OAKLAND – With two hours remaining until first pitch Sunday, the Oakland Coliseum parking lot featured the familiar sights and sounds of a party in the East Bay.
In one corner of the parking lot was a mariachi band, and booming audio systems around the lot further filled the air with 808s and synths.
A parking lot attendant screamed at one group to make room for cars looking for space in a well-populated area that is often vacant on game days.
“I came here early and there’s actually a great amount of people here already,” said Jesse Aiwaz after he made the drive from Modesto to East Oakland. “It’s actually really sick seeing all of these people, all the A‘s and Giants fans.”
Smoke of various kinds filled the air with a haze that smelled mostly of hot dogs and hamburgers.
There were neon green jerseys, “SELL” paraphernalia and vibrant orange as far as the eye could see as fans filled their time before the last Bay Bridge Series between host Oakland and visiting San Francisco.
The A’s will play in Sacramento next season, a fact that caused some mild confusion in the parking lot.
“Let’s go Oakland,” a man with a makeshift DJ setup yelled into the microphone, before pausing and quipping, “Or is it Sacramento?”
He quickly went back to playing beats, not wanting to kill the vibe.
“This is the greatest place to tailgate ever, especially when it comes to the Battle of the Bay. Everyone comes together,” Lani Nawahine told the Bay Area News Group, before adding, “In the beginning at least.”
After the Raiders left town in 2020, the Bay Bridge Series was the last cross-bay rivalry left in major sports.
“It was good for the ecosystem, and it gave everybody something to talk about, something everybody looked forward to. They got rid of football, so we just had baseball.”
Antonio Sanchez, who was born in Oakland and grew up in Castro Valley, thought of going to Giants-A’s games as “being with my family and my 35,000 closest friends.”
He grew up going to the Coliseum as a child, taking on his fandom from his father, who gave up the Say Hey Kid for the East Bay’s new team.
“My father is from Martinez and grew up in the Bay Area and was a Willie Mays fan at first,” Sanchez said. “But when the A’s came here in 1968, he became an A’s fan. It’s been great being able to share that time with him.”
A throng of 37,551 fans attended the first of the two-game series on Saturday, a 2-0 A’s victory that saw Oakland’s Osvaldo Bido take a no-hitter into the sixth inning of the 147th matchup between the teams.
Among those in town for the encore was lifelong Giants supporter Timothy Cravalho, a man with the Giants logo tattooed on his left bicep. A fan of Oakland’s rival for over five decades, Cravalho still expressed sadness at the end of the series.
“My heart is broken for them, our rival across the bridge. It’s sad for Oakland, and it’s sad for everyone who is a baseball fan,” he said.
The diehard Giants fan actually spent his formative years attending A’s games in the 1970s, when Reggie Jackson and Vida Blue headlined the biggest show in baseball.
The Bay’s two teams famously met in the 1989 World Series, and Cravalho opined that Game 3 was perhaps the series’ greatest moment, even if his team lost.
“I feel like the World Series saved a lot of people too, because they were in a safe place in Giant Stadium.”
All around the stadium’s parking lot, families and friends wearing both teams’ colors reminisced about the good and not-so-good times of the rivalry.
Many of them also furrowed their brows and frowned as they solemnly remembered that this would be the last chapter of the rivalry that brought together both sides of the Bay.
“I remember growing up, coming here when it was the $2 games and playing hooky from school,” Nawahine said. “I’m sad I won’t be able to experience that with my own children or with my family and friends. It’s gonna hurt for real.”
