Last call: A’s fans savor team’s final game at Oakland Coliseum

OAKLAND — After 57 seasons at the Oakland Coliseum, the Athletics’ final hours at their East Bay home began under an oppressive pall as baseball fans filtered through the gates on Thursday morning.

But by first pitch, the marine layer had burned off, and the afternoon sun was shining, setting the stage for a festive atmosphere for Oakland fans and their team to salute one another for one final time.

Fans watched franchise legends Rickey Henderson and Dave Stewart throw out ceremonial first pitches. They heard former Cy Young Award winner Barry Zito sing the national anthem.

Amid a mishmash of “Sell the team” chants, clapping, whistles and screams, the final out in A’s history at the Coliseum was made at 3:06 p.m. when Texas’ Travis Jankowski hit a ground ball to third baseman Max Schuemann, who fired to first baseman Tyler Soderstrom to end the game — a 3-2 victory over the Rangers.

Now all that is left of the A’s era as an Oakland franchise is a three-game series beginning Friday in Seattle.

A’s players and coaches stayed on the field after the final out, tipping their caps to the sold-out crowd of 46,889 who stood and cheered for them. Manager Mark Kotsay then briefly addressed the fans.

“There are no better fans than YOU guys!,” said Kotsay, himself a former A’s player. “Thank you for your lifelong support of the Oakland A’s.”

The manager ended his address by leading one last chant of “Let’s Go Oakland!”.

Sitting in the upper deck, A’s fan Adam Zimmerman waited 20 minutes after the last out before making his way toward the exit.

“Kotsay’s speech was really heartfelt,” he said. “I needed time to sit down and take a minute after that.”

Earlier, as the game moved into the seventh inning, some fans were already flooding out of the ballpark to beat postgame traffic, many of them clutching mini replicas of the stadium given to the first 25,000 fans.

Sneak-peek images of the one-time-only giveaway souvenirs had quickly been met with ridicule online for their ultra-minimalist design — seen by some as one last miserly indignity directed at a loyal fanbase.

“I’m not going to take it out of the box until I get home,” laughed Oakland native Kimberly Burns, “so I can save myself the disappointment.”

Jacob Neel, 27, also chuckled at what he described as a shoddy paint job on the replicas but still planned to keep his trinket on a bookshelf at home with other A’s memorabilia.

“I just think it’s a good bow on 20-plus years of me coming to the Oakland Coliseum,” Neel said. “But it’s also on brand for John Fisher and his team to do something cheap like this — because (he’s) the cheapest owner in MLB history.”

Fisher plans to have his team play in Sacramento for at least the next three seasons before a yet-to-be-built Las Vegas ballpark opens, so the franchise will live on.

But they won’t be the Oakland A’s.

“Since I walked in, it has been super emotional,” A’s fan Jesus Ventura said. “There were moments throughout the game, moments of realization that it was really our last game. This is it, our last home game.

“I started crying after the final moment. I felt a deep, deep sadness.”

“It’s heartbreaking knowing it’s the last game,” said Katherine Harkniss, a 21-year-old lifelong A’s fan from Clayton. “But there’s also joy in knowing that spirit is never going to leave no matter where we go.”

Many fans said they won’t be following the team as it leaves the Bay Area, and some aren’t looking for a new club.

“I’m ditching them until Fisher sells the team,” Dominic Vallejo said. “It will always be ‘(Expletive) the Giants.’ ”

Aaron Clark echoed Vallejo’s comments.

“I’m done following Major League Baseball,” Clark said. “I’ve followed the A’s, and now we don’t have them.”

Fans began arriving by 8 a.m. Thursday ahead of the historic finale.

On a crowded BART train, Stuart Cray reflected on how the latest 14-hour pilgrimage to Oakland from his native Australia gave him a window into a distinctive feature of American sports — that a team can abandon its city.

“It’s happened only one time in history” in Australia, said Cray, 48, who first fell in love when the 1989 World Series introduced him to A’s green and gold — his country’s colors. Oakland swept the cross-bay Giants in four games to capture a World Series most remembered for the Loma Prieta earthquake, which rocked the region minutes before the scheduled start of Game 3.

On a somber walk across the BART bridge, fans bristled at the ballpark’s front entrance, once adorned with the franchise’s history but stood bare even before the game.

“They couldn’t wait to take the banners down?” a woman grumbled.

“Forty dollars! Four-zero,” Rev. Charles Grays called out to passersby, calling out the price for T-shirts that he has sold on game days on the BART bridge since 1981.

The price of his “Last Game” souvenirs was high enough to drive some fans away, but others were interested. This was a historic day, after all — including for Grays, though he said he wasn’t feeling too sentimental.

“I’m going to go home and cry,” he said with a laugh, “and I’ll get up tomorrow and go to the Giants game! But I wouldn’t go to Sacramento or Vegas. Too hot.”

Shortly before the 12:37 p.m. first pitch, a “Let’s Go Oakland” chant broke out on the main concourse behind home plate. Oakland resident Jay Sathe helped lead the chants, saying that he plans on attending Roots soccer games at the Coliseum moving forward.

He correctly predicted there would be no violence for the A’s Coliseum finale.

“We’re not here for that,” Sathe said. “We’re all here for one reason, and that’s to celebrate Oakland.”

There was some mischief, however. Smoke bombs were thrown onto the field in the later innings, and two fans charged onto the field in the top of the ninth as A’s closer Mason Miller was trying to finish the game.

But fears of total chaos didn’t materialize.

With more than 100 Oakland Police Department officers and additional security guards patrolling the grounds, there were no scenes like what unfolded Tuesday when a video of a fan ripping out a seat in the lower bowl and hoisting it aloft like a rusted green trophy went viral.

The A’s franchise has a history of breaking hearts.

Dave Pomeroy, 82, was a kid in Kansas City when the franchise moved from Philadelphia to KC in 1955 and remembered when they left for California 13 years later.

The Topeka resident sympathizes with the East Bay fans.

“Being here, those feelings come back,” Pomeroy said. “I know it was our team, and it hurt.”