Baseball|The Loneliest Team successful Baseball
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/15/sports/baseball/oakland-athletics-attendance.html
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OAKLAND, Calif. — On 1 quiet nighttime earlier this month, less than 3,000 fans attended an Athletics game. It was truthful vacant and tranquil astatine nan bulky, aged coliseum that nan visiting Tampa Bay Rays players could perceive nan crisp enunciation of each taunt flung their way.
Brett Phillips, a Rays outfielder, said 1 of his teammates told him that erstwhile he was astatine bat, he intelligibly heard a instrumentality successful nan grandstands mocking his paltry batting average. Phillips missed that barb, but he was asked what he did perceive from nan barren stands that night.
“I heard a pin drop,” Phillips quipped. “Does that count?”
A caller shot play is simply a clip of dream successful galore shot towns, including Oakland, but nan first fewer weeks of nan 2022 run person served to propulsion backmost nan covering connected long-festering problems for nan Athletics. Things whitethorn person reached situation level.
That game, connected May 2, betwixt a brace of teams pinch worrisome attendance problems, drew only 2,488 fans, nan lowest people of nan play crossed nan fields and nan smallest number for nan A’s successful complete 40 years. The team’s once-loyal fans look to person fixed up.
Why wouldn’t they?
Their favorite players are routinely traded distant for much affordable alternatives. Their cavernous, actual stadium, while maintaining a stubborn charm for some, is decrepit and grossly retired of date. The organization, meanwhile, speaks openly of its long-distance romance pinch Las Vegas.
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