Site map
Photos!
ALL STAR GAME: 1987
With a circular design that was clearly intended for baseball use just as much as for football use, this could be considered as an "on-speculation" stadium, i.e., one that was built with public funds for the express purpose of luring abaseball franchise to relocate from another city. With all of the seats being oriented concentrically, the design resembled Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, with huge foul territory that favored pitchers and penalized fans by making them sit far from the action. The obvious difference from Atlanta Stadium was that the upper two decks only extended for about 255 degrees (71 percent) around the circle; this was the same setup as at Shea Stadium and (until 1989) the Astrodome.
The seating reconfiguration at Oakland Coliseum scheme was rather unique. There were only small movable sections that filled either the "notch" behind home plate and at the foul poles (for baseball games), or the "notches" at the corners of the end zones (for football games). When the A's first played there (in 1968), the backstop distance was about 75 feet. (I disagree with other sources that indicate it was 90 feet.) This was reduced to 60 feet after the first year, as the fences in center field and the power alleys were brought in about ten feet as well, creating a gap between the fence and the bleachers. Most of the bleachers were movable, intended to be moved forward during football games. This may explain the reason for the wide concrete stairs at either end of the lower deck, to provide an exit. Those small movable bleachers eventually proved insufficient for the Raiders' needs, however, so they built large temporary bleachers instead after the baseball season was over. Several years later, scoreboards were added under the light standards; the 1969 diagram above reflects this minor change. The outfield fence was apparently moved in a few feet in 1981, and then moved back in 1990.
Although Oakland Coliseum is triple decked, the top level is smaller than in most other stadiums. The stadium is built on a slope such that ground level in back is about the same height as the upper concourse level; the same thing is true of Dodger Stadium. It is conveniently located with a rapid transit train station just beyond center field. Oakland Coliseum stood out in being one of the few baseball stadium to lack any roof; the only other such stadiums during the 1970s were Memorial Stadium (in Baltimore), Metropolitan Stadium (in Minnesota), San Diego (later Jack Murphy) Stadium, and Jarry Park in Montreal.
The Athletics had been a mediocre team for several decades, in both Philadelphia and Kansas City, but they "struck gold" after moving to the West Coast. Indeed, they became one of the dominant teams in baseball in the early 1970s, winning consecutive World Series in 1972, 1973, and 1974. Years before he became known as "Mr. October" while wearing Yankee pinstripes, Reggie Jackson proudly wore the yellow and green uniform as the Oakland A's top star. In his peak-performing year of 1973 he was the American League champion in both the home run and RBI categories, two thirds of the Triple Crown. After he left town in 1976, the A's became cellar-dwellers again, and attendance plummeted.
It was during this period that the A's underwent a resurgence and won the American League pennant two more times, in 1988 and 1989. The latter episode was made famous by the major earthquake that shook the whole Bay Area just before Game 3 of the World Series, played in Candlestick Park. After the series resumed, Oakland ultimately prevailed over the Giants and became world champions for the first time in 15 years. This was the era of sluggers Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire, the "Bash Brothers."
CINEMA: Oakland Coliseum "played the part" of Anaheim Stadium in the movie Angels in the Outfield (1994), starring Danny Glover, Tony Danza, and Christopher Lloyd.
Oakland Coliseum was home to the Oakland Raiders football team before the A's even came to town, but in 1982 the Raiders moved to Los Angeles, and for the next 15 years the A's had the house all to themselves. One year after the Rams moved out of Los Angeles in 1995, the Raiders followed suit, returning to their previous home, after working out a deal to get funding for an expanded stadium. In preparation for the expansion, the center field bleachers were demolished in 1995. The capacity for football games is now about 63,000, compared to about 54,500 during the "original" (1966-1981) era. As for the A's, however, this expansion significantly degraded the baseball experience. It replaced the nice wide-open view of a grassy slope and trees beyond the outfield bleachers with an intimidating and claustrophobic ambience, as the field is now dominated by thousands of empty seats in plain view in center field. On the plus side, the outfield fence did acquire some interesting angles with a high (15-foot) section in the power alleys where the out-of-town scoreboards are. (The 362-foot distance to right center field "power alley" is shortest of all current Major League stadiums, by the way, while two stadiums -- Dolphin Stadium and Minute Maid Park -- have virtually the same distance to the left center field power alley.) Though not shown in the above diagram, the distance to the corners between the power alleys and the foul poles is 367 feet, and the distance to midpoint between the power alleys and center field is 388 feet. The new upper-deck outfield seats added for the Raiders in 1996 are not normally sold for baseball games and are thus excluded from the "normal" capacity figure, but these seats are made available for postseason games when attendance surges. Finally, a few extra rows of box seats were installed behind home plate and between each dugout and respective bullpen. Foul territory remained enormous, nevertheless.
In late 1997 this facility was renamed "UMAX Coliseum," but a legal dispute annulled the naming rights contract only a few months later. Beginning in 1998 it was formally known as "Network Associates Coliseum," and in late 2004 it was changed again to "McAfee Coliseum," reflecting the change in the corporate name of that software maker. The five-year naming rights contract expires in 2008... Prior to the 2006 season, the A's announced that the entire upper deck of "McAfee Coliseum" would be closed for the 2006 season. This modification artificially reduced its capacity for baseball games from about 44,000 to about 34,000. Because it was totally unwarranted, in my view, I rely upon the pre-2006 capacity figures in the table above. The contrived scarcity of seats kept down attendance, and may have been a factor in the A's losses in the first two games of the 2006 ALCS.
As can be seen from the dynamic diagram above, the size of the three main decks at Oakland Coliseum closely match the corresponding seating levels of the Roman Colosseum. Whether this was intentional or not is uncertain. The main difference (aside from the field size, obviously) is that the decks in Oakland are not as steep as those in Rome, and there are extra levels for luxury suites. The Romans would have appreciated those high-class amenities.
SOURCES: Lowry (2006), Pastier (2007), USA Today / Fodor's (1996), Rosen (2001)
WEB LINKS: maps.google.com, stadiumsofnfl.com
