'89 A's deserve better than small-market reunion

<p>OAKLAND -- The Oakland A’s always do things wrong. The Oakland A’s are cheap and amateurish, and if that seems harsh, it’s still the truth.</p><p>Tuesday evening, the A’s held the 20th reunion for their 1989 world championship team. It was a great team, a team that went 8-1 in the postseason and beat the Giants 4-0 in the Earthquake World Series. The 1989 A’s easily were the best big-league baseball club in the Bay Area in the past three decades. This team deserved a stunning reunion. Instead it got Amateur Hour.</p><p>We know it was Amateur Hour because we could compare the A’s and the Giants on this one. The Giants planned their event lavishly. They placed a big white tent on the other side of the outfield fence and invited in fans to meet the players. The A’s held their private reception, such as it was, in the dreary vacant Raiders’ locker room. It felt like having a big-league reunion in a rec room. It felt like the A’s lost the World Series in 1989 and the Giants were the winners.</p><p>Most of the Giants stars gladly came to the San Francisco reunion.</p><p>Twelve A’s showed up. Twelve. That’s not even half the club.</p><p>Rickey Henderson, bless his heart, was there as opposed to say, Dave Parker and Terry Steinbach and Dennis Eckersley, who were not.</p><p>This is what Henderson said about the pathetic turnout of world-champion A’s players: “You don’t know how they (the A’s) tried to put it together. You don’t know that situation — give the guys time enough to get here. Did they have this planned? It might have been the Giants planned it and then we decided we’d have one. I don’t know. If you give the players time, I think most of them would come.”</p><p>As of a month ago, the A’s did not have a firm date for their reunion. It’s not like this series snuck up on the A’s — the dates for these games were known. The Giants joyfully had their reunion set in the offseason. But then again the Giants are a professional organization. In some respects, the A’s are rinky-dink.</p><p>They were in this respect.</p><p>If they had given the players enough time, maybe Eckersley, who announces for the Red Sox, could have arranged his schedule to make the trip. What kind of 1989 reunion is there without Eckersley? Was A’s leadership satisfied with his absence?</p><p>If anyone actually had planned this event, Mark McGwire might have come. Imagine what that would mean to A’s fans, the sight of McGwire, bashful and self-effacing, waving to them as he walked across the field. It would have taken delicacy and planning to reach out to McGwire. It would have taken a high official in the organization or an important 1989 player — Henderson, Dave Stewart. It would have required a visit or a personal phone call — a large, generous, compassionate gesture. An attempt was essential. No one attempted.</p><p>Most other teams honor their history. The Giants honor their history.</p><p>You can see Willie Mays and Willie McCovey at AT&T Park all the time.</p><p>What famous A’s players do you routinely see in the Coliseum?</p><p>Here is Henderson on why he rarely shows up: “I’d love to be here, me being a native and Dave (Stewart) being a native. I don’t think they ask their ballplayers like certain other teams, like the Yankees. They don’t get involved with their players that played the game, let them be a part of this organization.”</p><p>Henderson said current ballplayers need to connect with the past. “Me with the Yankees, I was a great ballplayer, but I was in awe of the players that played before me and played the game well. You got a chance to talk to them, and it made you want to go out and do better. They gave me a challenge.”</p><p>The A’s should make A’s fans proud of their past, but the A’s don’t care about their past. Owner Lew Wolff, or whatever he is, comes off like a carpetbagger barely involved with the Oakland community. He’s trying to flee the community. Walter Haas, who owned the championship team, didn’t care about making millions with the A’s or, good grief, building condos near a ballpark. He made a baseball team. Everything about Wolff feels mercantile and shabby compared to Haas.</p><p>Wolff always gripes that his team is small-market. Henderson didn’t think the A’s were small-market. In 1989 they drew 2.6 million fans, fifth in the majors. That’s not small-market. The next year they did even better. Under Wolff they are small-market.</p><p>I blame Wolff for the crummy celebration of the 1989 team. He’s in charge. The only one I don’t blame is Billy Beane because he’s involved with making the current team. But every other A’s executive whiffed on this one.</p><p>And that leads to the key question. Did the A’s whiff by accident — the way they whiff on so many things? Or did they whiff on purpose? I say it was on purpose. I say the A’s don’t care about their image in Oakland. I say they’re intentionally distancing themselves from their history and their ballpark and their fans.</p><p>Happy reunion, 1989 team. You deserved better.</p><p><em>For more on the world of sports in general and the Bay Area in particular, go to the Cohn Zohn at blog.pressdemocrat.com/cohn. You can reach Staff Columnist Lowell Cohn at 521-5486 or lowell.cohn@pressdemocrat.com.</p>