Putting Down Roots
My first visit back to the Coliseum since the end of baseball there.
Parking at BART, the smell of piss in the tunnel under the tracks (actually, somewhat subdued; credit to all involved), the whoosh of the train overhead and the classic calls of the vendors, “Beer while you’re walking, beer while you’re talking.” The sizzle of hot dogs and bacon and suitably mysterious spice found nowhere else. My son’s fascination with the triple-train nexus: BART, the airport connector, and if you’re lucky, Amtrak. The canal, empty enough to see discarded tires but plenty full for the family of ducks having the best time. My body slipping into just the right lean going down the ramp to the parking lots. The looming concrete of the last dive girl herself shrouded in pregame smokes of all kinds. The cracks in the overhangs that still leak. All of it so familiar and warm and wonderful and inescapably sad.
We’ve said countless time about Raimondi that no matter the charm or quirks of the place it’s the people who make it magic. The Oakland Roots put on an amazing show here, and the added space of the parking lots provides lavishly for the village they create: food trucks and Torani Little Treat Trucks and kids’ zone and buses driven by skeletons. I loved the experience down at Pioneer Stadium and obviously love this more. It’s on me for not coming yet this season to the Coliseum. I told myself I wasn’t ready but that’s selfish. It’s a mistake I won’t repeat, and one I’ll have help fixing.
We were here first for the tailgate of the newly formed Oakland Sports Group. I’m partisan, obviously, and I believe deeply in the people making this work, but the goal of championing the Town’s sports by supporting the present, preserving the past, and planning for the future seems like such a necessary and daresay overdue consolidation of our cornerstone resources: the 68s, Oaklandish, Soul and Roots, Ballers and Oakland Marathon. Bringing the talent and tenacity of these front offices and fans together is essential. No one else is going to give Oakland anything or make it easy or make it fair. It’s more than strength in numbers; it’s gathering all the energy and good ideas so that nobody carries the burdens or the glory alone. Fan friend Garth Kimball pulled the quarter-behind-the-ear trick on my son for the first time —with a wooden Oaklandish token, no less—and in his young life it was genuinely seeing magic. What was parlor for us was profound for him. My son also held the championship trophy for the first time. I told him he was a part of winning it. How? he asked. By going to games, I said, and cheering and being a fan of the team. This had to sit for a moment in his five-years-old-in-two-weeks brain. I was glad he wasn’t still holding the shatterable glass. Well I am going to cheer harder next year, he said finally, and we are going to get a bigger one.
Inside, the Roots have made the Coliseum intimate despite its size. Every seat has a superb view. While my son was disappointed that he couldn’t go up to the very last row and chase seagulls for hours (thank you, Roots), this was more than made up for with ice cream, plentiful kids in costume, and the enormous Los Roots flags. The crowd was so young, so friendly. Every time I started to wallow—I used to sit here, we had a birthday party there, we knew the ushers here, remember when the homer landed over there—my son was off and running to something else newly marvelous and I was reminded how nostalgia without hunger is a privilege of the old. The halftime (the interval? the break? am I doing this right?) entertainment was a fashion show from local schools—more boundless creativity from our fans, friends, and neighbors and another great idea from teams a part of and not apart from their communities. To think anything is over here is to miss everything.
We left pre-fireworks—such is the curse of bedtime—but the lights cascading across the clouds, flashing sky selfies of this old stadium on our slow trek back across the bridge are their own kind of tradition, one of so many legacies that we can’t lose to a hole in a distant desert. My son loved the fireworks here long before he ever knew a game was happening on the field. The ice cream tastes better here than anywhere else. There was a time when the BART escalators were the most interesting thing in the world and we barely got to the gates. All of this is worth celebrating while fighting for more. I was late to the new party here but I’ll make up for it. Of course it would take a team named after roots that run so deep to reclaim a place that was always ours.
