Athletics Decline Pioneer League Team's Request to Play Game at Oakland Coliseum

The Oakland Athletics rejected the Oakland Ballers request to play a Pioneer League Game at the Oakland Coliseum on June 29, 2024, despite the Ballers having an agreement in place with ASM Global, the organization that manages the stadium.

Athletics' vice president of stadium operations David Rinetti sent the following email to ASM Global on Dec. 29, per Melissa Lockard of The Athletic:

"We support the JPA (Joint Powers Authority)'s efforts to bring new events to the Coliseum. However, under our license agreement with the JPA, we have the exclusive right to play professional baseball at the Coliseum, and we therefore do not consent to your request. We are happy to work with the JPA on other ways to celebrate and promote professional baseball in Oakland."

Paul Freedman, one of the founders of the Ballers, told Lockard the entire organization was "surprised and disappointed" by the response from the Athletics.

"We think that Oakland is the best baseball market in the world, the best city in the world for baseball, and we think that the Coliseum, despite its flaws, is the best place for baseball to be played," he added. "We really thought that this could be a milestone celebration that we're going to continue to have baseball in Oakland, and we think that the community would have been really excited about it."

The Athletics haven't exactly wrapped themselves in good press in the past few years as the organization moves closer to its Las Vegas relocation. The team is entering the final year of its lease at the Oakland Coliseum, leaving questions as to where the team will play in 2025, with a new Vegas stadium not expected to be completed until 2028.

Oakland owner John Fisher isn't particularly popular in Oakland these days, and even his team's former roommates at the Coliseum, the now-Las Vegas Raiders, didn't have much nice to say about the organization.

"I won't forget what they did to us in Oakland. They squatted on a lease for 10 years and made it impossible for us to build on that stadium," Raiders' owner Mark Davis told John Katsilometes of the Las Vegas Review-Journal in April. "They were looking for a stadium. We were looking for a stadium. They didn't want to build a stadium, and then went ahead and signed a 10-year lease with the city of Oakland and said, 'We're the base team.'"

"For them to leave Oakland without anything is pretty (screwed) up," he added. "Because that site that the stadium was on was a good site."

Clearly, the Athletics aren't the biggest fans of sharing.