I could cut 1200 words if I claimed inspiration over convenience, but I fully confess that I had already circled the series on my calendar.
Baseball fans who enjoy traveling can make visiting every stadium a bucket list item, but my discomfort away from home limits me to a more modest goal: seeing every Major League Baseball team play in person. I had already seen 26 (including the now-migrated Montreal Expos) before this season; that left five more to go. The only American League squad on that list was the Tampa Bay Rays, after back surgery kept me from attending the 2019 Wildcard game. Since the Rays would be in town during a week when school was off, I wanted to be at the Coliseum for this specific series to check off one more box on my list.
The Reverse Boycott only surfaced later. In fact, it surfaced a few mornings after I’d started putting potential game dates into my calendar. It seemed like a tiny idea then, a grassroots effort that would bounce around the A’s subreddit only to fizzle out as so much online discourse does. Fans make sports their business, but these rooting interests are literal businesses. It’s thousands of dollars against billions. It’s a single pigeon against a blazing Randy Johnson fastball.
The idea didn’t even make sense. To strike back against a ruthless owner abandoning the city of Oakland, the community would…buy expensive tickets and hand him their money? “Reverse” had to work overtime in that ridiculous phrase.
Still: the thing aligned with the series I’d circled. The extra hubbub might make attending a midweek mismatch more appealing to Nate and Bria. I’m not a frequent opportunist, but I’ll don the costume for the right role. This was a prime read: a team I wanted to see and, deluded or not, a legitimate reason to see them.
Nate was out, but Bria was in. We locked in tickets in the wee hours of the morning. The A’s were 6-25 at the time of purchase.
But hey: the Rays! One more check mark.
Oh, and that boycott thing. That too.
*****
Staff and security alike herded us into the Harriet Eddy Middle School gym one day. Everybody was smiling, a fact that only unsettled me because I couldn’t understand why.
We were planted on the bleachers for what we were told would be our first rally. I didn’t understand the reason for the event; maybe there wasn’t one, and it was just a thing the school scheduled annually as tradition. I never asked.
No one would have heard me if I had tried.
As I came to see, the event involved brief encouragement from a series of administrators punctuated by imploring the study body to scream. Oh: and also actual screaming. Lots and lots and lots of screaming. Assessing things 24 years later from memory, I’d peg that rally’s composition as four-fifths loud noises and one-fifth aimless motivation.
I wince even now, a quarter-century later, because the place went wild. I’d have thought my peers were receiving crisp $5,000 bills from the Spice Girls from their volume. Joining at first, the piercing screeches of vocal cords approaching puberty eventually overwhelmed me. I covered my ears and huddled against the closest chunk of gym wall, which was itself vibrating.
Perhaps if I had understood the rally’s purpose—it had to be standardized testing, right?—I could have tolerated the discomfort. But I didn’t. I was in a horror movie, that crashing wave of aural torture breaking my reflexes like a timely jump scare. Any power those screams might have seized was lost after the fourth. They broke me with their aimless sound and fury. I’d never been a large crowds person, especially not since we’d lost Tom for an interval one night at the State Fair, but those pointless blusterfests they called rallies amplified my distrust.
It wasn’t a reach to extend my suspicion to large-scale activism. Nothing could be worth the headaches and nausea rooms packed with frothing-at-the-mouth fervency delivered. Big demonstrations were aimless flexes of quantity. To be one more shrieking howler in a massive crowd was no feat; large assemblages made for good theatre, but the decibel count rarely kept pace with a cause’s significance.
Even when an issue was big and close to my heart, there was always something I could not overcome. Sometimes it was an absent clarity of purpose; other times, I couldn’t navigate nebulous goals, fractured leadership, or murky messaging. Volume raised my suspicions, so I doubted the crowds large enough to produce it.
The larger the group, I also began to notice, the broader the message had to become. One speaker can voice nuance and shed light on powerfully specific details, but a crowd? No chance. You can only fit so many words on a readable poster; only so many syllables can be chanted intelligibly in unison. Combine that with a general distrust of authority, years of seeing outrage eclipse outcomes, and then COVID and rioters rendering meaningful congregation as problematic at best but dangerous at worst, and, well: there was always a reason that could turn me away.
Which is both my instinct and my style anyhow. I am not a shout-in-your-face person; being raised by one assured me of that. Non-confrontational to a fault for most of my life, I don’t do what I do by joining a throng and shouting with them. I model and persist and explain and write until I find my footing. Obsessed with accountability, letting someone else speak for me is antithetical to what feels right. I pick at others’ messaging and bristle when important tenets don’t land. Mine is a steadfast, sincere voice speaking to a small crowd full of hope to sway one person into thoughtful, personal change. I feel powerful when I speak up and conduct; I feel trivial and superfluous when I’m playing a few notes of redundant harmony from the sixtieth chair of the orchestra.
Showing my privilege though it does, I knew my lane, and I stayed in it. The only protests I’d ever attend would have to land in my lap.
*****
As May gave way to June and the game approached, both the messaging and mechanics of the Reverse Boycott in Oakland became clearer.
Plenty of voices online regarded the whole thing with snark and condescension, but each instance led to further promotion of a clear thesis statement. This would be a strike back against the prevailing narrative about A’s baseball: the team wants to move and can’t keep its stars because the fans don’t care or show up. To hear it told by ownership, the league, and the average baseball Redditor, everything that ails the franchise developed from Oakland’s apathy and non-viability as a professional sports market. With both the Raiders and Warriors fleeing Alameda County as well, that allocation of blame provided a too-convenient story to ignore.
Enter the Reverse Boycott. A frenzied crowd packing a universally-reviled and woefully dilapidated venue for a meaningless Tuesday night game against an unpopular squad would deal quite the blow to that fiction. Stuffed stands of paying fans clad in Kelly Green would provide a vivid counterpoint to claims of community apathy parroted across the country. Fans can and do show up, the event would say. They show up when the ownership group isn’t actively alienating them, ignoring them, or raising prices on them while simultaneously cratering the on-field product.
Soon the Oakland 68s, an Oakland community staple, were organizing a giveaway. Major League teams do those all the time, be they commemorative jerseys, goofy bobbleheads, or magnetic schedules. This was pure grassroots, though: the 68s had designed a t-shirt, and fans at large were donating for its mass printing. The shirts would feature just four letters:
SELL
That gesture earned the movement credibility with me. Seeing organizations step up and pledge their support told me this cause had seeped out of niche digital spaces and found its way into the mainstream.
The intended outcomes also spoke to me. Confirming the unambiguous message of those green shirts, leaders hoped, of course, that owner John Fisher would sell the team. True, the franchise arranged purchase agreements for land in Las Vegas only days after the Reverse Boycott officially chose its date, but that knife twist landed like a glancing blow rather than a fatal one. Fisher could have that land; MLB could plop an expansion franchise there. But the A’s could become some other billionaire’s baby whose cradle would remain in the bay.
In the last 72 hours, one more announcement began to make the Reddit rounds. While other subreddits closed to protest infrastructural changes in the platform, r/oaklandathletics remained open. A post announced additional plans for those in attendance.
During the first batter in the top half of each inning, fans would chant “SELL THE TEAM” for the duration, echoing their primary goal of prying Fisher’s miserly fingers from the franchise’s throat. In the bottom half of each frame, the chants would rebrand the familiar rhythms of “Let’s go Oakland!” into a pleading symphony of “STAY IN OAKLAND” followed by the traditional quintet of claps. Satiating my healthy skepticism about the value of chants, the evolution of the orchestrated cheers’ intentions carried an unexpected nuance: Fisher’s ejection was the priority, but ultimately, the community just wanted their team to stick around. The callouts were companion pieces.
Both of those plans struck me as feasible. Concise, clean, and consistent with existing traditions, it would take little effort to bring those two to life. Fans who knew would lead; everyone else would catch on quickly enough. There were nine innings to perfect them anyway.
The third, though? The third was impossible. I snorted when I read it the first time:
“For the first batter at the beginning of the top of the fifth inning, to honor 55 years in Oakland and protest the move, everyone stand up, but be completely silent for the entire at-bat.”
Large groups will scream like a chorus of wounded walruses on command. They’ll do it when the scoreboard urges them to; they’ll do it when three colored balls race around a digital screen. Even 30,000 people can figure out the syllabic trio of SELL THE TEAM after an inning or two. But getting an entire stadium of people, even like-minded people, to be simultaneously silent?
The A’s staying in Oakland was far-fetched and unlikely.
A silent Coliseum for any duration, though? That was pure fantasy.
*****
With the date approaching, my investment escalated. I bought a hat from the 68s to contribute to their work. I sent the cheer plan over to Bria and upvoted its every mention across the few unshuttered subreddits. I devoured every article I found online about it—I even began commenting on them. The word “proud” found its way into every paragraph.
More than any other element, though, it was that potential silent at-bat that gripped me. I found myself imagining the Coliseum bathed in hushed solidarity. Mind you, I still didn’t believe it would happen—too many obstacles remained, let alone the baseline unlikelihood of getting 27,000+ fans on the same page—but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
That quiet, if it could be executed, would represent a flex of unbreakable unity and fierce power. What force it would showcase if, on cue, the fans turned off the electric energy of a buzzing stadium. The first four innings would have onlookers anticipating additional SELL THE TEAM calls; instead, they would be met with melancholic rage.
As I went for my morning walk, I kept returning to that far-fetched fantasy. It would never happen; it couldn’t! But I felt this compulsion to do something all the same. I resolved to print dozens of fliers with the cheer plan. When I remembered my ink was out, I began calculating new afternoon itineraries that would land me at Kinko’s. I outlined posts in my head for relevant subreddits trying to weaponize the masses to get word out. I had a half-dozen plans sketched by the time I reached Bilby. I also had tears in my eyes.
When I returned home, I headed straight to Reddit to begin my attack. To my surprise, my plans went up in flames. This was good fire, though: others had beaten me to the punch. Glossy placards had been ordered from local print shops; droves were texting the cheer plan graphic to friends and coworkers intent on attending. This wasn’t my show; the 68s and other locals had this in hand.
All I had to do was show up.
*****
Although I’d listened to somber conversations about fading Coliseum memories from the guys sitting around me on the BART ride in, their voices catching in their throats over and over again, there was a charge in the crowd from the game’s first pitch. The Coliseum still had huge pockets of empty seats as stragglers searched for parking spots stolen by attendees of a K-pop concert next door, but there was a buzz.
As people found their way in, though, sections kept filling. By the fourth inning, nearly all of the lower decks and the outfield became dense with fans. The planned chants became louder. I grew increasingly skeptical that the fifth-inning plan would work, especially as the drummers tapped out rhythms off-beat from the hollering masses several times, but the energy around us was palpable. The Coliseum radiated its emotional energy.
When the top of the fifth arrived, Bria and I stood up on cue. The lower-level fans were by then almost unanimously on their feet, but every additional person rising from their plastic chair seemed to inspire another four. The stadium would maintain an impressive wave for an entire half-inning twenty minutes later, but that gesture was easily observable. This standing was, of course, part of the plan, but you could watch those out of the loop figure it out organically in real-time, which was important because timing mattered here.
As the Rays’ Jose Siri strolled to the plate to lead off against southpaw Hogan Harris, everything else fell still. It was far from total silence, but a wave of shushing crashed through the park to change that. Normally grating to even the most earnest elementary schoolers’ ears, this time, the sound communicated an urgency. It implored the packed stands to join in. It sent a chill down my spine before I realized I had joined in. The atmosphere had turned on a dime.
The stadium, indeed, went quiet. There were no more than a few seconds of a fully muted ballpark, but I could feel its silence. When some man began to interrupt it with a callout, you could hear him clip his own response as he caught on to the gesture. The silence was everywhere. As I searched the stadium with my eyes, I saw somber faces and felt that familiar lump in my throat. I’ve reveled in shared silence before, but this wasn’t me and a recording of my favorite artist stopping simultaneously; this was 27,000+ individual people doing something as one. The entire vibe of the stadium had shifted from explosive to reserved in a snap, but there remained this crackling intensity as if our collective emotion clung to the oppressive concrete surrounding us waiting to be summoned. I felt intensely close to tens of thousands of strangers. I held my breath as if our shared sentiment might otherwise escape, although maybe I was just afraid any exhale would become an audible sob cutting through this glorious silence.
An older gentleman sat one row in front of us. Surely in his late seventies, this man had been the picture of nervous energy for the entire game. Muttering to himself and rocking uncomfortably anytime the Rays got Fujinami or Harris in trouble, he clapped after every escape but in a way that seemed reluctant or futile. He had not chanted with us once during those first four innings, even giving those in his row the side-eye when they did. Everything on the field seemed almost painful to him. His was an unquestioned investment, but he carried too much bittersweet concern to embrace the moment.
He stood a few beats after the rest of our section had risen. Looking around as though trying to decipher the strange mannerisms of the befuddling world around him, he froze as the hush enveloped the ballpark. After a few moments of that murmur of vanished voices, right as I felt myself swelling with proud awe at the impossible thing that was actually happening, the man’s posture straightened, he removed his cap, and he raised his clutched fist in the air, a wistful resolve finding his eyes. Impossibly still everywhere else, his gesture left my lips quivering.
When Siri ripped a double down the line on Harris’ first pitch, I didn’t notice, my eyes roving between the unmoving audience lining every row and section I could see and that man. A singular “Fuck!” from the left field line shattered the last gasps of quietude as the ball rattled around the corner, but my eyes couldn’t leave his fist.
But then the place exploded. Trading out that stoic silent unity for a ferocious swell of cathartic rage, the original chant took over but with a newly aggressive tempo. SELL THE TEAM! SELL THE TEAM! SELL THE TEAM! SELL THE TEAM!
It continued. I was thrashing my voice, bellowing those three words out alongside the rest of Oakland, and I lost myself in the act. When Harris stepped off and asked for time, I didn’t understand until I got home that our rhythmic yelling had overwhelmed his senses to such a degree that he assumed his earpiece had failed. The umpire marched out to check while catcher Shea Langeliers grinned, his awareness well ahead of his rookie hurler’s.
We owned the stadium at that moment. The Nevada state capital, having pushed ballpark financing legislation through three cruel hours earlier, may have heard us. There was no hiding from our call, our volume and force too epic and unbridled to minimize on even the dampened broadcast audio. Bria’s Apple Watch offered a stern warning that the sound intensity had eclipsed 100 decibels, but we were actively growing louder.
The entire sequence was maybe ninety seconds in total length. We only had what could truly be deemed silence for a few short moments, yet Bria and I both felt this intense surge of strength and power in that moment of silent protest. 27,000+ became one for that minute-plus. We became larger than our number and maybe even larger than our cause. We had stopped the literal game. We had seized the narrative back.
I’ve attended playoff elimination games. I’ve sat in the upper decks of a World Series home victory. I’ve witnessed back-to-back Opening Day wins in person. I’ve coached two teams to championship victories.
Nothing has ever, in any sport or at any time, felt like those ninety seconds did.
Not even once.
*****
Every hour today, I’ve found myself back on Reddit and scrolling through posts about last night. I’ve watched a dozen videos posted on YouTube about it and read another ten articles across various outlets. All talk about that silent stadium. All mention the explosion that punctuated it.
Watching these professional journalists attempt to translate what happened is odd. They purify the silence and amplify the explosion, joining the chorus of participants who have already romanticized the moment to its maximum capacity. To hear it told today, the stadium went from pin-drop quiet to the love child of a volcanic eruption and a nuclear bomb. Siri’s at-bat against Harris lasted only one pitch, but the moment surrounding it has already achieved legendary status. The game itself has too.
Special though the entire experience was, it does not escape me how privileged I am to be protesting about a professional baseball team. That my call to action involved the frivolity of sports in a city that isn’t my home should cast a shadow over my experience. There have been far better causes—major causes!—that should have spurred me to action. My voice could have been far better used countless times over the last decade. I don’t wear that sobering truth proudly.
But I do wear the green and gold glow that last night left on me proudly. Until last night, being one tiny voice in a sea of voices felt like a fruitless endeavor. What could be accomplished while engulfed in that anonymity of loudness? One less me could never change a huge assembly’s output. I’m just one voice, after all.
How counter to Calculus that is, though. A definite integral sums up an infinite number of infinitesimally small rectangles. Each quadrilateral has a negligible area, its width so narrow it might as well be zero. Not one individual rectangle contributes meaningfully to that cumulative area on its own. Not one.
But together? Well, shit: together, that collection of insignificant shapes becomes something of consequence. Something finite but infinitely grander than its thinner-than-conceivable parts. A Riemann sum is definitionally a whole greater than the sum of its parts: no one rectangle means anything until they all come together.
The Reverse Boycott isn’t going to change the ill-fated course of the franchise. I realize we’re long past that point. The power of a billionaire, his lobbyists, a state government, and the entire multi-billion dollar industry of Major League Baseball dwarf what one night’s demonstration, no matter how special it was, can accomplish. There do remain avenues for a franchise in Oakland, unlikely though they are, so I haven’t surrendered, but I know this hasn’t changed any circumstances. This was an electric night I won’t ever forget, sure, but it was only one night.
I have to wonder if the Reverse Boycott will ultimately invert my mindset toward this sort of activism, though. The high of last night’s unity still clings to my clothes; my ears are sore, I have a splitting headache, and my throat is scratchy from overuse. I’m also grinning. One night won’t eliminate a lifetime of discomfort in crowds or a deeply-ingrained skepticism about their messaging and efficacy. One night won’t convince me that my involvement makes one lick of difference to a cause.
What I think I’ve always missed, though, is that being present and part of an event like this isn’t uniformly about outcomes. One doesn’t demonstrate or chant or picket or go eerily silent amid a rotting concrete behemoth to change the course of history. That’s the hope, of course; results matter. But the process does too. The act of giving oneself to the crowd, of surrendering agency to a cause and becoming one with a massive throng desperate for change—I think that can change people. The experience concentrates a dynamic emotional spectrum into a single moment and imprints that on one’s soul. It offers this powerful reminder that we are all greater together than apart. That our respective nothingness can transform into something transcendent if we join our hands and voices. It instills this intense belief that, hey, if we can all go silent in unison, maybe we can change the world that way too. Together.
It gives me enduring hope. Dismiss it as denial if you want, but I can’t shake that hope, no matter what Nevada or Fisher or Major League Baseball executives say. It isn’t the result we want, but absent a plan to sell the team or stay in Oakland, maybe the best outcome really is just that.
Hope, just like 27,759 people standing in silent unity together, is a powerful force.
You can choose not to believe it, but this has been hacked to pieces from its original form, which was more than 50% longer. Gone are interludes about candlelight vigils, empty scorebooks, good deeds in the parking lots, and the early innings leading up to the fifth. I don’t anticipate anyone clamoring for the “Steele Cut” or “10 Minute Version” of this, but they do exist.
Where I’ll finish is here: after such a high on Wednesday, the commissioner of baseball handwaved away the entire event. I was livid. His words burned me. His press conference made me think of all the times I’ve watched someone with power belittle the legitimate efforts of good people and lie to minimize an effort.
I was happy to see so many prominent voices call the commissioner out for this. Over and over and over again they tore him a new one. It was legitimately moving, even if it didn’t wash away the acid anger burning through my stomach lining.
I know many of you don’t care about baseball, so this topic probably pushes you away. But all of my trimming was to try to make clearer that this experience really wasn’t about baseball at all. It was about something far bigger.
This won’t be the last time I talk about the end of the Oakland Athletics. I apologize.
Unless Fisher sells the team and the franchise stays in Oakland.
But you know I’d write about that as well.
PS: Go watch the newly released movie Past Lives. I won’t say anything more except that I’m sure I will bring it up at some point.
As I look back and reflect on this piece that you have written, I just think back to a personal experience with the Sacramento Kings when they were almost sold to the ownership group in Seattle. Mind you I was 11 in 2013 and was just watching basketball and rooting for my team at the time because that is what you do, follow in the footsteps of your family's team (in most cases). I come to realize how significant that ruling was to keep the team in Sacramento. Sacramento, like Oakland now, only has one significant sports team in the national spotlight. Taking that away from the community that has grown up loving and supporting the team is inconsiderate at its finest, even inhumane. I sometimes found myself saying that the teams that have left Oakland are in a better place but I know realize that the team may be more successful financially but the effects that it brought to the community are irreversible. The kid who dreamed of going to a game in his hometown of Oakland to watch his favorite players may now have to go to the Sin City to catch a game? Ridiculous. I honestly hope that a resolution comes for the city of Oakland just as it did with the Kings, but the old-adage cliche of "money talks" is no more prevalent than for the ownership group for the teams in Oakland. I sometimes get asked why I love sports so much and my simple answer is that it helps bring people together. You can start up a conversation with a person you have never seen in your life just with simple gesture of asking them about their favorite team. The fact that that collectiveness and feeling of community within the Oakland A's community could possibly be taken away is just so heartbreaking. Hoping for the best for you and all A's fans everywhere!!
I think you nailed it. One of the parts I cut from the piece was about all the little miniature interactions I had and conversations I overheard among these people who weren’t just there to be there–or even to protest–but as a tribute to the team they loved. I used “community” so many times because I felt tapped into a community I should have been outside of but was part of by virtue of being a fan too.
Those Kings-relocation times were miserable. There is a civic pride that develops, an identity that cities tie into their sports teams. The grit and resourcefulness the A’s showed post-Moneyball always reflected the Oakland I knew from games. My disappointment over the team leaving is selfish–I love going with my friends–but I left that game hurting even more for these people already alienated by Fisher and MLB but now also losing something they loved. It’s just sports, I know, but I too swear it’s bigger than that.
Thanks for sharing your experience. There’s so much more here than just a baseball or sports story.