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Embodying baseball’s grittiness, the Oakland Athletics went out in style vs. Texas Rangers

The community of Oakland gathered at the Coliseum on Thursday to celebrate its connection and history with the Athletics.

OAKLAND, Calif. — Baseball lost a little bit of cool on Thursday.

Which seems like an odd tactic to take for a league that is desperately jamming up your social media fits with everything from fits to food telling you how cool it is. Sorry, if that’s too Gen X. Make it: How much “rizz” it has. Thing is: We may not be entirely sure what rizz is, but we’re pretty sure if you’ve got it, you don’t have to say it.

The Oakland A’s didn’t have to say it. For nearly 60 years, they and their fan base embodied everything that was edgy and gritty in baseball. From fashion statements to critical thinking, the A’s were often at the forefront. And now, it’s no more.

When Travis Jankowski grounded out on a 103.5 mph fastball from Mason Miller, ending the Rangers’ 3-2 loss Thursday, it ended the A’s home season. And also the A’s. Well, they may still be the A’s when they get to Sacramento next season and maybe eventually to Las Vegas. But whatever they are, they won’t be Oakland. Maybe no franchise in baseball was more imbued with its home than the A’s.

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That’s baseball’s loss.

“Oakland is cool,” said Rangers second baseman Marcus Semien, who grew up in the East Bay, played six years for the A’s and leads all active players in games and hits at the Oakland Coliseum. “It has a different swagger than the rest of the country. The rest of the country might not like the music, how we dance, how we talk, but this place is cool. Everybody who is from here is proud to be from here.”

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That connection seemed to be the theme for the final series. The Rangers were merely coincidental visitors, though it was appropriate Semien was on hand. He’s the latest in a list of East Bay-raised greats to have spent significant time with the A’s. On Thursday, 46,889 fans showed up early — parking lots opened at 8 a.m. PDT and were packed by 9 — and stayed late. They were there when Oakland-raised Rickey Henderson and Oakland-raised Dave Stewart threw out first pitches. Nobody had left when Jankowski grounded out. Well, except for the two numbskulls who decided to sprint onto the field in the ninth.

There was concern it would be far worse. Who among Rangers fans can forget the club’s own history? On the last day before they moved to Texas, the then-Washington Senators had to forfeit their final home game due to fans plundering the field. That was more than 50 years ago. Sports has only become more unruly since. The Rangers were prepared to make a hasty exit in case they came under a physical plundering. Semien had all but dismissed that notion. He knew.

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Oakland Athletics fans cheer after Brent Rooker (foreground) hit a single during the third...
Oakland Athletics fans cheer after Brent Rooker (foreground) hit a single during the third inning of a baseball game against the Texas Rangers on Sept. 26 in Oakland, Calif.(Godofredo A. Vásquez / AP)

The fans had come to celebrate their connection with the team, not mourn it. Sure, they chanted “Sell The Team,” just about every half inning after the game became official. But it was a happy crowd, a crowd intent on taking home one last memory.

This could go into a long dissertation about A’s owner John Fisher, MLB, the never-ending hunt for maximizing revenue out of a market, but that’s been hashed out over and over for the last decade, if not more as site after site for a new glitzier stadium in the East Bay was proposed and ultimately shot down. Fisher instead will take the A’s to an actual minor league ballpark in Sacramento for the next few years while he waits for a palace to be built in Las Vegas. They are even installing artificial turf in Sacramento, which will make the field even hotter. Makes perfect sense. But, hey, we digress.

This is about the A’s being cool. And, if you are of a certain demographic (meaning mostly newspaper-reading age), you know of that which we speak.

The A’s were born in Philadelphia and had a layover in Kansas City before getting to Oakland in 1968, a year after the Summer of Love swamped the Bay Area. The A’s took a sport steeped in old-fashioned traditions and infused it with as much counterculture as they could. They embraced individuality in both their players and their fans.

They wore their hair longer and shaggier than the rest of the league. Facial hair was encouraged. They wore bright green jerseys and white cleats. And they dominated baseball. They produced winning seasons in each of their first nine years in Oakland, won five straight AL West titles and three straight World Series titles.

This is how cool they were: When they hosted their first World Series game in 1972, they were without Reggie Jackson, the King of Cool, because he tore his hamstring stealing home in the ALCS. Jackson was introduced to the crowd before the rest of the team, limped out of the dugout in a full-length leather coat and received a crazy reception.

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The Swingin’ A’s were the dynasty of the ’70s and the first dynasty broken up by the advent of free agency. In the 1980s came Henderson, setting base stealing records with style, and then the Bash Brothers, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire. They went to three more World Series in a row.

“There is a genuine aura around this team,” said Rangers catching instructor Bobby Wilson who has been coming to the Coliseum for nearly 20 years as a player and then coach. “There was a grime to them. They had long hair and dirty uniforms. When I was just getting into baseball, everybody I knew wanted to be a ‘Bash Brother.’ The impact they had kind of swept the nation.”

When free agency gutted them again, they reinvented themselves into the “Moneyball” A’s, heading the forefront of the advanced metric era. Then Brad Pitt came to run the team. Or something like that. Put it this way: No other team in baseball is getting Brad Pitt to play their GM in a movie. The Dodgers? They got a cranky Harrison Ford. And they are literally in Hollywood.

Along the way, while the A’s shine on the field was dimmed, they became the place where families could go to games. Could take the BART, like Semien and his friends did. Could load up on $1 hot dogs.

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“This was the place you could go to see Major League Baseball when you couldn’t afford to see the Giants,” Semien said Tuesday with a certain ardor.

The inference: There are fewer and fewer venues like that around baseball these days, what with priorities placed on premium seats and corporate partnerships. And now there is one less.

But the A’s went out in style Thursday. It’s something they always had.

Correction, 12:30 p.m. Friday: An earlier version of this article misidentified Rangers second baseman Marcus Semien as Rangers shortstop Marcus Semien. Additionally, it stated parking lots opened at 8 a.m. PST when it should have stated they opened at 8 a.m. PDT.

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