Around 8 o’clock in the morning on Tuesday, Jorge Leon and his wife, Michelle, landed in Seattle for a quick 24-hour trip at the MLB All-Star Game. They didn’t have tickets, but that wasn’t the point.
Leon is the president of the Oakland 68s, an independent A’s fan supporter group that helped organize the June 13 reverse boycott at the Coliseum. While Nevada legislators have already approved a $380 million ballpark bill for a new A’s stadium on The Strip, the franchise is yet to complete its relocation paperwork with the league.
A’s fans are still holding on to hope that they can keep the team in Oakland. For three hours before Tuesday’s Midsummer Classic, Jorge, Michelle and about 10 other A’s fans (mostly based in Seattle) held a mini-protest in front of the gates at T-Mobile Park, wearing their famous kelly green SELL shirts while handing out cheer cards.
In a nod to the reverse boycott, they passed out cheer cards asking fans to stand in silence for the first batter of the fifth inning before chanting “Sell the team! Sell the team!” for the second batter – to honor the 55 years of Oakland baseball. While FOX (conveniently) cut to a Shohei Ohtani interview with one out in the top of the fifth inning, you could hear the cheers in the background.
The “Sell the team!” chants were even more audible during A’s outfielder Brent Rooker’s at-bat in the sixth inning. After the game, Rooker told the San Francisco Chronicle’s John Shea he could hear the chants while he was in the batter’s box, before he roped a ground-rule double to right field.
“It is crazy, man,” Leon told 95.7 The Game. “It's a legit movement and it’s amazing to see. Our thought process was, OK we’re gonna go there and we’re gonna stand there and protest and we’ll give these cheer cards away – hoping, maybe, that someone would chant something. Even if they didn’t, it’d be a win. The rest of it, that was pretty cool to see, man.”
Leon said the group got a pretty warm welcome from baseball fans in Seattle as they walked around in their SELL shirts. In 2008, the city lost the Seattle SuperSonics in a relocation to Oklahoma City Thunder and the NBA is yet to return.
“It was like 90 percent positive and you still get those 10 percent a–holes who are like, ‘Vegas! Vegas! Vegas!’” Leon said. “Even the ones that did say ‘Vegas’ and were playing around with us, we would be like, ‘What happened to the SuperSonics?’ and they’d be like, ‘Awww.’ I think that’s why Mariners fans were so sympathetic to our cause, because they’ve been here and they’ve lost their team.”
After their protest outside the stadium, the A’s fans went to a local pub to watch the game and were happy to hear “Sell the team!” on the airwaves. So, did Leon think MLB scheduled Ohtani’s interview during the scheduled “Sell the team!” chants on purpose?
“Man, it’s a little bit weird, right?” Leon said. “How come they didn’t start the interview with the first batter? That was weird. I can’t say it’s a conspiracy like that or whatever, but it’s just funny.”
At one point during the day, Leon said a random guy popped his head out from a highrise balcony and yelled down to show his support for his SELL shirt. A couple of weeks ago, the National Baseball Hall of Fame even reached out to the Oakland 68s for a SELL shirt to include in their museum.
“Everyone that donated, every fan that wants the A’s to stay in Oakland – we can all say that we’re Hall of Famers. Isn’t that crazy?” Leon said. “When you wear that shirt, you’re a Hall of Famer, bro. Let’s just say, this generation of A’s fans, we die – we’re gonna be at the table with all the baseball greats and all the baseball greats are gonna be like, ‘What the f–k, why are a bunch of A’s fans here?’ Just imagine us walking into that table saying, ‘We tried our hardest to keep the A’s in Oakland’ and they’re gonna be, like, ‘That’s respect.’”
Earlier in the week at the first round of the MLB Draft, fans also shouted “Sell the team!” as Manfred announced the A’s No. 6 overall pick.
The latest A’s protest came against the backdrop of Oakland mayor Sheng Thao’s meeting with MLB commissioner Rob Manfred in Seattle on Tuesday, as the city continues to keep the door open for the franchise to stay in the Bay Area. A couple weeks ago, Manfred pinned blame on Oakland for not having a “plan” to keep the A’s in town. Thao wanted to make it known that Oakland had a concrete proposal sent to the A’s on April 15, four days before they announced their intentions to buy land in Las Vegas for a new stadium.
“I’m just feeling like the truth needs to be out there,” Leon said. “I applaud the mayor for doing what she had to do, honestly. I commend her for doing that. Rob Manfred is something else, man. He’s fighting against us, as well as [A’s owner John] Fisher. Whether it’s too late, whether it’s not – it’s still amazing that Sheng Thao is putting it out there and going to bat for us. Right now my hope is to keep the A’s in Oakland. Until the shovels hit the ground, that’s when we’ll stop. We’re at war, we’re not playing.”
It’s worth noting that Manfred sounded a bit dismissive of Thao’s meeting, telling The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, “We had a good meeting, a very open exchange of views. I understand she came to the process late and is doing her best to figure out if there is something that can be done in a process that was in a lot of ways kind of over when she showed up on the scene.”
The odds might be stacked against the Oakland 68s in their fight to keep the A’s from going to Sin City, but they’re still trying to make their voices heard.
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