Fans’ Fest 2025
That they need to put on their own celebration—and do it so successfully, year in and year out—should tell you all you need to know about the love and grit of Oakland fans.
It’s hard to put your finger on what exactly makes these fans—us—and this day so special. Maybe it was the arts and crafts table that was, amid the voluminous other offerings, my son’s tractor-beam first stop (thanks, CallThatAgent.com!). Or maybe it was Raimondi’s stalwart playground, here and available every single day of the year, that was, of course, bustling with kids start-to-finish.
Was it the professional wrestler gianting through the crowd, praising the arrival of the California sun when it poked through the clouds, or was it the huge and chatty lines for autographs snaking along half of the Raimondi outfield? Maybe it was all the food trucks and vendors and the shiny new food spots in the Prescott Market, shinier in their earnestness to make a good impression (including our fortunate encounter with Violet, the young namesake of Pizzeria Violetta) ahead of all these Bay-grown places collecting B’s fans during the season.
Or maybe/obviously it was Scrappy, willing to groove and shake his marsupial tail with anything that moved (or his huge accompanying staff minder with his huge smile…I have it on good authority from a general manager of a certain baseball team that kids not infrequently try to hit Scrappy below the belt...no such shenanigans today).
Maybe it was the group of fans who sprang into action after a gust of wind knocked down a display of Angeline Otis jewelry, helping set that world right without a word. It definitely might have been the dog serving blue fohawk or the fallen note amid the traffic reminding Katie, wherever and whoever she is, that She Sparkles. Maybe it was homegrown Ballers players fulfilling lifelong dreams to start a Lets-Go-Oak-land chant.
It's all of that good stuff, of course. It’s the thousand little things making the “immaculate vibes” that come organically only after much planning and work. It is strange and rare and wonderful that fans, who almost by definition gather to celebrate something else, to cheer and not to be cheered, at least once a year get to celebrate themselves. So, I guess I should reconsider how I began here, this dispatch, this day that turned sunny and full. What might have started as a need, a fans’ festival of righteous anger to fill a void and commemorate a loss, has become something else—an appreciation of the joy of being together.
It’s like the sign says: Oakland isn’t punchlines or redlines or bottom lines; it isn’t just the name on a jersey or the letter on your hat. It’s a place, an idea, that welcomes everyone but isn’t for everybody. It takes work to make it work. And for us, it’s heaven.
