The Giants will welcome the Athletics to Oracle Park tomorrow to begin a three-game series. What are Giants fans’ favorite memories of Giants vs. A’s games?
Good morning, baseball fans!
The San Francisco Giants are enjoying a day off at home today before they welcome the Athletics to Oracle Park for the….Bay Bridge Series? Hmm, that doesn’t fit anymore. The I-80 series? We’ll workshop that one. Anyway, the point is that the A’s are in town this weekend, so I thought it would be fun to talk about some of our favorite Giants vs. A’s memories.
Personally, all of my earliest baseball memories involve the A’s. Literally one of my first memories ever is of the 1989 World Series (and subsequent earthquake). I didn’t get to attend a Giants home game until Oracle Park opened in my freshman year of high school. But I grew up in a baseball family with a fairly even mix of Giants, A’s and Los Angeles Dodgers fans, so we attended many family games when the Giants played the A’s at the Coliseum. Uncles turning on uncles, cousins battling it out with trash talk. It was a bitter rivalry, but filled with an undercurrent of love. Super wholesome.
My first employer would buy group tickets and raffle them off to employees pretty regularly. So I attended quite a few Giants vs. A’s games that way too. Those were a bit less wholesome. In my early 20s, a coworker I attended a game with proceeded to drink a fifth of whiskey and got so surly after the Giants lost that he was walking out of Oracle Park mouthing off at every A’s fan he passed. It’s a wonder we made it out of the park in one piece.
Most of my favorite memories of these games were more about the vibes than what happened on the field. But there is one game that really stands out to me. It was September 26th, 2015. I wasn’t at the game, my mom had just opened a store and my brother and I were helping out and listening to the game. Tim Hudson was starting for the Giants and Barry Zito was starting for the A’s. Jarrett Parker hit three home runs! My brother and I were incapacitated with laughter well before he hit his third, a grand slam, that allowed the Giants to go on to win 14-10. Yet I don’t think anyone really cared about the outcome, it was important and memorable because it was a celebration of Bay Area legends.
That old rivalry between the Giants and the A’s might not really exist anymore, with Giants fans much more concerned about their rivals to the south. But the environment of a Giants vs. A’s game cannot be beaten. A’s fans are truly a different breed. And I mean that with love and respect. They’re equal parts passionate, funny, knowledgeable, and full of it. Every game spent in that environment always left me with a lot of fond memories, even if the Giants lost.