Opening Day possesses a ritual significance for baseball fans. Writing in The New York Times in April 1963, Roger Angell described Opening Day as “a ceremony of renewal and welcome” whose meaning, for baseball fans, is “psychic and profound”—an Easter in the church of grass and sky. This, Angell was suggesting, is true for all baseball fans every year—but I think he would have conceded that it was perhaps especially true for fans of the Oakland A’s this year. Twelve months ago, John Fisher, owner of the Oakland Athletics, Oakland’s last major league sports team, revealed that he would move the A’s to Las Vegas in 2028. This was bad enough, but then, this February, rumors started swirling that Fisher intended to move the A’s out of Oakland much sooner than that—to Sacramento, at the end of 2024. The ceremony of renewal and welcome would need to be reconfigured into a wake. Opening Day 2024 would be the last Opening Day Oakland fans would probably ever get.
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