him than maybe the fourth most popular A.

Sorry to

J.D.

Davis.

You know, look.

I was there.

I'm a journalist, right?

Sitting out there in the middle of this, you know, sprawling concrete monstrosity.

I wanted to try to see this from John Fisher's side, if I could.

Yes, please.

Yeah, so here's how I put it to Brian and his friends.

Okay, the very narrow empathy set of this is a stadium,

everybody knows that this is unreasonable.

And like, he's looking around the country and he's like, most other places will pay for my stadium.

Let me ask you something.

Okay.

Let me ask you something.

Is Fenway a stadium?

No.

Is Wrigley Field a stadium?

I mean, I guess, what do we mean by?

But no, it's still, it's a beautiful historic park.

What about Dodger Stadium?

Beautiful historic stadium, but still kind of.

So two of those.

So two of those are over 100 years old.

All three of them are revered.

I'd rather take a piss at that place than walk in.

All three of them are revered as the most historic, like, baseball landmarks in the history of the game.

Why?

Because it's viewed that way.

It's marketed that way.

It's invested into that way.

So, I mean, Dodger Stadium, before they did the Mount Davis, looked exactly like the Coliseum.

The difference is they continually invest into their product, into their market, into their stadium.

It's like Wrigley and Friendland.

This place has been ignored by the very people that should be maintaining it and putting money into it.

Coliseum places,

the area around it has never been developed because they've never had an ownership group to actually.

They also didn't have to share a stadium with a football team.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

Honestly, the kiss of death was like the Raiders could come back and let them

go back.

Yeah, I mean, the only excuse they have for this place not being better than it is now is themselves.

At any point in time, these billionaires could have invested into this facility.

They could have invested into the area around.

They could have worked with the politicians earnestly and in good faith, something they've never proven they can do.

And they would have done that.

You know what I mean?

And so

they haven't, and that's why it's the last dive.

Yeah, the sense I get, Joel, professional journalist, award-winning podcaster, is that they tried to radicalize you.

I mean, we embedded you with this resistance and the feeling that you get while you're in the stands is what?

How would you describe honestly how you were feeling?

Pablo, I have to admit,

they probably didn't have to try too hard to radicalize me.

I got to say I've joined the resistance.

What does the resistance look like?

Well, one thing about it is that you get these cool little wristbands that say, I stand with Oakland, right?

Not cool for me and cool for my two-year-old as well.

So you get to do that.

And then look, you know, I'm fall victim to, you know, wanting to, you know, have a little fun at some of these things sometime.

And so I see Brian bring in one of those big ass cell flags, you know, big green cell flags.

Wait, Joel, Joel, it is one thing.

It is one thing to even wear the radicalized wristband, but this giant ass, you, you literally, wait, did you wave the flag?

Have you ever waved a flag?

Have you ever done it?

Because, because if you haven't, like I had not, then you understand the allure of it, right?

Like, even in sports at football games where the guy runs out with the flag, I never got to do that.

So, Pablo,

yes, I have to admit it.

I wave that damn flag.

Oh, God.

Look, the photo of Joel Anderson on YouTube Draft Needs Network.

I'm delighted, right?

I'm like a little, I'm a kid.

You look like the happiest person in Oakland Coliseum.

Okay, so I should probably remind you now that the object I actually assigned to Joel Anderson, the object I originally wanted him to scrutinize, was not Brian's flag or even Brian's bring your own Own Burrito.

It was Brian's wristband.

It's a rebel wristband worn by four Oakland A's players, which allegedly resulted in real punishment from team management.

And I know that the wristbands read stuff like I stand with Oakland, but this whole story, this popular online theory known as wristbandgate, if true, is also big enough to maybe make a dent in this whole saga.

And so I wanted to find out if this theory would stand up in court.

I want to go through this investigation with you because player number one, James Caprillion, is a pitcher who got dropped allegedly by the team for the crime of supporting Brian and the last dive bar.

Was he any good, first off?

He started 11 games last year for the A's, wore the wristband, and then, look, he had major surgery on his shoulder.

And the alleged punishment was, according to fans, that he got released.

But really, at the end of last season, he hit free agency and didn't get re-signed by anyone.

Right, right, right, right.

And so we should say also we reached out to James Caprillion, his agent, no response.

And so the investigation surges on.

Player number two, Christian Pache, who got banished allegedly to Philadelphia, got traded away for wearing, again,

this wristband.

What really happened here?

Christian is a pretty good player.

He's played in two postseason with the Braves.

He's a talented Dominican outfielder.

The A's acquired him when they traded away one of their only two all-stars because that is what the A's do.

Obviously, they trade away their all-stars, right?

He struggled offensively when he came out here.

He wore the wristband, and then, well,

it starts to happen.

He gets banished to the Phillies last March for a relief pitcher.

And the A's explanation here was what?

They claimed he was out of major league options, but they also released that relief pitcher a year later.

Pache, meanwhile, has been starting a center field for Philadelphia ever since.

Analysts say, just a bad trade.

And when the Phiddlies found out why we were asking, they declined to make him available for an interview because, I mean, why would they do that?

Right.

Do you want to help us stir up some shit over in Oakland?

And they're like, no, you guys over in Oakland are doing enough of that already.

So player number three is Estiary Ruiz, who got demoted.

And this is a guy who is notable because I have heard of him.

Yeah.

One of the few.

He's a rising star.

And so how was he punished allegedly for the wristband?

The great looking athlete, man, and he was arguably the A's best player last season.

He led the AL in stolen bases for the crime of wearing a wristband.

This is what people think happened.

So five games into the season, he got sent down to AAA, despite leading the team in batting average and OPS.

So why would Istrary Ruiz be sent down?

Well, according to Athletics Management, they said he needs to get on base more, which is comical because he was leading the team with a 429 batting average.

And the guy they signed to replace him, Tyler Nevin, had a worse on base percentage than him last year.

A's management claimed at the time that it was because he wasn't going to play every day.

But I did get to go into the A's clubhouse at some point and talk to Ruiz.

And

his translator responded in this way after saying, I don't know what you're talking about.

What is this?

He have no idea.

So first of all, he worked that.

Didn't know what that means.

He just got on his chair.

He loved Rico, but he didn't know what that meant for him.

So he definitely definitely had to do with us and

he just worked and was in his luck with him and he just put them because he liked the colour.

Will you wear again?

So pleading ignorance is SGRI Ruiz.

Player number four, though, Brent Rooker.

Again, this is, I believe, the only all-star on the A's last season.

I presume that he knew what this wristband represented.

Rooker wore the wristband last year after he got handed one by the group, which, yes, he told me that he was aware of the last dog bar and what they stand for.

Did you know them?

Do you know any of those folks over there?

I mean, yeah, I think, I mean, I generally know

most of the people who've dumbed to most of the games.

So I definitely understand where they're coming from.

It's an an unfortunate situation.

And I think I feel like they have every right to be upset

just because they do love this team so much and they hate to see the team leave.

This season, he was literally their opening day cleanup hitter.

He starts the season 04-11.

Hey, early in the year, 04-11.

That's not that horrible.

And boom, the fans say he's benched.

So I went and asked Rooker about this in the locker room, too.

It is nonsense.

It was the rumor

that I saw going around was that I had been benched because of it.

I missed one game because I had an injury, and that was the extent of me not playing.

So there was, I was never benched.

I was never taken out of the lineup.

There was never any kind of

repercussions for me wearing a bracelet.

And so I just need to be clear about this in order to be fair to the Oakland athletics, right?

We've established that you have been radicalized.

You're literally a flag waiver.

And yet,

we don't have the evidence here.

Clearly, we have, in fact, the opposite.

We have counterclaims from some of the principles that actually this whole thing about our punishment is not what the last I bar, what your new friend is claiming it to be.

So we actually sent a list of detailed questions to the A's general manager, David Forrest, and he gave us this fairly clear statement that I hadn't seen anywhere else.

So maybe we're breaking some news here, right?

Quote, the suggestion that we would move players based on their opinions of a fan group is absurd.

Winning games at this level is hard enough without worrying about who's wearing a wristband.

You can just imagine he wanted to say damn, but it was a written statement.

So I do want to express some empathy, I suppose, for the people who work for John Fisher, even the GM of the team, right?

It can't be the easiest thing to manage a team that's constantly cutting payroll, playing in front of nobody in terrible facilities.

But taking him at his word and taking your reporting now at its word, Joel, what really happened here?

Like, these people believe this.

What is actually the reality of this story?

Well, I mean, it's real easy to believe in the worst, right?

That the team would actually influence the outcomes of games because they're, you know,

they're not willing to take on a little bit of criticism.

But it's easy to believe that if you've been mistreated as a fan base for so long, they've done the worst.

And so you've gone through a decade or more of lies about this sort of stuff.

And so it kind kind of becomes, oh, why wouldn't they demote, you know, an all-star?

Why wouldn't they trade away somebody that has value?

Because they'll do anything, right?

Right.

The plausibility, a plausibility that feels like familiar to anybody who's like argued with someone that they used to love and now hate.

Yeah, oh, very much the like, I don't know.

It's like, you could be that way, right?

Like if we, we were former lovers and like you cheated on me or whatever, you left me for somebody else.

And everything you've ever done is sort of in question as a result.

And so I think that's sort of what's happening here.

You know, the A's, you know, they say, I'm not cheating.

I swear I'm staying with you.

I promise you.

And all of a sudden, they're getting married in Vegas.

And you're like, well, what the hell?

Like, what was it all for?

You were lying.

What else did you lie about?

I feel for Brian and the last dive bar because it does not feel like what they have been doing.

waving flags, reverse boycotting games, protesting, organizing, building alliances with players.

It doesn't seem like any of it, Joel, is actually going to work.

It doesn't feel like it's going to get them what they want,

what they love.

It doesn't feel like they're going to keep that.

Well, Brian's going to try to move on, man.

You know, you know, your lover leaves.

I mean, you're never going to love anybody again, right?

But in the interim, they're going to do this thing.

So, you know,

we talked about the reverse boycott.

They're going to do an actual boycott this time.

So the day after this episode airs,

Brian and his crew are going to show up for a game against the Toronto Blue Jays.

And then in dramatic fashion, all at the same time, they're going to bail.

They're going to leave and go to a stadium about 10 miles up the road to watch this new independent baseball team called the Oakland Ballers.

It'll be their first ever home game.

And so they're hoping, you know, maybe they can fill this hole in their heart that the A's are going to leave.

Right.

Brian's going to take his burrito money and hand it to somebody else.

What we found out here at the end, Joel, right?

Because this is a story ultimately about protest.

And it's a story about a protest that fundamentally isn't going to work.

And so what is this all really about then?

Well, yeah.

I mean, sometimes you just protest because you're mad, right?

Sometimes it's just an expression of unfavorable dynamics by a group that's marginalized or vulnerable.

And they just say, we're fed up.

We're sick of this shit.

Often I would say when you do go out to protest, you kind of accept the fact that you don't know if you're going to win, right?

So that's exactly what's happening here.

Also, I think the other piece of this, this, Pablo, to be honest, is that they're trying to let sports fans all across this country know it could be you.

You could easily be Oakland.

If you're not L.A., if you're not New York, if you're not Dallas or Chicago, one of the really wealthy major cities in this country, you could easily lose your professional sports team.

I'm from Houston.

Houston's the fourth largest city in the country, one of the top 10 markets.

When I was a kid, my favorite team was the Houston Oilers.

Do you know who the Houston Oilers are today?

The Tennessee Titans.

So, you know what I'm saying?

So,

it really is important for people to know.

And I think that's what they want people to know, that like if Major League Baseball will treat us like this, in spite of our loyalty and the culture and the history of this franchise here in this town, and they'll still move it on, it could definitely be you.

Yeah.

Joel Anderson, it was really good to hear from you and

also them.

Yeah, man.

No, thanks so much.

It was a lot of fun.

And hey, you should come out.

Me and Brian, we got some plans.

I'll let you know when they are and maybe you can make your way out here.

As long as I get to wave that fing flag.

This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metalark media production.

And I'll talk to you next time.