Back in the Coliseum, Leon continued to harp on his A’s attendance as an act of defiance toward Wolff. “I’m not going to let him win,” he said. “I’m not going to let him say these fans aren’t passionate.” Leon used to scrawl messages on bedsheets and bring them to the games, giant signs announcing his distaste for his team’s owner. “Lew Wolff Hates Oakland,” said one. And another, referring to Wolff’s comments that he has attempted to make the franchise viable without leaving town: “Wolff Lied. He Never Tried.”
After hanging that one, in April 2010, Leon was escorted out of the stadium by security. But as he was led away, the fans around him started chanting. “Lew Wolff sucks!” they yelled. “Lew Wolff sucks!”
Across Oakland there is talk of identity and pride, of a rallying point that unites classes, of all the warm and fuzzy themes that emerge whenever sports are discussed. But there is also, inevitably, talk of economics. If Oakland loses one or more of its teams, it will lose the jobs that come with them. It will also lose the suburban dollars that flow into the city on game days. Right now, that effect is minimal, but if the Coliseum City and Howard Terminal projects come through, it should increase.
Zimbalist, the economist, doesn’t buy it. “You’re talking about a drop in the bucket,” he says. “It will hardly affect the economy. In fact, when the teams are gone, those resources will be freed up. That land will be free for other uses. City planners can find much better ways to use all of that, and it can even be good for the economy.”
You can’t tell that to Maggie Gibson. She’s a member of the union Unite Here Local 2850, and she’s been working concessions at the Coliseum and Oracle for 26 years. She’s “deeply concerned,” she says, about the fact that her job could soon be kaput. Oakland has a worker retention law, which means that when a team is sold to a new owner or hires a new catering company to prepare stadium food, the workers stay. Yet if the teams move, that changes. Then, she says, “You would have a lot of people who have been doing this for a long time who would be put in a very difficult situation.”
She’s saying this in Oracle’s Plaza Club, a bar that sits just off the lower section of the arena, minutes after a meeting of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority. This arena, and the suddenly ascendant NBA team that comes with it, represents the most immediate threat to Oakland’s sports landscape. The Warriors want to move to San Francisco in 2017. To do so, they would build an arena along the pier. “It’s a done deal,” says Zimbalist. “The Warriors are gone.” Only it turns out that it’s more difficult to build an arena on a San Francisco pier than originally thought. Since the Warriors announced their plans, projected costs have gone up. Environmental groups have been alarmed. Some San Francisco residents whose views of the Bay would be blocked have grown defiant. “It is virtually impossible to get something built on that site,” says Quan. “It’s going to be incredibly difficult for them to get something done.”
Says Warriors owner Joe Lacob: “We’re going. No matter what you write, we’re gonna get this done.” Lacob emphasizes that he sees the Warriors as the Bay Area’s team, not just Oakland’s. “There is a little bit of a concern,” he says, that the Warriors may lose some of the fans that make Oracle one of the NBA’s loudest arenas, “but we think we’ll retain those fans — they’ll come across the bay for games.”