At the moment, the Oakland Athletics sit at the bottom of the AL West on track to have the worst Major League Baseball record of all time. Just 3 years ago, the Oakland Athletics made the MLB postseason but since then, there team has been decimated through superstar trades and a hint at a move to Las Vegas. Oakland is pretty much living the story of hit baseball film, Major League. Where the owner tries to purposely lose games to move cities. It’s obvious that Josh Fisher, the owner of the Athletics does not want to stay in Oakland as it is almost confirmed they are now moving to Las Vegas in upcoming years.

Former A’s shortstop Baseman and co-host of podcast Talkin’ Baseball, Trevor Plouffe has said on multiple occasions that Oakland has the most diehard fans but when the team is this bad there is no point in going to games anymore. For a team to have a biopic about them highlighting their poor ownership and the hustling they needed to do to win games to have it happen again, makes the loyal A’s fans lose faith in the organisation. To have a team with so much pedigree and superstars like Rickey Henderson, it hurts to see them fail to make any progress due to bad management, who obviously have no interest in building a great Major League roster. This now begs the question for why Las Vegas?

For years US sports have pushed the agenda for Las Vegas sport teams. In fact, the only three mainstream US sports to not have a Las Vegas team is the NBA, MLB and MLS. This doesn’t change the fact that Las Vegas is always rumoured to get a team in each of those sports and their presence is always felt when a team is performing badly. This has been the case for the A’s. Now the devastating news of Oakland are not going to have an MLB team in the next few years is bad for the game of baseball.

The A’s in their prime were one of the most iconic MLB teams, largely contributed to the Moneyball Oakland team or even in the mid 70’s where they won 3 straight World Series’ off the bat of Mr October, Reggie Jackson. Oakland was such a big influence at one point that there is an Andy Samberg starring musical parody about the Bash Brothers, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire.

But as the A’s progressively lose more and more it looks bleak for the A’s and the diehard fans have even had enough. Every year it seems Oakland just become a pitching farm that eventually get traded to the bigger market teams. Many sports journalists label the A’s the worst team in MLB history but the unfortunate change is about to happen. It will be a sad bookend to a team with so much history and pedigree. But what are you going to do when your owner wants to lose?