With Big Changes Ahead, Bay Area Baseball Fans Celebrate Opening Day

After a delay caused by the second-longest strike in MLB history, baseball has returned today, Friday, to the Bay Area. On Opening Day, the Giants host the Miami Marlins at Oracle Park. The A’s play in Philadelphia.

Both teams are dealing with major changes this season: The Giants are missing their star catcher Buster Posey, who announced his retirement last season, while the A’s have traded away several productive players — Chris Bassitt, Matt Olson and Matt Chapman — and beloved manager Bob Melvin, who left to manage the San Diego Padres.

“We’re all a little bit disconcerted because we’ve gotten attached to the players and Melvin,” said Joanne Hall, a longtime A’s fan, on Wednesday during a Giants-A’s joint event outside San Francisco’s Ferry Building to promote Opening Day. “But the A’s have a long history of building a good team, and I think we’re going to be starting a new one.”

Standing near her team’s mascot, Stomper the elephant, she addressed the other elephant in the dugout, so to speak: whether yet another Oakland sports team will relocate. The team wants to build a new waterfront ballpark, but owners also are checking out options in Las Vegas, where Oakland’s former NFL team, the Raiders, currently resides.

“It makes no sense to build a stadium out at the port when we’ve got a perfectly good site at the Coliseum and BART goes right to it. I think a lot of fans feel that way,” she said, holding a copy of “50 Years of Oakland A’s Baseball.” She hoped legendary A’s pitcher Vida Blue would sign it.

Blue, who also played for the Giants, appeared at Wednesday’s event. He weighed in on the future of the A’s.

“It’s a big business. Getting traded is part of the business,” he said. “Teams come and teams go. Hopefully, they can get something resolved, and the A’s can stay in Oakland.”

Relocation can be a touchy subject for many A’s fans. Some tweeted outrage that Wednesday’s event, meant to promote both Bay Area teams, took place in San Francisco.

Hey @Athletics… The comments on this tweet are overwhelmingly negative. The Giants haven’t tweeted anything about it. Are they even aware of it? Serious question… Who’s the genius in the FO that thought this was a good idea? https://t.co/I90OiA5Yjx

— CoachⓋShawn (@shawcochrane) April 5, 2022

Hall said she doesn’t mind seeing Stomper far from the Coliseum.

“We let him go over the bridge once in a while,” she said.

As Giants fan Robin Shaw pointed out, “Baseball brings out this kind of joy.” He’s excited for the return of baseball — especially after the recent strike and the intense couple of years brought on by COVID, which put a halt on professional sports for a while.

“Seeing your friends get sick and your elderly friends or relatives die, it affects people,” he said. “Baseball did its darndest to entertain us, and offered us a distraction and gave us hope.”

As for the future of the Giants, which had a franchise-record number of wins last season, Shaw said the team could still sneak in as a wild card with Posey gone.

“That’s a tall order,” he added. “It’s going to be another one of those seasons where we have our own unique sets of trials and tribulations that we’ll have to overcome and that will hopefully steel our resolve.”