The 2013 Oakland Athletics got their first win of the season last night, in their third game. Attendance on Wednesday night was only 15,162, and the A's are the defending American League West champions.
Opening Night drew a capacity-plus crowd of 36,067 to the Oakland Coliseum, but Tuesday night's attendance -- on a free parking night, no less -- was only 15,315 as the A's saw a huge dropoff in fans from the first game.
Considering the way this stadium was rocking in early October last year -- when the A's clinched a playoff berth, the AL West title and hosted three AL playoff games -- it's quite disappointing, but hardly surprising.
One of the more disturbing trends across the sports world in the United States is the nature of the bandwagon fan: people who only show up and show support when the team is winning, yet are nowhere to be found when the team is losing.
And it's pretty bad right here in the Bay Area, whether people want to admit it or not.
Opening Night is always a big night, but the Oakland fans needed to keep coming -- whether the team repeats as American League West champions or not -- and that had to start on Tuesday night, a traditionally down night for attendance after the pomp and circumstance of the first game.
And it didn't happen. What a sad reality that is for the A's.
This isn't something only the A's experience locally: the San Francisco Giants' current "sellout streak" only began after the team won the 2010 World Series. There were years of "announced" sellouts at AT&T Park that anyone present or watching on TV laughed openly at, and let's remember why Candlestick Park no longer hosts baseball games, while we're at it. There's a lot of people who now claim they've been "Giants fans forever", but any Bay Area resident with a brain knows that's a lie.
Also, those 49er "Faithful" weren't around a lot between 2003 and 2010 when the team was one of the worst in the National Football League.
Californians, as the excuses go, always have something better to do when their local team is losing. Same goes for the cities as a whole: San Francisco didn't light up Coit Tower orange when the Giants were losing regularly for four decades or from 2005-08 -- nor did U.S. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi show up a lot in support of either S.F. team when those teams were losing most of their games and missing the playoffs.
On this side of the Bay, the City of Oakland decision to have an A's "spirit week" this season was the same kind of the worst bandwagon support. How come Oakland's mayor didn't do this when the Green and Gold from struggling from 2007-2011?
Everyone loves a winner, and it gives people some sort of identity confidence boost to cheer for a champion, evidently -- sporting a "holier than thou" attitude, which is the worst sort of mob-mentality insecurity. Few true fans have the fortitude to love a loser, outside of Chicago (yes, Cubs fans, that means you) -- and Oakland Raiders fans.
Which makes a casual observer wonder why the Raiders can engender such mad support for a team that rarely wins big while the A's cannot. Both teams play in the same "outdated" stadium. Sure, football fans only need to show up eight times a year -- not 81 times -- but still ... Oakland loves its Raiders, but not so much it's A's, despite the Green and Gold's significantly-better success on the field than the Silver and Black.
The A's need those bandwagon fans who showed up late last year to keep showing up this year, whether the team wins or not. Remember those bleacher creatures in the Oakland heyday of the early 2000s? Where are they now?
Good question. The Coliseum is waiting for you. Today. Even in the rain.
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