Every time I attend an Oakland A’s game at the Oakland Coliseum, two thoughts pop into my head. First, I miss Raiders games in Oakland. Second, this isn’t a bad experience. A lot of people want to crap all over it, but why?
This is an ode to the Oakland Coliseum and old, ugly stadiums everywhere. There’s an important lesson they can teach us.
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An ode to the Oakland Coliseum
The Oakland Coliseum exists for people to watch sporting events. Or, occasionally, Monster Jam. It doesn’t have the bells and whistles of modern parks. Wi-Fi isn’t necessary. You piss in a bathtub. Sure, it’s not Instagramable. However, it is functional.
To that end, the Coliseum harkens back to an important time in sports history. The era of going to sporting events and actually watching them. It’s not that all new stadiums are bad. However, many of them have become nothing more than a glorified Dave & Busters where sports happen to be going on in the background. It’s wild how many modern venues have bars, restaurants and other amenities where people choose to watch the game from a TV inside the stadium.
The Oakland Coliseum is raw. It’s a pure, unadulterated sports experience. You go to watch the game, not to say you went to the game. It’s refreshing and it is also something we are losing in sports. Real fans are being pushed aside in favor of people with cash and a desire to be a part of something. Folks who have proven time and again they will abandon you the second things go sideways.
Being real is beautiful. And there is no stadium more real than the Oakland Coliseum. For all its flaws and shortcomings, you have to appreciate what it represents. And as we have seen repeatedly, replacing these venues with something newer doesn’t always equate to something better. A trip over the Bay Bridge is proof of that.
Candlestick Park
My favorite Candlestick Park moment has nothing to do with a game. In the stadium’s dying days, security was, shall we say, lax. You could tell the person staffing the entrance you were going to the ticket office and then walk into the stadium.
One day, me and a few friends did just that. We got to walk on the field and take it all in. No one cared. This is a memory I’ll cherish for the rest of my life.
Candlestick Park may have been decaying and probably dangerous, but it had soul and heart—two things a new stadium cannot buy. At best, Levi’s Stadium has been a disappointment. At worst, it’s a giant middle finger to San Francisco 49ers fans who have been asked to shell out vast sums of money for the right to be exposed to the elements in a facility that looks half complete.
Related: What’s the view like from the Levi’s Stadium Standing Room Only sections?
Vicente Calderón Stadium
Now we head overseas to Madrid and Estadio Vicente Calderón. I still remember going to a game here in 2011 and thinking damn, this is the soccer version of the Oakland Coliseum, only with a freeway running under one side.
In the stadium’s latter years, fans really embraced the decrepit state of the stadium. It became part of Atletico Madrid’s identity as Spanish soccer’s underdogs, although that’s a relative concept because they’re still quite a large club.
You didn’t go to Estadio Vicente Calderón because it was a thing to do, which was a good because parking sucked and it was some ways away from the nearest Metro station. You came here because you loved Atletico Madrid and wanted to see the team play at this imperfect place.
Like the 49ers, the team moved far away from the city center to the Estadio Metropolitano. It is big. It is nice. But there is nothing about it making it uniquely Atletico Madrid. The venue is generic which runs counter to the club’s unique fan base that values being different.
It’s not even that fans hate Estadio Metropolitano. Sure, some still do but by and large, supporters understood. However, most tend to agree the team has lost something magical in its new digs.
Tokyo Dome
Finally, we move over to Tokyo and the Tokyo Dome. I never got to visit any of the great domed professional sports stadiums in America so the Tokyo Dome is the closest I have ever come. It’s brutal, ugly and not particularly inviting, but damn, it has something.
In some ways, watching a game here is like watching a game from Fenway Park. It is a throwback to a different time. You can’t help but be at least somewhat taken aback by the marvels of a dome. You just have to go to Japan to find it.
Final thoughts
Look, the Oakland Coliseum probably won’t be around by the end of this decade. And I understand why. But there is also an argument to be made for keeping it around. It’s the last of a dying breed of stadiums. That means we won’t be able to get that experience and feeling back when it is gone.
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