A’s fans broke into a ‘let’s go Harper!’ chant. Here’s why.
Bryce Harper is accustomed to getting booed at visiting ballparks. It’s the price you pay for being one of the greatest talents in the sport and playing with the type of fiery intensity that endears you to hometown fans but makes you a villain to opposing fanbases.
But something strange happened when Harper stepped to the plate in Friday night’s Philadelphia Phillies game at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum: A’s fans broke into a loud and prolonged chant of “Let’s go Harper!” Led by fans in section 149 of the right field stands — where a group of very vocal diehards known as the “Oakland 68’s” is positioned at every home game — the chant had many in the stadium confused as to why they were supporting an opposing player, especially one as villified as Harper.
Turns out, Harper and the Oakland 68’s are on the same team.
The Oakland 68’s are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization “centered around preserving the fanaticism of the Oakland A’s fan base.” Though the organization wasn’t formally founded until 2017, they are the evolution of a group that has been cheering for the team from the outfield seats for many years before that. Famous for the chants and rhythms they bring to the game — and especially for the drums they bang that reverberate throughout the stadium — the group of about 70 people is among the most passionate and organized fan groups in all of baseball, and lately their fervor has been channeled towards trying to keep their beloved team in Oakland.
On Friday, as they have been doing all season long, they unfurled a series of signs along the right field fencing that held messages such as “Sell,” “Stay,” and “#FisherOut.” They loudly and vociferously chanted things like “Sell the team!” throughout the game. A chant of “Fisher sucks!” made it clear who their ire was aimed at — A’s owner John Fisher, the heir to The Gap, who has made no mystery of his refusal to invest in the team’s success unless it leaves the Bay Area and resettles in a shiny new $1.5 billion stadium in Las Vegas.
Unfortunately for the Oakland 68’s, Fisher’s goal came one step closer to reality earlier this week when Nevada’s state assembly passed a bill that would grant $380 million in public funding for a new stadium near the Las Vegas Strip.
It’s a move that Harper, a Las Vegas native, seems uncomfortable with.
“I feel sorry for the fans in Oakland,” Harper told USA Today in a story published on Thursday. “It’s just not right. They have so much history in Oakland. You’re taking a team out of a city. I’m pretty sad because of all of the history and all of the greatness they’ve seen there.”
“I see the A’s as Oakland,” he added. “I don’t see them as Vegas.”
Jorge Leon, the founder of the Oakland 68’s, is glad to have Harper’s support. Leon was born and raised in Oakland and has been coming to A’s games at the Coliseum since the early 1990s. Writing in the local publication Oaklandside, Leon tells of taking a “wrong turn” on his way to school some days and ending up at an A’s game. He describes the Coliseum in those days as looking like “a shining diamond just glowing in your face” and remembers watching players like Stan Javier, Rickey Henderson and Mark McGwire win over generations of fans just like him. He even met his wife in the Coliseum bleachers during an A’s game.
So it is especially painful for him to see the A’s most likely headed to another city.
“He’s one of the players that has come out and says he supports keeping the A’s in Oakland,” Leon later said of why he and the 68’s were cheering for Harper. “And I think he’s right overall. Las Vegas needs their own expansion team, born and bred from Las Vegas. And I appreciate all [Harper’s] comments because it’s so true. The ‘Green and Gold’ is Oakland. Out here in the Coliseum we need all the support we can get, and for a player of his magnitude to say something like that, it speaks volumes.”
Like most games Leon has watched this year, his A’s came out on the losing end in a 6-1 final. Harper had two hits in four at bats, with two runs scored.
But for Leon and the rest of the A’s fans in attendance, they were just glad to get to watch their cherished team play baseball in the city they love. Although Fisher’s move to Las Vegas seems more and more likely every day, Leon and the Oakland 68’s are still doing everything they can to try to get the team to stay in Oakland.
Even if that means cheering for an opposing player.
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