It’s officially official. We can now consider John Fisher the worst owner in professional sports. Thursday’s announcement that his Oakland Athletics are in the midst of their final season in Northern California adds another layer to this.
The A’s announced that they will move to Sacramento and play at a 14,000-seat minor league stadium from 2025-27 before ultimate relocation to Las Vegas.
“We understand the disappointment this news brings to our fans, as this season marks our final one in Oakland. Throughout this season, we will honor and celebrate our time in Oakland, and will share additional details soon,” John Fisher statement on relocation.
The A’s time in Oakland will come to a conclusion this fall after 57 seasons, four World Series titles and several historic moments. It will come to an end with a dud and likely an average of less than 6,000 fans per game inside the run-down Oakland Coliseum.
It will come to a conclusion with the on-field product being one of the worst in franchise history. The A’s posted a 50-112 record last year. Since the start of the 2022 campaign, the team is 111-220. It’s the franchise’s worst stretch of action since they were playing in Kansas City in the mid-50s.
If that weren’t bad enough, Fisher is overseeing a payroll that ranks dead last among MLB teams at $61.94 million. The second-lowest figure is the Pittsburgh Pirates at $83.98 million.
This doesn’t even take into account Fisher’s net worth of $3.2 billion and the fact that he begged Nevada for hundreds of millions in public funds to build a new stadium.
Regardless of what happens moving forward, Fisher is a stain on the A’s and MLB. Sure, the Vegas stadium will be nice once it opens in time for the 2028 season. Sure, they’ll be some interest in Sacramento. That’s all fine and dandy. But the level of disrespect he treated A’s fans with won’t soon be overlooked.
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We’re not just talking about general baseball fans or those who have rooted for the A’s during their time in Northern California. National baseball writers and those respected around the game also took to social media to blast John Fisher for his latest middle-finger tactic. The responses were not subtle.
Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic and MLB on Fox mocked the entire situation in a very sarcastic manner.
Some of the other responses were completely NSFW. We’ll just link one of them here.
Giving a press conference in Sacramento, Fisher noted how excited he is to be playing at “the most intimate ballpark in all of Major League Baseball.” Yeah, it’s something he actually said.
He apparently also left the presser without taking any questions.
The overall responses to Thursday’s news were about as expected. Let’s look at some of the best.