AEW's Eddie Kingston, a Yankees Fan, Wears "Sell" Shirt on Dynamite
When All Elite Wrestling visited Oakland towards the end of 2023, announcer Tony Schiavone proclaimed his love for the Oakland A's and said they should stay in The Town. On the most recent episode of AEW Dynamite on Wednesday, Eddie Kingston was wearing a shirt that said "Sell the Team" during his backstage segment.
While the shirt shares the same sentiment that many fans in Oakland feel, the one that Kingston is wearing is actually from the podcast Tipping Pitches, a baseball show that goes over issues surrounding the game, rather than the play on the field. One of the hosts, Alex, grew up in the Bay Area as an A's fan, but after a two episode discussion during the offseason, he landed on rooting for the Philadelphia Phillies.
KIngston's shirt isn't the only "Sell" message that was seen around on Wednesday either. In Texas, where the A's are taking on the Rangers, fans apparently had one of the flags that was handed out at the Opening Day boycott unfurled for a brief moment in time.
Then there was this picture from the Oakland 68's, one of the groups, along with Last Dive Bar, that has been putting on the events to gather A's fans over the past year. It shows five flags hanging in Jack London Square, across from the A's offices.
The public sentiment is clear at this point. ESPN, CBS, and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic have all published articles this week just dismantling the franchise. ESPN went inside the negotiations between the A's and Oakland about the lease extension, which included a quote from Leigh Hanson, Mayor Sheng Thao's Chief of Staff.
"It's your responsibility to decide where you're going to play baseball. We pick up trash and we do cops and we care about economic development, but it's not our responsibility to house you."
This was after the A's had waited until February to reach out about a lease extension and hadn't put forward a plan of their own for a lease extension. The city was just tired of dealing with this ownership group, and that quote sums that sentiment up perfectly.
The CBS article includes talks with workers at the Coliseum that will be without jobs in the coming days, weeks, or months and voices a lot of frustration with the way they have been treated by the franchise during this entire relocation saga. Rosenthal wrote a column asking soon-to-be free agents whether they would sign with the A's to play in Sacramento and questions how Fisher could ramp up payroll even if he wanted to.
The longer we go without answers to very real questions about Las Vegas, the more people are going to doubt that the move will ever happen. Fisher has spent 20 years trying to find a ballpark solution just about anywhere in order to increase the value of the franchise. The thing is, the way that he's going about his business is really hurting the brand he one day hopes to profit off of when he does eventually sell the team.