What the Dodgers' Back-to-Back Means to (this) Former OAKLAND A's Fan
TL;DR Y'all's team is the solution, not the problem.
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This past week has been one of those rare moments where the manufactured hysteria on my social media feed actually reflects real messages and real conversations I'm having with actual people I know in real life:
"Apparently you can just buy a World Series now.
"They're ruining baseball."
"They might have won the title, but they aren't the true champions."
"There was no heart in this."
I grew up in Sacramento, and lived much of my adult life in Oakland. NorCal is home. I've been a Sacramento Kings fan for life, and because I grew up with the River Cats being the A's affiliate back in those days, I also embraced the A's and supported them for almost 25 years. I know all about the futility of supporting a low-budget team.
I also know all about the anger and the heartbreak of some dude with more money than I'll ever see in my life, negotiating with my city and my community in bad faith to create a pretext to abandon this place I call home because (a) he thinks he doesn't have enough "more money than I'll ever see in my life," and (b) he thinks he'll make more "more money than I'll ever see in my life" in a smaller market with no established fanbase and no new stadium.
...What I saw in this year's World Series - like the one before it - didn't make me angry or jealous. It gave me hope that a better way is possible.
After years of watching the Maloofs cheap out on my NBA team - some years struggling to keep up with the previously-forgotten salary floor - and watching John Fisher pull off a more blatantly obvious, comically incompetent version of the same script, I've had enough of these billionaire owners deciding they're going to extract more value out of the team, and out of me, without paying into the team, without investing into the franchise and the fanbase that I'm part of. I'm tired of players - actual human beings - being seen as primarily a cost, a liability to be minimized, without also acknowledging their potential, which can be invested in and maximized.
That's what I saw with the Dodgers, who've made big moves, spent big money, but also developed guys and took risks on guys other teams weren't willing to spend on.
No disrespect to Josh Reddick. He wasn't the only one asking this question at the time.
There was nothing inevitable about Yoshinobu Yamamoto. There was nothing inevitable about Andy Pages making the championship-saving catch.
Sure, the Dodgers spend more than anybody else in MLB. Yes, they have a big market in LA.
You know who else has a big market?
If I remember right, Chicago's a decent-sized city with a healthy metro population.
...Has anybody shown these population figures to the owners of the Cubs or the White Sox?
The thing is, the Dodgers aren't making it harder for these teams to compete. A fair number of these teams are not locked into limited markets - they're locked into self-limiting choices.
The Bay Area is not a small market. Even if you split it in half, it's still not a small market. Yet the A's, who had a 25-year stretch where they actually exceeded the Giants in average attendance, chose not to invest in the franchise, and chose to become "small market." We're seeing other owners trying to follow that same playbook. Sure, these owners want to win, but they also want to win cheaply.
The Dodgers are making it so teams have to make a choice: spend, invest, compete, actually PLAY if you want to get paid - or spend small, cheap out on your players, disrespect the people you're investing in, and stay small.
I could go on and on about which billionaires I hate and why I hate them. You all probably understand my hatred for John Fisher, and all the reasons why. And John Fisher has done more than burn Oakland baseball down to the ground - he's given other billionaire MLB owners reason to believe they can get away with the same chicanery. They're the ones ruining baseball.
If anything, by treating the team, the players, and the fanbase as a growth opportunity to invest in, the Dodgers are saving baseball. They're doing everything right, that the John Fishers of this world have refused to do, despite having many of the same opportunities to at least try to do so.
Love & respect. Go Dodgers.
Posted Nov 7, 2025, 7:02 PM UTC