“Baseball's Last Dive Bar” prepares for final call as A's time in Oakland comes to an end

As the A's make their final appearance at the Oakland Coliseum, the sun seems to be setting on this relic of a stadium. Once a bright vision of the future, it is now drifting into the past.

“Well, the atmosphere is so awesome,” said A's fan Robert Mikinka. “I've been to so many stadiums. There's no other atmosphere like Oakland. There isn't one. I've experienced this place full. Full of (Mount) Davis. Just fans. 'Oakland! Let's go, Oakland!'”

Mikinka and Jason Dana have come for the long farewell and are enjoying a few last moments in a building full of memories.

“Every day I walk by here and see Rickey (Henderson),” Mikinka added. “Denis Eckersley. I hang out with Dave Stewart over there.”

The Coliseum is now almost 60 years old and has been called “outdated” for decades. And many fans love it.

“We were just talking about this before you sat down. You haven't really remodeled much,” Dana said. “But the fans love the stadium the way it is.”

“It was built with a rawness, simplicity and real elegance,” said Craig Hartman, senior design partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the architectural firm that designed the Coliseum in the early 1960s.

“A very, very innovative structure,” explained Hartman. “And the architect, Myron Goldsmith, was a genius, both with the land and the geometry. These buildings nestle into the land. Very Californian in that respect. The relationship between the architecture, the land and the climate is so beautiful. It has a real Californian feel.”

And the Colosseum reflects an even broader sense of time.

“It was part of the American ethos of the time; the idea of ​​making things flexible and transformable and multipurpose,” Hartman added.

The Americans were also on the move, out of the cities and into the suburbs. A coliseum surrounded by a huge parking lot fit exactly into this vision of the future. And there is something else that can be said about this complex: it was an absolute bargain, even in 1960 dollars. 25 million dollars back then would be just 260 million dollars today.

The Raiders' new home stadium in Las Vegas cost $2 billion. The Coliseum dates back to an almost unimaginably different time. And time has not harmed this stadium.

“I don't like it,” said one fan of the changes in 1996 when Mount Davis was built. “You used to be able to see the Oakland Hills and now it looks like a mess. And I don't think it will look good when it's finished.”

Many people still criticize Mount Davis. And the conditions in the building are now legendary. And every single one of the people who rebuilt the Coliseum is long gone. But for a few days, it is still home to the Oakland Athletics and A's fans.

“Thursday is going to be a really tough day,” Mikinka said.

So the long goodbye comes to an end. Last call at Baseball's Last Dive Bar.

“Yeah, it's Oakland,” Dana said. “That sums it up, man. The Oakland feeling is going to go away. It's weird.”