Farewell to the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, baseball’s last dive bar
The crumbling stadium that’s prompted the Athletics’ move to Las Vegas was just as cavernous, threadbare, outdated and unfashionable as advertised. Naturally, I loved itOakland-Alameda County Coliseum, the fifth-oldest stadium in Major League Baseball where the A’s have called home since 1968, has been called baseball’s last dive bar. A brutalist concrete doughnut short on grandeur and long on character, seated next to a Bart station at the center of an industrial waste land, no one could ever mistake it for the sport’s revered old cathedrals like Boston’s Fenway Park, Chicago’s Wrigley Field or Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.When I paid the princely sum of $2 for a ticket to a recent Wednesday afternoon game against the Cubs, the stadium...