SF Envy

No One Likes the A's (Not Even Oakland)

Things aren’t looking so bad for the Athletics.  They ended last year’s regular season with one of the best records in baseball (even if the playoffs were a bit of a disappointment), and they just wrapped up spring training by beating up the Giants.  They might even get to stay in Oakland!

Alas, the Facebook Data Science team recently analyzed which teams are liked most in every county in America and found our frenemies across the Bay are preferred by exactly no one:

Three teams’s fans make up a plurality of zero counties, anywhere in the U.S.: The New York Mets, the Toronto Bluejays, and the Oakland Athletics. 

This makes sense. Two of those clubs are just across the water from another team with another, more successful franchise. (Those waters would be the East River and San Francisco Bay, respectively.) The other is in Canada and therefore not a part of this American map.

That’s right, even Alameda and Contra Costa counties couldn’t get behind the A’s.  Rough.

[Full Map] [via The Atlantic Cities]

Comments (10)

I know you’re trolling by saying “No one likes the A’s” but I’ll bite. The Oakland Coliseum is sold out tonight. The A’s sold out the ENTIRE Coliseum (including the normally tarped upper deck) for the entire playoff run last year. That’s like +40k people each game.

Things are looking better for the A’s this year than the Giants. Lots of people pick the A’s to win the AL West. Giants are predicted to finish anywhere from last to second.

Oh, and it was a Facebook study. Who gives a fuck.

FWIW the Mets play near Flushing Bay, and Yankee Stadium sits next to the Harlem River. Minor point, but saying the Mets & Yanks are across the East River from each other is like saying the Giants and the A’s are across the Sacramento River from each other.

“This makes sense. Two of those clubs are just across the water from another team with another, more successful franchise.”

Yeah, the Giants make more money, so it goes for the team with the yuppie fanbase.  

However:

Oakland Athletics since 1968- 16 division titles, 6 pennants, 4 World Series championships 

San Francisco Giants - 8 division titles, 5 pennants, 2 World Series championships

Absolutely.And the study is inherently skewed because at the least, it’s only measuring votes by those with Facebook accounts and voting through some system involving Likes. Given assumed demographic makeup, I bet the A’s fan base has a lower percentage of fans with Facebook accounts than the Giants fan base. This all goes to illustrate why A’s fans are not also Giants fans.

Amen! Thanks for pointing this out.

Two things about this article. First, they try to characterize the A’s relationship to the Giants like the Mets to the Yankees and try to make the reason that the A’s are less popular is that they are an unsuccessful franchise that is overshadowed by their better neighbors. That’s a mischaracterization to say the least as the A’s have won two more World Series than the Giants (who have not only been here ten years longer, but also took 50 years to win their first one on the West Coast, the A’s did it in their fifth year in Oakland), including a sweep of the Giants. Also, the A’s have just had tough luck in the playoffs, but their record has actually been better than the Giants the last few years as well. Also, throughout the 80’s and the first part of the 90’s the A’s outdrew the Giants too. Second, what’s happened is that the Giants got a shiny new ballpark, the Raiders came in and fucked up the Colisuem, the Giants have won two recent World Series and people jumped on their bandwagon. Also, with the “will they or won’t they” drama of the A’s moving (similar to that of the Giants in the early 90’s) it takes a pounding on their local popularity. If this had been done in the early 90’s, you would have probably seen several A’s counties.

So much defensiveness!

Go Giants, btw.

Go Giants? Where? Definitely not to the playoffs.

While I am a Giants fan, I have no (real) ill-will against the A’s, and feel that if given a true commitment from ownership that they will stay in Oakland, there is no reason they couldn’t thrive.

I think the fans (both active and prospective) of Oakland have been undermined by current owners who have openly and actively courted other options outside of Oakland, and also poo-pooed any option offered in Oakland.

It’s hard to commit your heart to a team when you have no idea it will still be around in a couple years. Same thing I went through in the Lurie days with the Giants.

Anyways, I really do hope the A’s stay, and while they’re here, I’ll always be rooting for an A’s-Giants World Series!

Hahah what’s that Nostradamus? I hate the Giants, and hindsight is always 20/20, but not a great comment