How to Fight the Cheapest Owner in American Sports

Speaker 1 Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

Speaker 4 Why would they want to give their hard-earned money to John Fisher, Nepo Baby?

Speaker 1 Right after this ad.

Speaker 1 You're listening to DraftKings Network.

Speaker 1 So, one of the great pleasures I have hosting this show is that I get to assign absurdly accomplished people to do my bidding.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 7 It's true.

Speaker 8 I mean, you know, I don't like to talk about it often, but I did have the best podcast in America last year.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 11 Okay.

Speaker 1 So, Joel Anderson, if you did not know, is is a writer for Slate.com and the host of the trophy-winning podcast series, Slow Burn, Becoming Justice Thomas.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 12 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 reverse boycott.

Speaker 12 And if their goal was to get attention, then by all accounts, it works.

Speaker 12 We heard the crowd go silent and now getting very loud at the Coliseum.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 17 What's your message to Bay Area fans who can't be happy about losing a baseball team? A message for them?

Speaker 19 You know, I mean, I grew up in the Bay Area.

Speaker 19 I started out as a Giants fan before we bought the A's.

Speaker 19 And, you know, there's no words that I can say

Speaker 19 that are going to make people at home who are really upset about the team leaving feel better about the team or about me.

Speaker 1 But the city of of Oakland has not yet given up. This season, the reverse boycotters have only continued to organize.

Speaker 1 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 Fisher.

Speaker 1 One wrist at a time.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 2 So they want to embarrass him.

Speaker 21 They want to let people know that John Fisher is abandoning and abusing a fan base that has been really, really loyal.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 1 Right. And the connectivity, I mean, it's not just a battle between a billionaire owner and this die-hard,

Speaker 1 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 wristbandgate, Joel.

Speaker 1 And so what the f is wristband gate?

Speaker 33 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 good, who were photographed wearing these wristbands.

Speaker 1 What do the wristbands say?

Speaker 35 Some say I stand with Oakland.

Speaker 10 Some say the last dive bar, which we'll talk about a little bit later.

Speaker 36 You can imagine that if you work for an employer and he says,

Speaker 38 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.

Speaker 29 Sure.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 41 People are beginning to speculate that this was actually under the instruction of AIDS owner John Fisher and had nothing to do with baseball. And you won't believe the actual reason why.

Speaker 41 There's an online shop called Last Dad Bar. Their homepage features apparel encouraging fans to boycott the A's and for Fisher to sell the team.

Speaker 41 The website tweeted pictures of four players wearing their wristbands.

Speaker 41 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.

Speaker 43 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.

Speaker 25 And the team's only all-star benched.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 47 Was it John Fisher?

Speaker 1 The idea is, like, we cannot tolerate this kind of rebellion among our employees.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 That is up to something that I just have not seen before. And so.

Speaker 1 Did you enjoy the luxurious locale that we dispatched you to?

Speaker 32 I've been to a lot of bad stadiums.

Speaker 42 This is the only one that has ever literally smelled like s.

Speaker 1 So, Joel Anderson, before you got to Oakland Coliseum, as someone someone who lives out of the bay, when you think of the Oakland days and what they used to be,

Speaker 1 what comes to mind?

Speaker 27 Oh, man, it was just so great.

Speaker 48 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.

Speaker 43 Think about Ricky Henderson, you know, back in the late 80s, early 90s.

Speaker 49 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.

Speaker 43 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.

Speaker 43 Fine drive up the alley and left center field, and this one is going to be gone. Home run McGuire.

Speaker 1 Then it gets to Mark Maguire, Jose Conseco, like the Bash Brothers stuff.

Speaker 49 And there's a drive to center. Backlow Shelby to the wall.
It is gone.

Speaker 49 Grand slam home run for Jose Canseco. And look where he hit it.

Speaker 38 That was the height of fame in baseball, I would say, during my childhood.

Speaker 26 I mean, Jose Conseco used to date Madonna.

Speaker 1 Truly, the boldest face names at the time. Madonna, Jose Canseiko.
All which is to say that even before Moneyball.

Speaker 1 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 Sabre metric analytic revolution, all that stuff.

Speaker 1 But I feel like the entire time with the A's, underrated in the concept of Moneyball was the word money.

Speaker 1 Like 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.

Speaker 40 Yeah, I mean, they were fielding a team on discount.

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 15 Fast forward to last season, almost a generation later.

Speaker 10 Now the A's have the lowest payroll in the league at $43 million.

Speaker 22 And this season, dead last again at $47 million.

Speaker 28 So that's 35% less than the second lowest payroll in Major League Baseball, which belongs to the Pirates.

Speaker 8 How can you make the Pirates look like they're balling and you're not?

Speaker 15 I mean, that's just how bad things are, right?

Speaker 1 It's a very anti-Kenseiko, anti-Ricky Henderson dirtive energy, right? It's like we are rock bottom cheap.

Speaker 1 And so the guy in charge right now, Joel, what makes him remarkable given the arc of how this franchise has

Speaker 1 been?

Speaker 9 Well, I mean, you know that there are a lot of bad owners in baseball, but this dude probably takes the cake.

Speaker 8 He's

Speaker 15 the most f ⁇ ed up, aloof, and careless owner in the sport.

Speaker 1 If you showed me John Fisher in a lineup, I could not pick him out.

Speaker 1 Why is it that he's managed to be this anonymous while also this flagrant?

Speaker 29 Well, it helps that he basically doesn't do on-camera interviews.

Speaker 50 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?

Speaker 22 I know you reached out to me in hopes that my reporting chops would really help out with the story here, but sadly.

Speaker 1 You dangle a podcast award in front of this reclusive billionaire and he'd be like, finally, it's time.

Speaker 5 on the record.

Speaker 29 Come on out and talk.

Speaker 9 Yeah, right.

Speaker 42 But no, that did not work.

Speaker 45 Clarence Thomas didn't talk to me and neither will John Fisher.

Speaker 1 And both of them seem to have a lifetime appointment to the jobs they have.

Speaker 8 It's true.

Speaker 10 I mean, it would be very hard for them to lose those positions absent them croaking in the job.

Speaker 1 John Fisher's origin story, his deal, where does that begin?

Speaker 15 You know, there's just a lot of talk about Nepo babies now.

Speaker 9 So John Fisher is one of those dudes.

Speaker 29 He failed up.

Speaker 32 He grew up a Giants fan here in the Bay.

Speaker 5 He's the son of, you know, Gap Clothing.

Speaker 39 He's the son of the founder, Donald Fisher.

Speaker 32 And the way they got involved in pro sports is when John convinced his dad to buy an interest in the Giants.

Speaker 1 So just to be clear, so an empire built upon khakis was immediately interested in owning a baseball team.

Speaker 23 Yeah, man.

Speaker 4 And so Fisher also went to this exclusive boarding school in New Hampshire, Phillips Exeter Academy, and then to Princeton.

Speaker 8 And Pablo, I know you're a Harvard guy.

Speaker 26 I don't know how Ivy League beef goes.

Speaker 5 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 10 I don't know. I don't know where they rank like it's Yale.

Speaker 1 You know how it's ranked.

Speaker 21 I don't know.

Speaker 1 You know, you know how it's ranked. There's only one slot that's important.
It's the first one. But yeah.

Speaker 4 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?

Speaker 35 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?

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 15 they have a timber company. And that deal actually spurred massive protests.

Speaker 2 And one demonstration that ended up outside the gap in Midtown Manhattan.

Speaker 9 At that protest, the environmentalists chained themselves to the store.

Speaker 30 So it was

Speaker 8 very early, people figured out that they were not very happy with the Fisher family.

Speaker 21 Right.

Speaker 1 Very early on, people realized that they wanted to fight John Fisher by refusing to leave somewhere.

Speaker 13 This is a through line in in John Fisher's arc.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And so John Fisher ends up buying the Oakland Athletics How.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 43 I mean, nobody would ever call them cheap, right?

Speaker 16 Correct.

Speaker 8 Except that the commissioner of Major League Baseball back in the early 2000s, Bud Seluk, had been fraternity brothers with a guy who was taking a minority stake as part of John Fisher's bigger bid.

Speaker 1 So I just, I laugh at him.

Speaker 11 I know a guy. I know a guy.

Speaker 1 It's always a guy who knows a guy who knows my dad. This is how business is done among billionaires, clearly.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I do want to know who is going, who is actually attending.

Speaker 32 Not very many. I mean, it's very bleak out there.

Speaker 25 I mean, consider first, I mean, the A's lost 112 games last year, right?

Speaker 15 So that's not much of a draw.

Speaker 35 Allegedly, 6,000 faithful souls are showing up a night, but the next worst attendance is the Marlins.

Speaker 25 And I know you guys, this is Metal Lark.

Speaker 42 I know that it's always terrible there.

Speaker 10 More than twice twice as many people are allegedly showing up at Marlin's games and at Oakland A's games. That's how bad things are.

Speaker 1 And so John Fisher, he is mounting an argument that I think must be on some level correct, which is the team isn't making enough money.

Speaker 1 in Oakland right now and that he needs some sort of a change, right? This is the whole argument about a new stadium.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 15 As Kendrick Lamar

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Actually, you can go back and look this up. These fans know at this point when they are not wanted.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 You might say, well, what are you talking about, Kim? They draw 5,000.

Speaker 55 Yeah, they draw 5,000. And you know why?

Speaker 1 Because the owner, John Fisher, has wrecked the club.

Speaker 6 John Fisher, again, since 2005, has been part of this ownership group. Who have they signed?

Speaker 6 Nobody. They have not made an impact signing at all.

Speaker 19 Let someone who actually like takes pride in the things they own own something.

Speaker 1 There's actually people who give a shit about the game.

Speaker 13 Let them do it.

Speaker 1 Take mommy and daddy's money somewhere else, dork.

Speaker 1 Fisher refuses to spend on players, perpetually sitting out free agency. He refuses to spend on toy players, getting rid of bobblehead giveaways.

Speaker 1 He refuses to upgrade the stadium, perhaps obviously, and he even got rid of free parking on Tuesdays.

Speaker 1 In so many words, John Fisher can't really read the room, and then he blames the room for being empty.

Speaker 1 But none of what I just mentioned is even John Fisher's most egregious self-own.

Speaker 21 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.

Speaker 5 And so there was a little bit of a hubbub because people in Oakland, they don't take things, you know, lying down, right?

Speaker 29 And so he reversed course a week later.

Speaker 39 And this was all to save $1 million.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 It's the equivalent of like, yeah, here's a sack of puppies. Watch me roll my car over it.

Speaker 51 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.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 Who is the person who embodies the history of this city that you wanted to talk to?

Speaker 43 Well, yeah, I mean, so Oakland is a city that has a great protest culture, right?

Speaker 32 You've got Marshawn Lynch.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 46 And so I decided Bruce Maxwell would be a real good person to talk to.

Speaker 55 New tonight, and A's catcher becomes the first player in Major League Baseball now now to kneel during the national anthem.

Speaker 55 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.

Speaker 1 He was doing something that pretty much everybody else in baseball was afraid to do, which was what as of 2017.

Speaker 15 Yeah, so he was kneeling in support of racial injustice and in support of Colin Kaepernick.

Speaker 43 And he was the only one doing it. I'd never heard of him before then.

Speaker 10 And as it turned out, I never heard much about him afterward either.

Speaker 1 Right. Where is Bruce Maxwell now? Where did you find him?

Speaker 32 So now he's playing and coaching in the Mexican league.

Speaker 43 He's 33 years old and he hasn't been back in the major since 2018.

Speaker 40 Thanks, Bruce. Appreciate it, man.

Speaker 8 It's good to see you, bro.

Speaker 29 By the way, it was good catching up with you yesterday, too.

Speaker 21 So, yeah, man.

Speaker 20 It's a pleasure, man. When Zirin reached out to me about this, I was like, oh, this is exciting, actually.

Speaker 18 I love this.

Speaker 1 So when Bruce Maxwell gets a call from you, Joel Anderson, and the call is about the Oakland Oakland A's, my instinct is not to presume that he has warm and glowing memories of what he went through.

Speaker 1 What was his reaction when you reached him?

Speaker 10 Oh, man, he couldn't wait to talk about Oakland and the A's and how much he loved playing here.

Speaker 20 The most special part of being in that organization,

Speaker 5 it was the people, the coaches.

Speaker 20 and just the overall, like even in the city, like it was just a camaraderie.

Speaker 20 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 um 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

Speaker 5 there was one other thing that i may have made reference to earlier he told me about uh the stink uh especially in the bullpen.

Speaker 20 The quality just wasn't there, especially for a big league ball club.

Speaker 20 It's probably really good for a AA, triple-A locker room, but for the big leagues, it's not even comparable.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 The septic issue is probably the most notable thing about being on the field as a player.

Speaker 20 When they have backups or if it rains a lot or whatever, you can smell the sewage through the vents in the dugout and

Speaker 20 it's there for days on end.

Speaker 20 It's not just some slight smell.

Speaker 21 No, it's heavy.

Speaker 16 Wow.

Speaker 13 It's kind of degrading, honestly.

Speaker 10 You just can't really think of another professional or sports organization that would even tolerate something like that.

Speaker 2 Like maybe you do that for gamesmanship to the visitors' dugout or locker room, right?

Speaker 1 Right, right. The piping in the crowd crowd noise

Speaker 1 of defecation, right?

Speaker 43 Right, or you know, maybe their hot water doesn't work

Speaker 15 in the showers that day, right?

Speaker 29 But, like, when we all have to smell the, then it's clear that the problem has gone beyond mere gamesmanship, right?

Speaker 1 Even though it smelled of, even though no one was there to watch this dump, Bruce feels how about the A's leaving it.

Speaker 47 Oh, he's pissed.

Speaker 20 What's happening with the franchise of the Oakland A's is disturbing, it's It's worrisome.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 It's very upsetting and it's heartbreaking when you think about it personally.

Speaker 1 So the thing that Bruce is waxing poetic about, the thing that Bruce Maxwell misses, the community, I am confused here.

Speaker 1 Is that community, the 6,000 people allegedly, who are showing up to sit in that stink to show up and watch these games?

Speaker 5 Yeah, pretty much.

Speaker 44 And of that group, he misses this specific group of super fans he got to know.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 21 And that group of folks, they go by a name, The Last Dive Bar.

Speaker 1 And so he went to a bar, you're saying he went to a bar called The Last Dive Bar.

Speaker 32 No, no, it's a group of fans that are called The Last Dive Bar.

Speaker 1 So you did not go to a bar on assignment for us?

Speaker 43 I did hang out at a bar, but not The Last Dive Bar.

Speaker 15 Very good.

Speaker 1 Okay, so if the last dive bar, Joel, is not in fact an actual bar, what is the last dive bar?

Speaker 24 So the last dive bar is actually a reference to the Oakland Coliseum.

Speaker 32 And in 2019, the New York Times used the term as a sort of backhanded tribute to the stadium.

Speaker 15 The headline for it was, The Beauty of America's Ugliest Ballpark.

Speaker 36 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 Ivbar.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 5 Well, if you met Brian Johansson, you might understand.

Speaker 58 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 58 In Oakland, in the East Bay, baseball was everything to people growing up in the 80s.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 22 Big, ball-headed dude with glasses.

Speaker 27 When you meet him, you know, one of the first things you notice is that he has the athletics logo.

Speaker 44 Pretty sure you guys have seen it before, the one with the cursive script that spells out athletics.

Speaker 39 He's got that tattooed on his right forearm.

Speaker 27 One of the things that he had started doing

Speaker 32 back in 2019 was wearing a gold vest covered in pins.

Speaker 27 In that year, he got caught on a game broadcast showing his,

Speaker 9 maybe displeasure is the best way to say it, after a guy on the A's got hit by a pitch.

Speaker 1 And so if you're not watching this GIF on YouTube or the DraftKings Network, Joel, what is happening here?

Speaker 1 What is Brian saying, clearly?

Speaker 2 This is a family network, correct?

Speaker 1 This is the opposite of a network that any family should want to show their kids.

Speaker 57 Brian was saying, what the f, man.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 58 I saw that line.

Speaker 59 I said, that's the most beautiful, greatest line I've ever heard to talk about Oakland Coliseum.

Speaker 58 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?

Speaker 1 And it was basically, it just says, baseball's last dive bar, Oakland Coliseum.

Speaker 58 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.

Speaker 59 And so that's how baseball's last dive bar started.

Speaker 1 And it feels like merch was a big part of his strategy.

Speaker 21 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 10 I mean, they're a merch collective, basically.

Speaker 27 I mean, he and his buddies started printing up shirts, pens, mugs, calendars, all sorts of stuff.

Speaker 1 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, you guys had the microphones rolling?

Speaker 43 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 sober for about a year.

Speaker 40 Just pretend there's gin in here.

Speaker 11 Yeah, okay, we'll get through that.

Speaker 11 Cheers, cheers, cheers.

Speaker 11 Great reporting, Joel. Yep.

Speaker 35 I ended up drinking by myself, but we met at this cool little place called Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon.

Speaker 1 All right, so just a quick geographical detail about the saloon where Joel met Brian.

Speaker 1 Because this saloon was near the site of an alternate universe.

Speaker 1 An alternate universe where John Fisher's Oakland A's were supposed to break ground on not just a ballpark, but a new waterfront stadium, which even had renderings and everything.

Speaker 60 It is an ambitious plan that does not yet have a price tag, but a tentative groundbreaking is set for late 2020.

Speaker 60 The ACE call it a jewel box waterfront stadium to be built at Howard Terminal just north of Jack London Square.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 58 There was a $97 million funding gap for Howard Terminal.

Speaker 58 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?

Speaker 58 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.

Speaker 58 Like we don't benefit.

Speaker 44 In 2018, the franchise released a proposal to build a 34,000 seat ballpark as part of this brand new waterfront district there in Oakland.

Speaker 4 And it's a beautiful spot.

Speaker 15 There's a lot of potential there. A lot of people have wanted to do things with it.

Speaker 22 This seemed like a really good fit.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 43 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.

Speaker 38 And essentially, they were like, hey, Oakland, are y'all going to kick in on this or not?

Speaker 32 And when they didn't, he decided to take the team to Vegas.

Speaker 61 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I remember this from afar, the news breaking. It was April 2023.
The A's announced they're no longer the Oakland A's.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And what we assigned you to go do, Joel, was to also reverse boycott, aka go to a baseball game with Brian.

Speaker 58 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 scouts.

Speaker 1 Well, that's because he didn't do it. And in all of his veteran savvy, how does he go to a game? What's that like?

Speaker 57 He was smart enough to bring his own burrito from home.

Speaker 62 Do you buy concessions and stuff when y'all y'all go in there?

Speaker 7 Do you

Speaker 63 have food that I brought in right there?

Speaker 13 Yeah. So that I had a bedroom.
Oh, okay. Yeah, I got it.

Speaker 17 I got a burrito.

Speaker 13 Y'all won't buy none of the big-ass bottle of Coca-Cola. And the only thing that was safeway, I'm good.

Speaker 11 I think that would have got me that.

Speaker 5 So, look.

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 1 A pro. That's a pro.

Speaker 54 I wish he had told me before because I didn't know.

Speaker 2 I thought we were going to get food there, and I didn't eat when we got drinks.

Speaker 43 And I'm like, oh, are we going to get a hot dog or something?

Speaker 10 And he was like, oh, no, we're bringing our own food.

Speaker 30 But nobody told me.

Speaker 1 So I had a key part of the reverse boycott is the BYO burrito policy, clearly.

Speaker 4 Look, these folks are not going to pay for any concessions because why would they want to give their hard-earned money to John Fisher Nepo Baby?

Speaker 5 Right?

Speaker 1 Right. Which is again, threading the needle of what it means to be a reverse boycott: I'm going to give you my money, but not for a burrito.

Speaker 11 That's where I draw the line in this protest.

Speaker 11 I became an Ace fan because of the s. I worked for that.

Speaker 11 Yes, sure.

Speaker 11 Yeah. I became an Ace fan.
It's like,

Speaker 13 you know,

Speaker 13 how you doing, man? Yeah.

Speaker 4 When we were walking to our seats, like, Brian was stopped no fewer than, like, a dozen times.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 52 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It was just like, hey, hey, and people hugging him and making promises to do things for him later.

Speaker 32 I would venture that more people in the stadium recognize him than maybe the fourth most popular A.

Speaker 1 Sorry to

Speaker 1 J.D.

Speaker 34 Davis. You know, look, I was there.

Speaker 27 I'm a journalist, right?

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 5 Yes, please.

Speaker 10 Yeah, so here's how I put it to Brian and his friends.

Speaker 53 Okay, the very narrow empathy set of this is a stadium.

Speaker 62 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.

Speaker 17 Well, let me ask you something. Let me ask you something.

Speaker 58 Is Fenway a s ⁇ stadium?

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 11 Is Wrigley Field a stadium?

Speaker 62 I mean, I guess, what do we mean by s ⁇ ? But no.

Speaker 13 It's a beautiful historic park. It's about Dodger Stadium.

Speaker 62 Beautiful historic stadium, but still kind of...

Speaker 13 So

Speaker 13 two of those are over 100 years old.

Speaker 13 All three of them are revered.

Speaker 17 I'd rather take a piss at that place than walk in it.

Speaker 58 All three of them are revered as the most historic baseball landmarks in the history of the game.

Speaker 11 Why?

Speaker 58 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.

Speaker 58 The difference is they continually invest into their product, into their market, into their stadium.

Speaker 13 It's like Wrigley and Friendland.

Speaker 58 This place has been ignored by the very people that should be maintaining it and putting money into it.

Speaker 13 Coliseum plays,

Speaker 58 the area around it has never been developed because they've never had an ownership group to actually...

Speaker 62 They also didn't have to share a stadium with a football team.

Speaker 13 Right.

Speaker 13 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 43 Honestly, the kiss of death was saying the Raiders could imagine let them

Speaker 13 go back.

Speaker 58 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.

Speaker 58 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.

Speaker 58 You know what I mean? And so

Speaker 1 they haven't, and that's why it's the last dive can you all yeah the sense i get joel uh professional journalist award-winning podcaster is that they tried to radicalize you i mean we 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 uh pablo i have to admit um they probably didn't have to try too hard to radicalize me i gotta say i've joined the resistance.

Speaker 1 What does the resistance look like?

Speaker 24 Well, one thing about it is that you get these cool little wristbands that say, I stand with Oakland, right?

Speaker 27 Not cool for me and cool for my two-year-old as well.

Speaker 10 So you get to do that.

Speaker 32 And then look, you know, I'm fall victim to, you know.

Speaker 4 wanting to, you know, have a little fun at some of these things sometime.

Speaker 29 And so I see Brian bring in one of those big-ass cell flags, you you know, big green cell flags.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 54 Have you ever waved a flag?

Speaker 34 Have you ever done it?

Speaker 47 Because, because if you haven't, like I had not, then you understand the allure of it, right?

Speaker 54 Like even in sports at football games where the guy runs out with the flag.

Speaker 8 I never got to do that.

Speaker 5 So, Pablo,

Speaker 25 yes, I have to admit it.

Speaker 9 I wave that damn flag.

Speaker 11 Oh, God.

Speaker 1 Look, the photo of Joel Anderson on the Cuban Draft Needs Network.

Speaker 5 I'm delighted, right?

Speaker 1 I'm like a little, I'm a kid. You look like the happiest person in Oakland Coliseum.

Speaker 1 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 Burrito.

Speaker 1 It was Brian's wristband. It's a rebel wristband worn by four Oakland Ace players, which allegedly resulted in real punishment from team management.

Speaker 1 And I know that the wristbands read stuff like I Stand with Oakland.

Speaker 1 But this whole story, this popular online theory, known as Wristband Gate, if true, is also big enough to maybe make a dent in this whole saga.

Speaker 1 And so I wanted to find out if this theory would stand up in court.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Brian and the last dive bar.

Speaker 1 Was he any good, first off?

Speaker 10 He started 11 games last year for the A's, wore the wristband, and then, look, he had major surgery on his shoulder.

Speaker 25 And the alleged punishment was, according to fans, that he got released.

Speaker 45 But really, at the end of last season, he hit free agency and didn't get re-signed by anyone.

Speaker 21 Right, right, right, right.

Speaker 1 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 Pace,

Speaker 1 who got banished allegedly to Philadelphia, got traded away for wearing, again, this wristband. What really happened here?

Speaker 5 Christian is a pretty good player.

Speaker 8 He's played in two postseason with the Braves.

Speaker 32 He's a talented Dominican outfielder.

Speaker 26 The A's acquired him when they traded away one of their only two all-stars because that is what the A's do

Speaker 52 trade away their all-stars, right?

Speaker 32 He struggled offensively when he came out here.

Speaker 10 He wore the wristband, and then, well,

Speaker 9 it starts to happen.

Speaker 39 He gets banished to the Phillies last March for a relief pitcher.

Speaker 1 And the A's explanation here was what?

Speaker 32 They claimed he was out of major league options, but they also released that relief pitcher a year later.

Speaker 15 Pache, meanwhile, has been starting a center field for Philadelphia ever since.

Speaker 30 Analysts say just a bad trade.

Speaker 10 And when the Phillies found out why we were asking, they declined to make him available for an interview because, I mean, why would they do that?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So player number three is Estieri 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.

Speaker 1 And so how was he punished allegedly for the wristband?

Speaker 43 The great-looking athlete, man, and he was arguably the A's best player last season.

Speaker 10 He led the AL and stolen bases for the crime of wearing a wristband.

Speaker 15 This is what people think happened.

Speaker 8 So five games into the season, he got sent down to AAA, despite leading the team in batting average and OPS.

Speaker 41 So why would his Jury Ruiz be sent down? Well, according to Athletics Management, they said he needs to get on baseball, which is comical because he was leading the team with a 429 batting average.

Speaker 41 And the guy they signed to replace him, Tyler Nevin, had a worse on-base percentage than him last year.

Speaker 9 A's management claimed at the time that it was because he wasn't going to play every day.

Speaker 22 But I did get to go into the A's clubhouse at some point and talk to Ruiz.

Speaker 21 And

Speaker 39 his translator responded in this way after saying,

Speaker 4 I don't know what you're you're talking about.

Speaker 9 What is this?

Speaker 18 He had no idea. So, he first of all, he wears that,

Speaker 18 didn't know what that means. He just got on his chair, he loved the polo, but he didn't know what that meant for him.
So, he definitely definitely had to do without saying,

Speaker 18 he just worked, and was a result, and he just put it in because he liked the polo. What do you wear again?

Speaker 1 So, pleading ignorance is S.G. Are Ruiz.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 46 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 dive bar and what they stand for.

Speaker 13 Did Did you know them? Do you know any of those folks over there?

Speaker 63 I mean, yeah, I think I'm going to generally know

Speaker 63 most of the people who've dumbed to most of the games. So you definitely understand where they're coming from.
It's an unfortunate situation. And I think definitely they have every right to be upset

Speaker 63 just because they do love this team so much. They hate to see the team leave.

Speaker 48 This season, he was literally their opening day cleanup hitter.

Speaker 34 He starts the season 04-11. Hey, early in the year, 0-4-11.

Speaker 23 That's not that horrible.

Speaker 27 And boom, the fans say he's benched.

Speaker 30 So I went and asked Rooker about this in the locker room, too.

Speaker 63 It is nonsense. It was the rumor

Speaker 63 that I saw going around was that I had been benched because of it.

Speaker 63 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,

Speaker 63 never any kind of repercussions for me wearing the bracelet.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 we don't have the evidence here. Clearly, we have, in fact, the opposite.

Speaker 1 We have counterclaims from some of the principles that actually this whole thing about our punishment is not what the last eye bar, what your new friend is claiming it to be.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 10 So maybe we're breaking some news here, right?

Speaker 9 Quote, the suggestion that we would move players based on their opinions of a fan group is absurd.

Speaker 10 Winning games at this level is hard enough without worrying about who's wearing a wristband.

Speaker 3 You can just imagine he wanted to say damn, but it was a written statement.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 It can't be the easiest thing to manage a team that's constantly cutting payroll, playing in front of nobody in terrible facilities.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 21 Well, I mean, it's real easy to believe in the worst, right?

Speaker 45 That the team would actually influence the outcomes of games because they're, you know,

Speaker 10 they're not willing to take on a little bit of criticism.

Speaker 40 But it's easy to believe that if you've been mistreated as a fan base for so long, they've done the worst.

Speaker 33 And so you've gone through a decade or more of lies about this sort of stuff.

Speaker 43 And so it kind of becomes, oh, why wouldn't they demote, you know, an all-star?

Speaker 27 Why wouldn't they trade away somebody that has value?

Speaker 10 Because they'll do anything, right?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 54 Yeah. Oh, very much the like, I don't know.

Speaker 31 It's like, you could be that way, right?

Speaker 43 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.

Speaker 9 And so I think that's sort of what's happening here.

Speaker 43 You know, the A's, you know, they say, I'm not cheating.

Speaker 53 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?

Speaker 34 Like, what was it all for?

Speaker 54 You were lying.

Speaker 5 What else did you lie about?

Speaker 1 I feel for Brian and the last dive bar because it does not feel like what they have been doing.

Speaker 1 Waving waving flags reverse boycotting games protesting organizing building alliances with players it doesn't seem like any of it joel is actually gonna work it doesn't feel like it's gonna get them what they want what they what they love it doesn't feel like they're gonna keep that

Speaker 45 well um brian's gonna try to move on man you know you know your lover leaves i mean you're never gonna love anybody again right but in in the interim they're gonna do this thing so you know they they try we talked about the reverse reverse boycott they're going to do an actual boycott this time.

Speaker 43 So the day after this episode airs, Brian and his crew are going to show up for a game against the Toronto Blue Jays.

Speaker 24 And then in dramatic fashion, all at the same time, they're going to bell.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 40 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And it's a story about a protest that fundamentally isn't going to work. Yeah.
And so what is this all really about then?

Speaker 47 Well, yeah.

Speaker 35 I mean, sometimes you just protest because you're mad, right?

Speaker 32 Sometimes it's just an expression of unfavorable dynamics by a group that's marginalized or vulnerable.

Speaker 22 And they just say, we're fed up.

Speaker 57 We're sick of this shit.

Speaker 54 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?

Speaker 31 Right.

Speaker 39 So that's exactly what's happening here.

Speaker 28 Also, I think the other piece of this, Pablo, to be honest, is that they're trying to let sports fans all across this country know it could be you.

Speaker 22 You could easily be Oakland.

Speaker 22 If you're not LA, 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.

Speaker 38 I'm from Houston.

Speaker 32 Houston's the fourth largest city in the country, one of the top 10 markets.

Speaker 38 When I was a kid, my favorite team was the Houston Oilers.

Speaker 26 Do you know who the Houston Oilers are today?

Speaker 31 The Tennessee Titans. So, you know what I'm saying? So,

Speaker 22 it really is important for people to know.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Joel Anderson, it was really good to hear from you and

Speaker 11 also them.

Speaker 10 Yeah, man. No, thanks so much.

Speaker 27 It was a lot of fun.

Speaker 47 And hey, you should come out.

Speaker 37 Me and Brian, we got some plans.

Speaker 27 I'll let you know when they are and maybe you can make your way out here.

Speaker 1 As long as I get to wave that flag.

Speaker 1 This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metalark media production.

Speaker 1 And I'll talk to you next time.