Baseball Legends Slam Oakland Over A's Vegas Move

Rickey Henderson and Dave Stewart know a thing or two about winning in Oakland. The former Athletics stars were key members of the franchise’s last World Series championship team in 1989. Henderson was the ALCS MVP that year while Stewart took home World Series MVP honors.

Now, over three decades later, the two Oakland natives are deeply disappointed in their hometown’s inability to keep the A’s from skipping town for Las Vegas. In a blistering critique, they blamed Oakland’s leadership for failing to get a deal done to build a new ballpark that could have kept the team rooted in the city.

“It’s disappointing to see the A’s leaving,” Henderson told the San Francisco Chronicle. “But we’ve gone through so much with all the teams. The city, there’s something they’re not seeing. When you have a city that had three big-name professional sports teams, and you can’t keep any of them, something’s wrong. It’s sad for the city.”

The Raiders have now left Oakland twice, first for Los Angeles in the 1980s before returning in the 1990s, only to depart again for Las Vegas in 2020. The Golden State Warriors said goodbye to Oracle Arena for greener pastures in San Francisco in 2019. And now the A’s are following suit, with plans to begin play in a brand new $1.5 billion stadium in Vegas by 2028.

Stewart, who now works as a special assistant to the A’s general manager, blasted Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao for her “wrong approach” to trying to broker a last-minute lease extension that would keep the A’s at the RuningColiseum for a few more years while their Vegaspark is being constructed.

Among Thao’s demands were that MLB promises to award an expansion team to Oakland once the A’s leave, and that the team’s name, colors and branding remain in the city. Stewart scoffed at those asks, saying “You’re going to try to force baseball to give you an expansion team? It’s not the way to go about it.”

The former pitcher also ripped the mayor for going public with inflammatory negotiating tactics, accusing her of simply “trying to talk to your constituents in Oakland” with no realistic chance of getting what she wants from MLB.

For their part, the A’s have already purchased half of the Oakland Coliseum site from Alameda County, with plans to develop the land and use the revenue to fund their Las Vegas stadium project. This investment has further muddied the waters when it comes to negotiating an affordable short-term lease extension.

While Henderson holds out faint hope that “maybe they figure out a way to make it work” and keep the A’s in Oakland long-term, Stewart is far more pessimistic. “Even for something as little as getting an extended lease for the stadium, I just don’t see there to be a possibility,” he lamented.

The Athletics’ roots in Oakland stretch back over 50 years, to when the formerly Kansas City-based franchise relocated to the Bay Area in 1968. In the decades since, the A’s have produced some of baseball’s most iconic teams and players, from the dynastic Swingin’ A’s clubs of the 1970s to the “Bash Brothers” and “Billydball” teams of the late 1980s and early 90s.

That legacy looks to be coming to an unceremonious end in a few short years, as the A’s plan for Vegas nears reality. Once MLB’s most renegade, free-spirited franchise, the A’s appear to be following the glitzy script of so many who have headed for Nevada before them.

But at least two of the greatest players in team history aren’t going down without a fight. Henderson and Stewart have made it clear where they stand, pulling no punches in denouncing their city’s role in driving the A’s out of town after over half a century.