Fans left picking up the pieces at Athletics’ penultimate game

SEATTLE — For Oakland A’s fans, the trek to Seattle this weekend was all about having a chance to say goodbye.

Some are bidding farewell to the team for good, with too many broken promises and hurt feelings to be able to continue their support of a team that is uprooting from the city it has called home for 57 years.

Others will continue to fly the green and gold no matter where the team plays. Still more are undecided on what they will do once next season arrives and the A’s are playing their games in West Sacramento.

Randy Garchar, 41, made the trip to Seattle from his home in Alameda, and said he has been a fan of the A’s since attending his first baseball game at six months old. Though he has loved the team nearly his entire life, Garchar felt “numb” after attending their final game at the Oakland Coliseum on Thursday.

“It was weird for me,” Garchar said. “A lot of people cried. I didn’t shed no tears, because I just, I don’t know what next year is going to have for me. I don’t know if I’m going to want to go to Sacramento or go to the Giants game or come up here… I don’t know.”

For other fans, the A’s series finale against the Mariners on Sunday will be the end of the line. Season ticket holder Ashley Mann is originally from Federal Way, Washington, but moved to the Bay Area as a child, and has been an A’s fan since 2016.

Mann has supported both the A’s and Mariners thanks to her roots in both cities, but says she won’t be following the A’s anymore. She goes to Stockton Ports games and loves to keep tabs on minor league players on their journey to MLB, but won’t be following the team to Sacramento next season, or to Vegas in 2028.

“If you want to go up there and go to games, that’s fine,” Mann said. “If you never want to watch another game, I totally understand. For me personally, I think this is the end of my A’s fandom. It took me so long for me to even call myself a fan, and so it’s just it’s getting ripped away from me, and it hurts a lot.”

Matt Addie was born in Santa Clara and grew up in the Bay Area before moving to Seattle in 2006, and was at T-Mobile Park on Friday wearing a green “SELL” t-shirt and A’s hat. He went through the “breakup” phase with the team at the start of the season and kept his distance, but knew that he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if he didn’t take his last chance to see the Oakland squad in person.

Addie moved to Seattle shortly before the city lost the SuperSonics franchise to Oklahoma City, and he sees plenty of parallels between Seattle losing its NBA team and Oakland’s current heartbreak.

To him, the Sonics’ departure didn’t feel possible until it actually happened. Now that feeling of loss is hitting him on a much more personal level, and he has received plenty of sympathy from his Seattle friends who remember how it feels to have a team taken away.

“You might check in on somebody or whatever, but I don’t know, it feels weird,” Addie said. “Everybody asked me, ’Are you going to be a Giants fan?’ Or, ‘You live in Seattle, are you going to be a Mariners fan?’ And none of it feels quite right. So I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t plan on following them, though. I wish I could, but it just doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel right.”

Oakland Coliseum fixtures Will MacNeil, known as “Right Field Will,” and Mike Marler, AKA “Road Trip Mike” both made the trip to Seattle to see the squad’s final three games wearing “Oakland” jerseys.

MacNeil described A’s owner John Fisher’s decision to move the team as “devastating.”

“We really don’t deserve it,” MacNeil said. “It’s unfortunate that a billionaire is ruining something that’s been so great for so long in the town, in Oakland.”

Ultimately though, MacNeil plans to continue cheering for the A’s far into the future, though he pledges that he will never attend a game in Las Vegas outside of the All-Star Game, and will go to games in Sacramento only if he receives free tickets.

“It’s going to be a lot more road trips and a lot more watching on TV, which really hurts, because I love this young team,” MacNeil said. “Zack Gelof and Lawrence Butler are phenomenal talents, and they deserve to have the best fans in baseball watching them. I don’t see that being in Sacramento or Las Vegas. It should be Oakland.”

Marler admits to crying at the team’s last home game on Thursday, mourning for the end of the place he has called home for the past 50 plus summers. On Friday, Marler sat behind the T-Mobile Park third base dugout alongside friend Jack Lima, cheering on the A’s as they began their three-game weekend series against the Mariners with a 2-0 loss.

He’s attended A’s games at the Coliseum since 1972, and while he is unhappy with the city of Oakland and Fisher’s actions, Marler is adamant that he will continue to be a presence behind the dugout. He has attended every A’s road game this season, and while it might get logistically tough to attend that many next year, he isn’t about to let the relocation stop him from supporting the squad that has brought him so much joy over the past five decades.

“Until the day I kick over, I’m going to be an A’s fan,” Marler said. “It’s that simple. Wherever they play, I’ll be there.”