The Bay Bridge Series is gone, and it's only going to get worse: Brisbee

New York Times

16-05-2025

In 1999, then-MLB commissioner Bud Selig tweaked the format of interleague play to give the world more Giants-A's games every season. For several years, it put both teams at a competitive disadvantage, as they were often contending teams at the same time, but few complained. There were two Major League Baseball teams separated by a small body of water. On a clear day, you could see one ballpark from the upper deck of the other ballpark, and everyone had at least one friend who cared more about the other team, which made it a perfect low-stakes rivalry. Let them play. Let their fans have some fun.
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In order for MLB to get the regional rivalry series, other teams had to pretend they had a rivalry — Brewers-Twins being a personal favorite — to balance out the schedule. Again, few people minded. The Padres and Mariners learned to have fun with their forced rivalry, eventually leaning into the idea of the Vedder Cup, but even before that, the pseudo-rivalries were worth it to get to the best regional rivalries. The Subway Series. The North Side vs. the South Side. The Freeway Series. The Bay Bridge Series. These games were never going to mean as much as, say, Yankees-Red Sox or Giants-Dodgers, but they were going to mean more than the average game. And in this context, 'meaning more' was synonymous for everyone having more fun while watching baseball games. Which should be the whole point of the sport.
Should be. Used to be. Is no longer. The Athletics — one word, no city or region before the team name, an entire franchise doomed to wander the Earth like Caine from 'Kung Fu' — are coming to San Francisco, and it's far less fun.
There you have it, went from Battle of the Bay to the 'Highway 80 Series'.
Brought to you by #FJF.
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Instead of thinking about a bridge that you can see from your arcade seats, you're thinking about sitting in traffic on a Sunday afternoon, behind approximately 100,000 people who went to Lake Tahoe. All of them had more fun than you did over the weekend. They make the lines at In-N-Out even longer, too.
Still, it's not not cool for the Giants to play a team in Sacramento, so some of the novelty remains. You might have friends or family in the Sacramento area, and you can still razz each other. It's still a local team for now, and the A's are still playing a car ride away, which isn't a geographical feature that a lot baseball teams can offer. It'll take you about nine hours to get from Coors Field to Kauffman Stadium, even though that's the Rockies' closest geographical rival.
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Eventually, even this might be taken away from us. Because while I still have the hope — still quite reasonable — that A's owner John Fisher will somehow screw everything up and the team will never move to Las Vegas, the momentum is definitely suggesting there will be only one team for the 12 million or so people in Northern California. The Giants are excited about that idea, and they've worked hard to facilitate it. Almost everyone else knows it stinks.
The A's playing the Giants used to be a reminder that you lived in one of the great baseball hubs in the world, which happened to be in the best part of the world. Now it's yet another reminder that everything is getting worse for almost everyone, at all times, for the benefit of a few people.
This isn't a controversial or political statement. It only gets political when you define who 'the few' are, but the idea that everything is getting worse has entered into the English language. Nobody asked for Lift 'n' Peel tops, which make millions of people reach for a butter knife every day, but the pennies saved are helping a few people make more pennies, so it's your problem now. (They were invented by the Selig Group, by the way. No relation, but it doesn't hurt the thesis here.)
Google used to be a great search engine. But it's not for you anymore. It's only for the people whose lives get better because of … whatever this is.
Larry Bonds, we hardly knew ye. We'll always remember your oddly specific rookie season in 1979. You can get these kinds of results all day long, and they're making things better for someone, somewhere. Not you, though. Not you.
The reason the Oakland A's are now the Redacted A's and will eventually be the Las Vegas A's is because of one man and his family fortune. He didn't create anything, didn't add value to our lives. All he did was not put that fortune into something stupid like inflatable belts or edible pants. With that hard work out of the way, he now plans to stand astride the Mojave Desert and say, 'My name is John Fisher, Owner of Owners. Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!', before it all crumbles. The Giants might end up with more eyeballs with the A's in Nevada, but the world will lose generations of potential baseball fans. It's not like the smallest market in the major leagues is going to make that up, so it'll eventually come back around to hurt the Giants, albeit in an abstract way.
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There's someone reading this right now who grew up in the shadow of the Polo Grounds, and they're thinking it's pretty rich that Bay Area baseball people get to whine about this. Fair enough. But there's a substantial difference between baseball's version of Manifest Destiny, made possible by advances in air travel, and the whims of a couple goobers always looking to extract more. The profit motive has always been around, and a big part of the Haas family handing over South Bay territorial rights to the Giants was almost certainly tied to the idea of the A's having a bigger slice of the San Francisco market. At least part of the motivation, though, was Walter Haas believing two teams in the Bay Area improved more lives than not. That sort of calculation doesn't exist anymore, not even in the abstract.
When the A's and Giants played against each other in the past, it was a reminder that we deserve nice things. Now that they're moving toward the phantom rivalry of the Phillies and Blue Jays, Tigers and Pirates, it's a reminder that everything is getting worse all around you, at all times, for no good reason.
A's-Giants games used to be something to look forward to. In their place, you get three more years of watered-down fun, and then you'll get an annual weekend of remembrance. 'Here's a toast to when things didn't suck quite as much,' you might say as you hoist a glass.
'Shhhh,' the person next you at the 2029 Giants-A's game will say. 'My company comped me these tickets while I'm in town for the convention, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't whine so much. Actually, forget it, it's too hot, so I'm leaving after the third inning.'
How can you not be romantic about baseball?
Quiet, you.
(Top photo from the final Bay Bridge Series: Darren Yamashita/ USA Today)