Oakland Athletics Finally Removing Upper Deck Tarps at Coliseum
For the past 11 Major League Baseball Seasons the Oakland Athletics have had the upper deck of the Oakland Coliseum covered with tarps.
Lew Wolff, who was at the time one of the Oakland Athletics majority owners, had the tarps put on due to low attendance numbers in 2006.
This is actually rather comical because in 2006 the A's didn't have an attendance problem in 2006. They not only made the postseason by winning the American League Western Division, they made it to the American League Championship Series for the first time since 1992.
Wolff, who still owns a small stake in the franchise, was removed from being the "face of the ownership" after last season. He had done everything possible to try and move the franchise to San Jose or Fremont or anywhere but Oakland.
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Keeping the tarps on was yet another way to further the fans anger and the team's attendance down.
Things have changed now in Oakland.
With Wolff no longer taking care of the day to day details of the franchise, majority owner John Fisher and new team president Dave Kaval have stepped in to fulfill that role.
Kaval's many accomplishments now includes the removal of the tarps.
Fans have been asking for the removal of the tarps since their inception but things really came to a head in 2012.
The club had been predicted to lose 100 games. Instead the ballclub won 97 games, defeating the Texas Rangers on the final day of the season to win the division by a single game.
The A's were drawing sellout crowds and having to turn fans away. Calls for the tarps to be removed were everywhere according to the San Francisco Gate. There were online petitions, pleas from city officials and of course fan complaints to the management.
The A's executives wrote an email to SFGate explaining their reasoning for not removing the tarps. According to them it was to keep the ballpark more intimate.
"The fan experience is better without spreading fans out over more seats," A's executives wrote, "The energy in the park and the fan experience over the last week (when the seats were tarped) was incredible."
Obviously the fans did not agree and when the A's won the division the following season the tarps were removed for the American League Division Series, but that is the only time that they have been removed for a baseball game, until now.
In an email to fans this morning, the Athletics announced that as a "thank you" to the fans the tarps are finally being removed and the team will now be selling View Level tickets for $15 each.
Additionally, during the A's upcoming 10-game homestand that runs from April 14-23 half of every View Level ticket sold will be donated to a charity called Oakland Promise.
"The best fans in baseball deserve the opportunity to experience the whole stadium so we have decided to take off the tarps on the upper deck," A's President Dave Kaval is quoted in the email as saying. "To support our community, we will donate half of all upper deck ticket proceeds from this homestand to Oakland Promise."
Oakland Promise is "a career initiative which aims to triple the number of college graduates from Oakland within the next 10 years," according to an article on KCRA.com
The addition of the View Level seating will add 12,103 seats per game bringing the capacity to a total of 47,170. The Coliseum actually holds 55,945 during football season, but the tarps covering the area known as Mt. Davis will remain in place.
The tarps will finally be coming off of the upper deck of the Oakland Coliseum, making Athletics' games more fan-friendly and the Coliseum more desirable.