After years of celebrating titles, Bay Area sports fans face new reality
Decked out in a crisp blue Warriors-branded jacket as he made his way into Chase Center to watch his favorite basketball team, Richard Foster hadn’t lost his enthusiasm after decades of fandom.
In fact, since he began watching the championship Warriors of Rick Barry and Jamaal Wilkes as a youth in Richmond during the 1970s, Foster’s love of the team has only grown stronger, even during decades of struggles through the ’80s, ’90s and 2000s.
Seeing his beloved basketball team finally break through and win another title in 2015 was one of the happiest days of his life.
“I was crying tears of joy,” Foster, 65, remembered, before mimicking the wrestler The Rock as he proclaimed. “Finally, the Warriors had returned to championship status.”
For Bay Area sports fans, winning championships, or at least contending for them, had suddenly become the norm.
The Giants won three World Series titles between 2010 and 2014. The 49ers went to three consecutive NFC championship games in the early 2010s and four in five seasons from 2019-2023.
The Warriors went on their championship run, capturing four NBA titles between 2015 and 2022. Even the Sharks reached hockey’s championship round in 2016.
But the good old days have come and gone, leaving fans with a wide range of emotions, from apathy and sadness to hope that things will eventually get better.
Chris Gunnare of Mountain View has been a 49ers fan since watching the team’s championship years of the 1980s while growing up in Montana. As with others in the passionate fanbase dubbed the Faithful, he went from the high of seeing his team play in last year’s Super Bowl to the low of it missing the playoffs in an injury-plagued season last fall.
“You get used to being in the hunt every year,” Gunnare, 41, said. “There were games that I expected them to win, and that they should have won. I felt like we left a lot of money on the table.”
Gunnare, a founding member of the Train Whistle Faithful fan club based in Mountain View, eschewed his father’s Minnesota Vikings loyalty for a Niners franchise that was constantly lighting up the scoreboard and lifting Lombardi Trophies while being led by the likes of Joe Montana and Jerry Rice.
Perhaps he was destined to live in the Bay Area. Employed by the U.S. Army, Gunnare relocated in 2022 from New Mexico to the South Bay, where he founded the fan club.
Although the 49ers sunk to a 6-11 record last fall, the season ticket holder continues to view his favorite team through an optimistic lens. Gunnare said he is no longer a “10 out of 10” on the live-and-die-with-every-game scale.
“Sometimes I tell people to take the A out of fan, and replace it with a U,” Gunnare said.
One of his favorite parts of game day has nothing to do with watching the Niners from his seats at Levi’s Stadium.
“I love that on the train ride there, you pick up more fans on each stop along the way, and I love the conversations you get to have with strangers,” he said.
Camaraderie is the same virtue that has kept a number of Sharks diehards coming back to the Shark Tank during the team’s steep fall from the golden era of fan favorites Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau to a sixth consecutive season outside the playoffs.
It is hard to miss Herb Alpers as he watches home games wearing a cowboy hat and boots. He is often shown on the SAP Center video board. And it’s not easy to ignore his friend Rick Cady, who sported flashing glasses and a teal suit plastered with the Sharks logo at a recent game.
“I’ve got a top hat, a pirate hat, a fedora, a teal fedora and a teal top hat, and a couple of other ones I haven’t used yet,” said Cady, a season-ticket holder since the team moved to its San Jose arena in 1993. “You’ve got to have fun and make people smile, because that’s what it’s all about.”
The Sharks won’t be contending for the Stanley Cup anytime soon, even though the future seems bright with last year’s top draft pick Macklin Celebrini, but loyal fans continue to support past and present members of the team.
Christine Moellenberndt, a San Jose native, grew up in a family that was so apathetic toward sports that her father rarely bothered to watch the 49ers, even in the Super Bowl.
But when a few friends invited her to a Sharks game in 2012, Moellenberndt became obsessed. She threw herself into the fandom, eventually purchasing season tickets.
Moellenberndt became Erik Karlsson’s No. 1 fan. The defenseman no longer plays for the Sharks, having been traded to Pittsburgh in 2023, but that hasn’t stopped Moellenberndt from wearing Karlsson’s Sharks sweater.
“I have seven jerseys just for Erik Karlsson,” Moellenberndt said, adding that she uses an Excel spreadsheet to keep up with her growing collection of Sharks jerseys.
The Sharks are alone among Bay Area teams in the cellar of their sport, but since winning the 2014 World Series, the Giants have reached the playoffs just twice, in 2016 and 2021, and have fallen light years behind the rival Los Angeles Dodgers. They finished last season 80-82, in fourth place in the NL West.
Fans are keeping their fingers crossed that franchise icon Buster Posey, the team’s new president of baseball operations, can lead the Giants out of mediocrity.
“I’m hopeful that some things from last year can get straightened out, maybe pick up a couple more wins,” Chris Tognetti, 32, of San Jose, said at a recent Giants FanFest. “But I’m a Sharks fan; I’m no stranger to disappointment.”
Even the emotions of Sharks and Giants supporters can’t compare to the emptiness Oakland A’s fans feel after their team abandoned the East Bay this offseason for Sacramento before a permanent relocation to Las Vegas.
Jorge Leon grew up in Oakland, sometimes skipping school to trek to the Coliseum for home games.
He launched the supporter group Oakland 68s, named in honor of the season the team moved to Oakland from Kansas City. The 68s organized rallies and drummed up support for the team during lean years.
After decades of activism, Leon said he is “100 percent done with MLB” and is now focusing on Oakland’s independent league baseball team, the Ballers, and two minor-league soccer franchises.
“We have to focus on what we have here,” Leon said. “Putting all of my support on the Ballers, Roots and Soul.”
The A’s are gone, having followed the Raiders out of town, and the outlook isn’t clear for the teams still here. The Warriors acquired Miami Heat star Jimmy Butler in a trade this month, but remain a longshot to raise a championship banner this season. They return from the All-Star break 10th in the Western Conference. The Sharks, even with Celebrini, have the worst record in the NHL.
But the diehards continue to support their teams.
“It’s always more fun when they’re winning, but the true fans come every time,” said Alpers, the Sharks fan in his trademark cowboy hat and boots.
Justice delos Santos contributed to this report.