Andy Dolich and Dave Newhouse deliver message to Oakland sports fans
OAKLAND, Calif. — “Oakland has the most loyal sports fans in the universe and easily the most dumped upon. … These fans pushed loyalty to a new level … in support of their hometown franchises—which then showed their gratitude by moving. … the heart versus the heartless—the great divide between Oakland fans and Oakland sports owners, bringing unparalleled spectator torture.” (p. 107)
Dave Newhouse and Andy Dolich didn’t check their swings when we met recently in Newhouse’s downstairs home office, its walls covered with sports photos and memorabilia.
Dolich: “Here’s a question for you. What color is the blood that flows through the veins of sports teams owners?”
Newhouse: “Green.”
Dave Newhouse is a familiar name to East Bay sports fans. He covered sports for the Oakland Tribune for nearly fifty years, and since retiring more than a decade ago he’s written 11 books about sports. Andy Dolich has worked in sports business management pretty much since that profession was invented, graduating from the country’s only sports management school in the early 1970s (today there are hundreds offering courses).
Now these ultimate sports insiders have poured their combined 100-plus years of experience into Goodbye, Oakland: Winning, Wanderlust, and a Sports Town’s Fight for Survival, published last month by Triumph Books.
Dolich has held management positions in every major league sport and then some, including COO of the 49ers, 14 years as a vice president of the Oakland A’s, and briefly president of the Warriors. That’s just the local teams. He approached Newhouse with the book idea a couple years ago. They interviewed another 80 people—from fans to players to politicians—to color in the picture.
What they’ve penned is both a love song to Oakland and its fans and an unrelenting stream of vitriol against a list of devious (Al Davis), ungrateful, gold-digging billionaire team owners who don’t give a (fill in your word) about fans or the cities that keep buying and building them stadiums, which they then abandon for the next city that waves a shiny new ballpark in their face. The exception was Walter A. Haas, Jr., who by contrast did keep the fans in his heart, and Oakland too, and the community, and not coincidentally was the only owner truly rooted in the Bay Area, tracing his clan back to the Gold Rush.
The spoiled Davis dynasty bailed on Oakland—not once but twice, a singularity in professional sports. Joe Lacob wanted the prestige of San Francisco, and the Warriors already wear that city’s name on their jerseys but never once wore “Oakland” in half a century.
A heartwarming tale of heartbreak.
The authors take such post-injury insults to heart. They lay out how much less fan-friendly the new locations are; for instance, Chase Center and Allegiant Stadium are harder to travel to than the Coliseum, which is conveniently smack in the middle of five counties, a freeway, mass transit, an airport, and a sea port.
“Here’s the history of domed baseball stadiums,” Dolich said about what’s needed to play in the Las Vegas heat, which can easily top 120 during afternoon games. “Add an O. Doomed.”
The authors blame a lack of sports vision among Oakland’s elected leaders (except the odd couple of Dick Spees and Ignacio de la Fuente), but mostly they unload on the green-blooded “corporate carpetbaggers” who’ve been ripping off the most painfully loyal fan base in the world for decades. Two (and soon three?) teams have come here with nothing, won Super Bowls, NBA championships, and three World Series, then walked away (or are threatening to) from the city that made them winners.
Newhouse and Dolich believe Oakland still suffers from decades of a bad reputation compared to its glamorous neighbor across the bay—Oakland is not the “City” but the lesser “Town”—and team owners least of all appreciate this newly thrumming, growing, diverse city on the eastern shore. That’s a view shared by our own Rep. Barbara Lee, who wrote the book’s foreword. The situation today is “a sports tragedy,” Newhouse said. “It didn’t need to happen.”
“Oakland has the highest level of low self-esteem of any city,” he added. He and Dolich fear the city may relapse into the sports desert of the 1960s, and we talked about current efforts to redevelop the Coliseum area and keep Oakland a sports town. The WNBA is in talks to create a women’s pro basketball team here, for instance. The fans are waiting.
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