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Baseball fans: Take a quick tour of all 30 major league ballparks

Authors Josh Pahigian and Kevin O’Connell explore America's major league ballparks in "The Ultimate Baseball Road."

20. Oakland Athletics/O.co Coliseum

Paul Sakuma/AP

  • By Ross Atkin Staff Writer

Opened: 1968

Capacity: 34,077

What the authors say: “[E]verything about the O.co is large. The stadium accommodates more than sixty-three thousand Raider fans during football season, but when the A’s are playing the stadium staff unrolls large green tarps to cover massive swaths of the upper deck.”

Learned from the book:

• Surely this is the most unusually named stadium in all of sports, because of the company that owns the naming rights. O.co was Overstock.com before shortening its name.

• The ballpark has undergone six name changes since 1998, possibly a reflection on the tenuous nature of baseball in Oakland. The team is interested in a new baseball-only stadium, but it hasn’t worked out where it would be in the Bay Area. Las Vegas has even been mentioned as a possible destination.

• Because the stadium also houses the NFL’s Raiders and, therefore, is far too big for baseball, the A’s cover whole sections of upper-level seats with plastic sheeting to bring capacity in line with demand.

• This is definitely not a ballpark that offers much to see or do beyond the stadium walls. As the authors note, even fast-food places are few and distant.

• The famous Village People “YMCA” sing-along popular at many ballparks began in Oakland when construction workers, hired to enlarging the stadium, led the crowd in spelling out the letters with their bodies.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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