The final week of the Oakland A's

Every baseball game begins with a blank scorecard. The plays on the field help fill out that card, creating memories for the spectators there or at home. Since 1968, the Oakland A's have helped fill our scorecards and our hearts, creating connections that last across generations. When the last out is recorded in the Coliseum in a week, those memories will stop and that connection to future generations will officially be severed.

The A's are just a sports team, and they're not exactly the first to ever relocate. This franchise has already moved twice, and they're the third team to leave the city of Oakland in recent years. The move itself isn't groundbreaking. However, that doesn't make it any less heartbreaking.

The A's are a sports team, yes. But they are also deeply intertwined in the lives of many Oakland and East Bay residents. Some will say the fans weren't coming, so of course the team was going. But back in college, I had to give a class speech on a topic of my choosing, and I chose the Fremont Ballpark the A's proposed. That was around 2007. That's how long the A's owners had been trying to move the team, and the fans just stopped coming.

Every single A's fan has their own memories of playing at Oakland Coliseum. Here are some of my memories.

One of my earliest memories is getting home early from school on my birthday and my parents taking me to a game at the Coliseum to see Cal Ripken Jr. and the Baltimore Orioles. I don't remember much about the game, but it was a special memory because I felt special there and it happened at the Coliseum. That's where my connection with the team began.

Over the years, my grandfather would take me to games, and we built some special memories at that concrete palace. No matter where we sat, he would always point directly across the stadium at a couple of fans and say, “Hey, that girl just smiled at you!” Grandpa was a joker, and this is a core memory not only of the Coliseum and the A's, but of him as well. On the way to the stadium, he once looked up at the sky and said, “Oh wow, do you see that? It's getting dark tonight.” Being young, it took me a few minutes to realize he was kidding me. I told these stories over and over at his ceremony after he died, that's how meaningful they were to me, and they happened because of our love of baseball.

He passed his love of baseball on to my dad and me, and because of that passion for the game, we were able to witness the walk-off bunt, Game 162, Jeremy Giambi's no-slide, and much more. We didn't see the walk-off bunt, though. Dad wanted to avoid traffic, and since the house was packed and the Boston Red Sox were in town, we had to hurry before the event actually happened. But we did see Tim Hudson and Pedro Martínez face off in that game, and that led to another important memory at the Coliseum.

I don't remember exactly how Derek Jeter ended up on the video board, but as I recall, he made a public appeal to all ballparks. Something along the lines of “Don't do drugs.” But the crowd at the Coliseum, which consisted of A's and Red Sox fans, saw his face and booed him mercilessly. It was hilarious and probably my favorite non-protesting memory.

In college, dollar hot dogs were not only a great deal, but also a challenge for hungry students. We'd put down $10 and see how many we could eat (spoiler: we all did). The trick was to eat a few before the game started and then one per inning. Back when there was no pitch clock, that was about one every 20 minutes. I think the record in our group was 13 hot dogs.

I took friends to the Coliseum because it allowed me to share my passion, baseball and specifically this team. Growing up, I always had a hard time finding common ground with other people and the A's were a way to share a part of myself with others and not feel so alone in the world. Since I'm a baseball geek, I was able to answer all of their questions and my friends usually had a deeper appreciation for the game itself because of all the action between pitches.

I even drove to Anaheim one time early in the year to watch the A's because I couldn't wait for their first home game. I called in sick at the restaurant where I worked, drove there with a friend, watched Dan Haren and John Lackey throw gems, and then drove through the night to be at work by 6 a.m. I slept about 45 minutes before work that morning, but man, it was a great experience.

Another year, the Saturday before Mother's Day, the A's played a long extra-innings game that seemed to last until midnight. I again went to work at six in the morning, and when we opened at seven, Ray Fosse was the first person to come in that morning, having just listened to him talk when I should have been long asleep. I worked in the cafe area of ​​the restaurant, and he gave us our first tip of the day and said, “I've got to fill that up.” In other words, when we put money in the tip jar, we were helping others contribute throughout the day. An empty tip jar doesn't have the same effect. From that day on, we always put a dollar in the tip jar at the beginning of the day, and that helped us make a little more each day.

I even met my wife, who is from Oakland, because I had a Jerry Blevins Shirsey one day. Apparently that's a topic of conversation, and we got chatting. Later, she said she knew I was a real fan because who else had a Blevins Shirsey? It was a Christmas gift from my sister, who fell in love with the A's during the magical 2012 season. My wife and I have been together for over a decade now.

Some outlets on social media have said that A's fans should just pick another team. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred alluded to the fact that the Giants are right across the bay, so there shouldn't really be a problem here. But they're missing the point, too. The A's are a sports team, yes. But for the fans who have stuck around and supported the Green and Gold despite all the restructuring, the poor treatment by the owners, the lack of roster stability, and the MLB itself saying we're not good enough, the A's are a way of life. It's not that easy to cheer for another wash. Those memories don't just disappear.

Other fanbases complain because their team hasn't won a World Series in a few years, but they don't understand what makes baseball fans tick. Titles are all well and good, but it's the day-to-day action that really creates lasting memories.

In 2012, the A's had their most memorable season for a large portion of their fans. Predicted to finish last in the AL West, the Oakland A's used a new group of rookies and cast-offs to clinch the Western title in the final game of the regular season, Game 162, after sweeping the Texas Rangers in the final series. Texas had played in two straight World Series in 2010 and 2011, losing both, so defeating them was no easy task.

That win put the A's in the ALDS against the Detroit Tigers, and in a strange twist, the A's had to start the postseason on the road due to a scheduling issue with the newly created Wild Card Game. The cold weather in Detroit caused the A's to return home down 0-2 in the series, but they still came back to tie it and force a fifth game. Although the season did not have the fairytale ending that the spectators in the stands expected, when the last out was recorded, we in the stands began chanting “Let's go Oak-land!” to show our appreciation for this club.

Part of me hopes that after the final out is recorded next Thursday, the 40,000-plus fans in attendance will fill the Coliseum with one final chant of “Let's go Oak-land!” before the A's pack up and leave town forever.

The A's are a sports team, but their brand is rooted in Oakland. They'll keep the colors and the history, but they'll lose the soul of the team. The people of Oakland are what made this franchise special. The struggling underdogs who don't have the best facilities or the biggest names to cheer on the team, but with their voices (and some drums) they can make sure they're heard. They've made 10,000 fans sound like a playoff game. For the past two seasons, since the A's announced their plans to move, players have talked about the noise level at the Coliseum being among the best in baseball, including New York. The fans are responsible for that, and they're the ones being left behind so the A's can just be another baseball team.