The Last Day of the Oakland A’s

The staggering stupidity of this situation overpowers the senses.

Let’s begin with Dwayne Murphy. Every franchise in every sport, it seems to me, has a quintessential player. This is not necessarily the team’s “greatest” player. For the Oakland Athletics, the greatest player could be Rickey… or Reggie… or Campy… or Rudi… or Giambi… or Rollie… or Catfish or Huddy or Chávez or McGwire or even Canseco, depending on when you grew up.

But no, we’re not talking about the greatest player.

We’re talking the quintessential Oakland Athletic, the player who nobody else really appreciated the way Oakland fans did. And that is Dwayne Murphy. He was born in Merced, a two-hour drive away, and he played centerfield at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum like a dream. This, it should be said, was when the place was simply called the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, long before it became the UMAX Technology Coliseum or Network Associated Coliseum or McAfee Coliseum or the baffling O Co Coliseum or the RingCentral Coliseum.