OAKLAND — It was about a quarter after 7 Sunday morning when the all-time winningest manager in the history of the Coliseum pulled into the parking lot for the final time.
“Bright and early,” Bob Melvin said. “I didn’t want to rush.”
He wanted to get a head start on processing what was sure to be an emotional day.
He wanted to reprise his ritual that he’d done before hundreds of games here, running the stadium steps one last time. There were “a million” people to reacquaint with. Vendors, security guards, front office personnel. In between interviews with both teams’ flagship radio stations, Melvin was asked if he wanted to hit ground balls to Matt Chapman on the dirt they shared for five years, but he couldn’t find the time.
“I’ve been here a lot. I love this place. I’m going to miss it a lot,” Melvin said Saturday from his seat on the bench in visitors’ dugout up the first-base line.
It was a less familiar viewing angle than the one from the opposite side of the field, where Melvin won 853 of the 1,617 games he managed from 2011-2021 as the longest-tenured skipper in the A’s 56-year history in Oakland.
From the third-base dugout, Melvin watched his second squad, in 2012, rally for three runs in penultimate inning of the regular season to clinch their first of three division titles together. He can still picture the scene from their last playoff game played in front of a home crowd, when the tarp was removed from Mt. Davis to accommodate all 54,000 fans in attendance for the 2019 Wild Card loss to the Rays.
“That was pretty cool,” Melvin said.
Coming back with the Padres and now with the Giants, in front of 37,000 fans on Saturday, helped Melvin grasp the unique home field advantage they had all those years.
“There’s a depth perception. You’re standing out at home plate, as far away as any dugout. The stands are kind of far back. It’s more of a stadium feel than a ballpark feel. And then all the foul territory, and the win can be tricky here, too,” he said. “So yeah, I think there is one.”
The dilapidated facilities got a minor refresh when Raiders left for Las Vegas, but Melvin said, “it was kind of a badge of honor that we didn’t have all the bells and whistles. …
“(And) when you get on the playing surface, this is one of the best playing surfaces in all of baseball. As you saw yesterday, when there’s a big crowd here, it’s a fun place to play.”
But his time wearing the Athletics’ uniform only encapsulated a sliver of the memories Melvin made in this venue as a rabid Bay Area sports fan who was also developing a taste for live music. In the summer were Bill Graham’s Day on the Green concerts. The fall brought playoff baseball and Raiders football.
“There’s just a lot to it today,” Melvin said. “A lot of emotions. I’ve spent a lot of my life here.”
The wall of his office when he became the A’s manager grew increasingly cluttered with black-and-white photographs gifted to him by the legendary shooter Michael Zagaris of some of Melvin’s favorite concerts he attended at the Coliseum, none better than the 1976 twin bill featuring The Who and The Grateful Dead.
Melvin’s first time stepping on the Coliseum turf came three years later, in 1979, when he worked out as an amateur prospect for the Baltimore Orioles.
“This is quite a bit removed from 1979,” he said. “So this has been a special property. Not necessarily just this field, but this property in general.”
To commemorate his last time here, the notoriously superstitious manager broke with a few of his established norms.
The first was evident to anybody who looked down, where they would have seen white shoes gracing Melvin’s feet. A staple of the Athletics’ aesthetic, Melvin has mostly worn footwear with other pigments since leaving Oakland. He also generally delineates the duty of taking the lineup card to home plate to whoever did it the last time they won a game.
It was hitting coach Pat Burrell again Saturday after beating the Braves on Thursday, but Melvin said, “no matter what, I was going to take it out today.”
As far as keepsakes go, though, Melvin didn’t feel compelled take anything.
“I think just being here is enough,” he said.
