Why I'm Proud to be an Oakland A's fan...

[GreatWhiteSnake]

Now that the outrage and anguish of Oakland Athletics fans at their reverse boycott has died down to a throbbing heartache, let’s put that memorable evening in perspective.

For this longtime observer of sports, here’s how it stacks up:

It was the loudest middle finger I’ve ever heard.

The shining moment came at the start of the fifth inning of Tuesday night’s Rays-A’s game at the Coliseum. As instructed via handouts, the crowd went silent as A’s reliever Hogan Harris came set to pitch. A dozen or so braying fools shouted during the silence, but they couldn’t kill the eerie vibe created by nearly 30,000 raucous fans going pin-drop quiet.

Then Jose Siri doubled to left, triggering the end to the silence and cueing the chant of “Sell! The! Team!” The chant swelled to the level of a lion’s roar in a phone booth. It echoed around the big concrete bowl, creating a row-row-row-your-boat outrage in the round.

The entire evening, from suiting up in “SELL” T-shirts in the parking lot before the game, to the postgame barrage of litter onto the field, was unprecedented — and cool as hell.

The night will go down as one of the great protest moments in the history of the Bay Area, long an epicenter of pushback against abuse of power. The reverse boycott wasn’t on the epic level of San Jose State’s Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising black-gloved fists on the victory podium at the ’68 Olympics, but it tapped into that same fierce spirit of defiance.

The reverse boycott surely rated nods of approval from the ghosts of Oakland take-no-guffers like Bill Russell, Frank Robinson and Curt Flood. And don’t forget Bruce Maxwell, the A’s catcher who in 2017 became the first MLB player to join the kneeling anthem protests started by former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.

The reverse boycott was reminiscent of Boo Joe Lacob Night in 2012, when Golden State Warriors’ fans at Oracle Arena laid an unmerciful torrent of derision on the new team owner. They were unstoppable in their rage, driven in no small part by Lacob’s telegraphed intent to move their team to San Francisco.

Let’s not forget the 2000 NBA All-Star Game at the same Coliseum Arena, when the packed house saluted then-owner Chris Cohan (and his young son) by booing the hapless, clueless owner off the court.

Those classic receptions hit home, the targets properly embarrassed and abashed. Tuesday represented a whole new thing in sports — a team owner and his team president, John Fisher and Dave Kaval, mocked and ridiculed in absentia with chants and cheers. No boos!

The nightlong enthusiasm and energy of the protestors was amazing, considering that their efforts were futile. Nevada lawmakers had just voted to clear what seemed to be the final hurdle in that state’s team-napping scheme, so fans entering the Coliseum knew their A’s were a dead team walking.

The bad news from Nevada, rather than killing the rally spirit, fueled the fury. The Coliseum crowd became the world’s largest primal-chant grief support group.

The A’s announced an attendance of 27,759, but this team’s management is notoriously bad with numbers. I estimated the crowd at well over 30,000, as did other veteran observers.

The night would have been powerful anyway, but team management and MLB managed to validate and amplify the protest message.

Just before the game, the A’s announced that the game’s ticket revenues, $811,107, would be donated to two local charities. That’s a fine donation, but what a nutty coincidence that of all the games in John Fisher’s 19 seasons as team owner, it came on a night when fans were protesting his greed and heartlessness.

Conveniently omitted from the media release was the fact that the donation amount would have been closer to $80,000 were it not for the protest.

Throughout the game, the Coliseum audio and video people tried to dampen the protest. Video screen shots of fans were carefully framed and edited to exclude any of the thousands of “SELL” T-shirts. When fans chanted before each inning, the stadium DJ cranked the music to earsplitting levels.

The A’s radio and TV announcers told listeners about the high energy in the stands, but carefully avoided any mention of protests, chants, signs or T-shirts. MLB.com’s reportage also declined to acknowledge the protest. The Rays’ TV crew, meanwhile, did actual journalism, delivering a strong live report on the protest.

This is a nitpick, but I wish the chanting had been extended to include baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred. The next day, Manfred reinforced the tone-deafness of baseball. He fibbed by saying Oakland never made the A’s an offer. Then he went all insult-comic on the A’s fans, mock-saluting the protesters for presenting “almost an average major league baseball crowd in the facility for one night.”

That’s quite a zinger, solidifying Manfred’s rep as almost an average Major League Baseball commissioner. And that bar is limbo low.

If the righteousness of a protest can be measured by the buffoonery of its targets, the reverse boycott belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Maybe just a simple display case with a “SELL” T-shirt.

I had low expectations for the event. I’ve seen too many fan-led protests fizzle. When the Raiders announced they were leaving Los Angeles to return to Oakland in 1995, a fan protest in L.A. drew about six people.

This protest kicked fanny. The fans gave a proper sendoff to Fisher and Kaval and the rented mule they rode in on.

Gertrude Stein would have been amazed. In Oakland on Tuesday night, there was plenty of there there.

Reach Scott Ostler: [email protected]; Twitter: @scottostler