Home Sweet Homefield

It a dump. It's a sewer. It's old. It's ugly. It's cramped. There's an infield on the football field. There's football lines in the outfield.

The complaints about the Oakland Alameda County Ring Central MacAfee Network Associates O Dot Coliseum are numerous and well known. It was one of the last cookie cutter stadiums of the 1960s. Built to house multiple sports, it's the last multi-use facility still home to both a major league baseball team and an NFL football team. The football team that shall not be named is leaving next year, but the stadium will remain largely the same, still encumbered but the monstrosity in center field that ruined the park's aesthetic and its wind patterns. The A's, the buildings last tenant, have done a lot to improve the park over the last couple years, but the reputation remains.

I remember the Coli the way it was. I'll never forget walking across the bridge from the train the first time. I was somewhere between 4 and 5 years old. Before the monstrosity, there was just a simple chainlink fence across center field. To prevent people from watching for free, the fence had those long plastic slats pushed through the chainlink so that you could only see the field if you walked by really fast. The effect was similar to a Zoetrope. You could see the players warming up on the field but the frame rate was so slow that they looked like films of ball players from the 1920s.

That fence was a time machine connecting baseball's past with its present in the mind of a small boy.

It was magic.

That was 1981 and I've been coming to the grey lady ever since. After my dad left, I went with my mom during the heady and wonderful Haas years. I fell in love with Mac, Canseco and Walt Weiss. I was crazy about Rickey. I liked that Carney Lansford looked like an actual carney. I always wanted a batting helmet with a huge jaw guard like Terry Steinbach wore. I remember that my biggest take away from the 1989 World Series is that its existence likely saved my mom from being on the collapsed Cypress Freeway the day of the earthquake. She had elected to work late in San Francisco to avoid traffic. Like a great many others who made the same choice, baseball may have literally saved their lives.

My mom wasn't really a fan. She took me to games because it was something to do. She liked going, but didn't know anything about the game. I remember throwing a tantrum one time on the train because there were no seats. I don't know why I was so worked up. Even in the moment I couldn't figure out why I was so desperate for a seat near a window, but I also couldn't stop myself. Being a kid can be really weird. I did not get a malt cup that day, and I learned to stand on the train in silence.

My grandmother was the opposite of my mom. She was a fan, knew all the players, looked up the box scores each day and listened to games on the radio, but she never went. She would get free tickets at the senior center and give them me and my best friend. She'd drop us off at the gate with $5 each for malts and a soda. Then he and I, all of 10 and 8 years of age, would go in and spend four hours on our own. We would sit in the nearly empty third deck and when the soda was gone and the ice was gone and the sun was beating down, we'd fill the cups up with water from the fountain, return to our seats and dump 32oz over our heads. We never thought to try to move down to better seats. Grandma would listen on the radio and at the bottom of the 8th, she'd drive back to the Coli to pick us up. It wasn't until 2001 when my grandmother finally attended her first game since the Charlie Finley era. We put her in the wheel chair and pushed her up to the 300s for game 3 of the 2001 ALDS. The Jeter Flip Game. As 45,000 people went from manic frenzy to dead silent I told her, "Well grandma, you picked a hell of a game to come out to. People are going to talk about that forever."

When I was a 19 year old college student looking for a way to connect with my 6 year old brother, I brought him to baseball games. It became our thing and for years we never missed an opening day. Our best year, we made it to over 40 ball games. During that time the coliseum was my refuge. When I had an afternoon to myself, or if I needed to escape and be alone, I'd head to a game. It was a great place to be anonymously social. You could almost always find someone to chat with, or you could sit with your headphones on and listen to Bill and Ken describe the action. I got to know the some of the vendors, particularly Joyce who ran the Pyramid Ales stand on the main concourse. I worked for Pyramid at the time, so I always liked chatting with Joyce and grabbing a familiar beer.

Much later, I started bringing my family to games. When I was teaching and had summers off we made a habit of attending a couple games every home stand. It got to the point where my kids felt so at home, they'd run off as soon as we got through the gates. It took a few talking to's and a few tears for them to understand that even though it was familiar, it was still a big public place full of people we don't know. But I was thrilled that they felt so welcome and at ease in this place I'd been frequenting since I was their age. They love game days. Some of it is the baseball. Some of it is being together as a family. A lot of it is knowing that "ballpark rules" apply and they're going to get some kind of treat, usually a malt cup or cotton candy.

We got season tickets this year. It's the first time I've had season tickets to anything. It's been everything I'd hoped. We had a great time going to games and the A's made the playoffs. On Wednesday, Buddy and I will attend the first home playoff game I've been to since Jeremy didn't slide. I wish I could have captured his reaction when I told him. He has no idea that the coliseum is ragged. He's been to a few stadiums, but he's never complained about Oakland. All he sees are the improvements and the opportunity to hang out with his friends and family.

My house is 96 years old. The floors need work. The water pressure is unreliable. There's mold on the back wall. The windows all need to be replaced. It's a mess because we have three kids and two old dogs and two working parents and everything that comes with all of that. It's not a beautiful house, but it's the one I want to live in because it's home. The Coli was built in 1966 and it still works for me. I know there's fans who feel differently. The team wants a new stadium and they're working on getting one, though that's a whole other ordeal. For teams, stadiums are less about places to play and more about real estate development in the surrounding area. The players probably want a new home. I hear the locker rooms and training rooms are the really out dated parts of the building. I've only seen glimpses, but it does seem a bit dreary.

I want the players to be happy. I want my fellow fans to be happy.

For me though, I don't need a new stadium. I've been to a lot of parks. Some major league, some minor league. They all have basically the same plastic seats and the same types of concessions. The prices vary, but the views are largely the same. Once I sit down, I could be anywhere and the surrounding structure fades into the background. Whenever the new place is built, I'm sure I'll enjoy it. I'll go to the park and marvel at its newness and its amenities. I'll look forward to seeing the fans with whom I've developed friendships. I'll sing the songs and drink the beer and hope I still get to see Joyce. It will be nice, but it won't be home. Home will always be that dingy old concrete mausoleum where I was allowed to run free and then eventually let my kids do the same.

If home is where the heart is, then mine will always reside at 7000 Coliseum Way, just over the BART bridge. Where you can forever enjoy "beer while you're walkin', beer while you're talkin'," and it always smells like bacon wrapped sausage.

It's OK to Love a Sports Writer

I couldn't find a relevant banner photo, so I'm using this one because we look happy.

I had a cool experience recently. My sports fan alter ego on Twitter (@RallyLamb) has been slowly picking up traction. I set up the account because I wanted to interact with local sports fans, but I didn't want those of you who follow me for my writing on parenting to suddenly get hit with 100 hot takes per game for 162 baseball games. On a summer evening last year, I got an alert that made my heart jump a bit. My favorite sports writer, Susan Slusser followed me. Look, it’s a small thing, but it’s one of the reasons I do any of this. I don’t make much money from writing. I started because I just needed to do it, it’s my heritage. Later, as I gained a small audience I was motivated by the opportunities I had to meet cool people and do cool stuff. Being followed by a writer I’ve been reading for over twenty years, less than four months into creating this account, was pretty cool. Then I saw that I had a DM, “Hi there, I’m looking for people to talk to for a story on the new ticket strategy and liked your response - would you be ok with a quick interview by phone?”

Dude! Susan Slusser wanted to talk to me for a story! I was in the driveway at the time and my wife came out to the front porch like, “Hey, why are you dancing?” Uh, because I’m going to get to talk to Susan Slusser, that’s why. (I had also gotten an RT from Dan Szymborski at the same moment so I was definitely winning Twitter that day.)

I forget how long it was until we did the interview. I know I spent the whole time rehearsing and editing my fan boy speech. I wanted to let her know how much her writing had meant to me over the years. How much I appreciated her work during the Twitter era, during most of which I was an out of market fan and relied on her reporting as my lifeline to the team. Once the interview was done, I half asked/half warned her that I was going to geek out for second. I told her about how much I respected her work and her career, she had also been president of the Baseball Writers Association of America (the people who vote on the Hall of Fame). I worry now that maybe I was being presumptuous of her experience, because I talked about how part of my admiration was due to my mom having been a journalist and knowing what she went through and how much harder I thought that might be in sports. I talked about how I thought it was super cool that my home team had four women covering them regularly (shout out Ann Killion, Melissa Lockard and Jane Lee). Maybe I over did it on the rah-rah women in sports feminism, but I was feeling it and I didn’t know if I’d ever have another chance to let her know how cool she is.

I guess I did OK as an interview subject. Susan (I call her that because according to my son, we are now close personal friends) sent me a message to let me know I’d be featured in the article. I was happy, but didn’t expect the first sentence to read, “As a sign-language interpreter and teacher with three children, Roberto Santiago figured season tickets for a sports team would be out of his reach.” So yeah, that was really cool.

Over the course of the season we tried to find a time to meet in person, but it never worked out. After all, when she’s at the game, she’s at work. It’s hard to visit anyone at work and I never wanted to be a bother. We were finally able to make it happen this season. Again, I didn’t want to bother her, or act like she owed me her time so I waited until I had a copy of her recent book so that when I reached out, I could at least show that I was supporting the cause. Yes, it’s still asking for her time while she’s working, but at least it’s a conversation starter.

She came down to the concourse to meet Buddy and I between innings. She was gracious and just as cool as she seems. I grew up around notable people, mostly writers and musicians, but I still get a little giddy meeting someone for the first time after reading them for so long. It was after this meeting that my son went on a routine about how we were all now totes BFFs and we should expect Susan at pizza night. He’s hilarious that way.

One thing that stands out for me in this experience is how we see sports writers and how they see themselves. Along with the book, I asked Susan to sign a baseball. She said she doesn’t like signing balls, that it seems weird because she doesn’t play. She agreed to sign for me because I’d also had the book. (See, I knew having the book as an opener was a good call). Throughout this whole experience, I kept thinking about the Seinfeld episode where George is asked who he reads.

  

Mr. Lippman: Who do you read?
George: I like Mike Lupica.
Mr. Lippman: Mike Lupica?

George: He’s a sports writer for the Daily News. I find him very insightful…

 Mr. Lippman: No, no, no. I mean authors.

I always loved this scene because of how it depicts the difference between what “literary” people consider writing, and what people who read consider writing. My favorite “authors” are mostly academics. Have you read any Dorothy Smith or William Labov? They rule. But if you ask me who I like to read, it’s a lot of sports writers. I’m super into Bill Barnwell. I really like reading Zach Lowe’s breakdowns of specific plays. I am dependent on Susan Slusser to keep me connected to the A’s. This was especially true when I lived in D.C. The A’s don’t get a ton of national attention even when they’re good, so it was Slusser and SFGate.com that kept me up on my home team. Most years I’d send a tweet to her at the end of the season thanking her for helping us transplanted fans stay abreast.

So right, she doesn’t play. She’s never taken a swing or recorded an out for the team. But to us fans, she’s as much the face or voice of the team as any player or manager. Really, she’s been even more a part of our experience of the team than any of the PsTBNL or managers who are hired to be fired. Slusser has been with us for twenty years. Can we say that about anyone associated with team other than Ken Korach or Billy Beane? Sure, the reporter isn’t the story. It’s only recently that journalists have become personalities, and even then that’s mostly screamers on TV. So no, we don’t know Susan Slusser outside of the glimpses we get through social media. We know a hell of a lot about the A’s because of her reporting, and I think it’s folly to try to completely separate the story form the story teller. In many ways, Susan Slusser is the A’s for us because she’s the source of most of our information about what’s happening with the team. So for me, meeting her was just as exciting as meeting any player past or present.

Susan Slusser is one of my favorite writers, and that’s as legit as anything else.