m0ckduck said:
Ugh, that was horrible. I remember that exact statement-- him saying it and me cringing.
Really? I lived in the Bay Area for ten years (up to '06) and used to go to games at the Coliseum and found it pretty crappy, all in all. The aesthetics of park definitely suck. In the 'fans don't care' department, I remember getting a ticket to the '03 ALDS deciding game 5 on the day of the game and there were all kinds of tickets available, plus the A's fans were drowned out by Sox fans at many points in the game. I don't remember thinking that it seemed like a very locked-in fan base during those years. Now, it's entirely likely that the culture has probably changed in recent years. But just to say that Simmons' POV doesn't seem so much unfounded as just a bit outdated to me. But he does sucksucksuck at baseball-- not arguing that point.
I was at that game (I grew up in San Francisco and also got tickets that morning), and nearly got jumped by some hostile Raider assholes. It was pretty loud, and while the Red Sox fans showed up the A's fans did make a lot of noise when their team did something.
Anyway, it's not a numbers thing because the A's don't have a lot of fans, although their attendance is up and one benefit of the much maligned tarp is it concentrates the crowd - 30,000 looks close to a sellout now. It's who goes there. The
Balfour Rage thing they did in 2012 when they beat the Rangers...
they do that stuff all the time. There's constant drumming and clapping, banners everywhere, and everyone is wearing green and cold, even if there's 10,000 empty seats. I watch a decent number of A's games, and the two times I've been on trips home, the people there are completely locked in. They seem determined to piss away their playoff chances, but if they host the wild card game I guarantee it'll be an insane asylum.
This has been noticed - they've received a ton of praise and publicity from baseball writers for their playoff crowds, which have arguably been the loudest crowds of any playoff team the last 2 years. Buster Olney had Tim Kurkjian on his podcast a few weeks after Simmons talked to JackO and they agreed without qualification that the A's have the most passionate fans in the park in MLB. It's just a great example of how he doesn't pay attention to baseball outside of the Red Sox, and even then if it's not a good Red Sox team he's checking out.