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A’s Upper Deck
"That Upper Deck was my home, and closing my favorite thirty sections doesn’t make the stadium a better OR more affordable place to watch a game."
By Nico Savidge
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After announcing their schedule for this season, the A's also announced their plans to close the third (also known as the upper) deck of Oakland's multi-use stadium, McAfee Coliseum. The new baseball season capacity plunged by nearly ten thousand, the lowest in the Major Leagues. Youth Radio's Nico Savidge, a dedicated upperdeck fan, talks about the sudden change and what it means for him and his peers.
The 2006 Major League Baseball season has just begun, but already a lot of Oakland A’s fans are worried.
No, there’s not a key pitcher hurt, or a gap in the lineup, knock on wood. Our big fear for this season is the Upper Deck – and its demise.
For those of you who don’t know, seating in Oakland’s McAfee Coliseum is divided into the outfield bleachers and three tiers – the Field Level is the most expensive at 30 dollars, the Plaza Level costs 20 dollars, and the Upper Deck costs ten dollars for adults and five bucks for kids.
In December, A’s owner Lewis Wolff announced he was going to close my five-dollar haven, eliminating more than 10,000 seats and trying to create a “more intimate atmosphere” in the stadium. He’s draping a huge tarp with the words “Home of the Oakland Athletics” over the entire Upper Deck.
Now those cheap tickets are pretty much impossible to get. The only seats you can get for five bucks are behind the bleachers, and there are only three thousand of them.
That Upper Deck was my home, and closing my favorite thirty sections doesn’t make the stadium a better OR more affordable place to watch a game. All Mr. Wolff is doing is alienating thousands of potential customers who come to see high-profile match-ups against teams like the Yankees or Giants.
This is a terrible business decision, and it really makes me wonder if Mr. Wolff is ONLY doing this so he can say the A’s aren’t drawing enough fans and, as a result, that he HAS to move the team. Why else would he throw away all that revenue?
I, for one, want the A’s to get rid of that tarp and reopen the Upper Deck today. Then we can go back to the cheap seats and big stadium I fell in love with, and forget this entire ugly incident ever happened.
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