Reggie Jackson may be wearing a New York Yankees cap on his plaque in Cooperstown, but he spent nine of his 21 Hall of Fame seasons in Oakland with the Athletics.
Jackson was a perennial MVP candidate with the A’s, winning one in 1973. His number 9 is retired by the organization he won three straight World Series with from 1972 to 1974.
But the A’s will soon be history in Oakland and headed to Las Vegas.
The Athletics are following the NFL’s Raiders to Vegas. The Raiders moved there in 2020 after spending the previous 25 seasons in the Bay Area. They called Oakland home from 1960-1981 before moving to Los Angeles.
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Reggie Jackson carries the World Series trophy during a ceremony honoring the 50-year reunion of the World Series champion 1973 Oakland Athletics before an A’s game against the New York Mets at RingCentral Coliseum April 16, 2023, in Oakland, Calif. (Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
The A’s had long been rumored to be leaving the city of Oakland as the team and the city have been unable to come to an agreement on a new ballpark. Once a sports town with three teams — the NHL’s San Jose Sharks are less than an hour drive from Oakland — it will soon have zero.
An Oakland legend, Jackson ripped the city for which he hit 146 of his 563 career homers for not only losing his A’s, but everybody else.
“You’re going to lose the team,” Jackson told Sportico in a recent interview. “The city, I thought, really needed to do something. Save the A’s. You lost the [Golden State] Warriors. You lost the Raiders. What the hell’s wrong with you? You can’t see that coming? The fans don’t deserve that. I blame the people running the deal. You’ve got to keep the team for the benefit of the city. They lost all three of them.”
The team signed a binding agreement to purchase land in Vegas with the intention of building a new ballpark.Â
Oakland Athletics logos in the dugout before a game against the San Francisco Giants at the Oakland Coliseum July 22, 2018, in Oakland, Calif. (Jason O. Watson/Getty Images)
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A’s President Dave Kaval told the Las Vegas Review-Journal a $1.5 billion, 30,000-seat ballpark with a partially retractable roof would be built on the site.Â
“For a while, we were on parallel paths (with Oakland), but we have turned our attention to Las Vegas to get a deal here for the A’s and find a long-term home,” Kaval told the Review-Journal Wednesday. “Oakland has been a great home for us for over 50 years, but we really need this 20-year saga completed, and we feel there’s a path here in Southern Nevada to do that.”
Reggie Jackson addresses the crowd during a pregame ceremony introducing the first members of the Oakland Athletics Hall of Fame prior to a game between the Athletics and the New York Yankees Sept. 5, 2018, in Oakland, Calif. (Michael Zagaris/Oakland Athletics/Getty Images)
“It’s really exciting to have a site,” Kaval said. “We’ve spent almost two years doing our due diligence, working with community leaders, elected officials and everyone in town to really determine a location that could be a win for the A’s as well as the community and public officials.”
“We support the A’s turning their focus on Las Vegas and look forward to them bringing finality to this process by the end of the year,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement provided to the Review-Journal.
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The A’s, who are 4-16 and on pace for 32 wins this season, are aiming to call Nevada home by 2027.
Fox News’ Joe Morgan contributed to this report.
