The Angels were repping the Dubs on Sunday at the Oakland Coliseum.
As they mashed their way to a 6-0 win over the A’s with three home runs – including mammoth back-to-back blasts by Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani in the fifth inning against southpaw Ken Waldichuk – the Angels celebrated by wearing a big straw hat with a Warriors logo, including more logos on the underside of the brim.
Trout, Ohtani and rookie Logan O’Hoppe each donned the cap after hitting home runs throughout the game.
Janie McCauley of the Associated Press found out the backstory after the game, saying Angels staff member Tim Buss bought the hat for the team to celebrate while it was in Oakland. The Warriors won three titles at Oracle Arena, which is next door to the Coliseum.
Kind of a weird decision to rep the local basketball team if you’re a team from Southern California, but maybe this is a new tradition after the cowboy hats the Angels have used in years past.
This isn’t the first time the Warriors and Angels have been linked. Earlier this year, Warriors owner Joe Lacob told The Athletic’s Tim Kawakami he was interested in buying the Angels, as Arte Moreno initially put the team up for sale before backtracking this offseason. Lacob has also told the San Francisco Chronicle’s John Shea that he has an outstanding offer to buy the A’s from John Fisher and that he would have found a way to privately finance the off-site infrastructure necessary to complete a new waterfront ballpark district in West Oakland at Howard Terminal.
Given his win-at-all costs mentality, Lacob would be a welcome new owner for either disgruntled fanbase at this point. Despite having arguably the game’s top two players in Ohtani and Trout since 2018, the franchise hasn’t made it to the playoffs since 2014. The A’s are in the midst of yet another rebuild after trading away its talented core during a 2022 fire sale, as Fisher is unwilling to spend despite making a $29.2 million in profits last year, per Forbes.
The Warriors are aging, but still seeking their fifth title in nine years at Chase Center, which is still just three years old. Led by Steph Curry, Golden State has become the league’s most valuable franchise at an estimated $7.6 billion.
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