The Oakland A’s, Lawrence Butler and another personality taken from the Bay

OAKLAND, Calif. — Lawrence Butler is used to change. A constant in the baseball world, never really knowing what city you are or what day of the week it is, legitimately comes with the territory. Unfortunately, yet expectedly, the Oakland Athletics faithful have watched another shuffle in and out of town — not because of a trade, the typical path for young players in Alameda County. This time, the whole team is now gone.

On Thursday, the last day that baseball would ever be played in the Oakland Coliseum, the 24-year-old outfielder went 1-for-4, and scored a run. A solid day in a win, all the emotions aside — which are no small things even for a rookie with the world in front of him. For guys like manager Mark Kotsay, who played in this city and this park from 2004 to 2007, those feelings are impossible to hide.

If you’ve only been paying attention to the Athletics because the last few years of front office ineptitude have turned them into the saddest laughingstock in the league this side of Chicago’s South Side, nobody would doubt you. It’s just a shame that Oakland, specifically, didn’t get more time with a guy who embodies everything the league wants out of its personalities.

“I feel like it’s more emotional for people that been here for the longest. I mean, I know a lot of workers probably gonna be out of jobs, looking for jobs,” Butler said following the 3-2 victory over the Texas Rangers. “I mean, a lot of long, hard, A’s fans that just, you know, they’ve just been here forever from the start, I feel for them.”

In the last six seasons, all six of his pro career, he’s played for 10 teams if you include the Arizona Fall League but not the Major Leagues. The leaving has never been the hard part, but you just can’t help but think that, in a perfect world, Butler is precisely the kind of player who Oakland would have kept, developed and turned into a star.

He looks and dresses like any important human that age would. He’s not some robot with no apparent personality. In April he sat down with MLB Network sportscaster Siera Santos at Quad Studios in New York City to kick up a couple flows for the camera. He described his admiration for music artists Tupac Shakur, Biggie Smalls, Beyoncé and Whitney Houston.

“You could either have a song that’s special to you, or you could have a song that’s just going to get the crowd turnt up for your at-bat. That might get you turnt up to go do something special on the field,” Butler says simply. “I feel like music influences baseball a lot.”

It sounds so basic, so obvious, so simple, but sometimes that’s what it takes. Talking to ballplayers about their personal tastes in almost anything art-related can be a super-laborious process. Guys don’t want to give away whatever personal secrets for motivation they have or are afraid the wrong admission can go viral and when you stack 25 guys like that on top of each other in a clubhouse, you’ve got a snoozefest that turns any reasonably personable human into a bore.

Butler will never be taken for a square. Be it the big sunglasses, the flashy accessories or his all-around game, his swag feels so familiar when he’s wearing the Oakland kelly green jerseys. That’s because the Athletics were the team back in the day that was not afraid to mix it up in their personalities. In many ways, that IS the identity of the franchise, not whatever this latest iteration of existence that the hated team owner John Fisher has brought to the Bay.

The kid who goes by Z4law on Instagram is the closest thing we’ve seen to the style and charisma that the A’s squads of the 1970s and 1990s brought to the table. The franchise of Vida Blue, Rollie Fingers and Reggie Jackson. The team that brought you the Bash Brothers Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire, and the Hendersons, and countless other names plastered on the never-ending concrete walls of the Coliseum concourse.

In short, exactly the kind of player that if you’re a team, a league, or a city, to build around. The kind of baller that puts butts in the seats and balls in the stands at the plate. As a product of the Marquis Grissom Baseball Association in Atlanta, all of this makes sense. And when you see him after games giving his teammates style pointers in front of everyone and generally having a good time, it’s beyond a breath of fresh air.

For all the nonsense MLB pushes about trying to make the game cooler and more diverse blah blah blah, how Butler isn’t the latest darling of the league is beyond me. It’s all there and we haven’t even talked about the baseball. Which is exactly the point, to some degree.

Ask many Black folks who were kids during that era and they’ll tell you that the A’s and all that attitude were exactly why they liked the game at all. When you put a bunch of guys in white cleats together with the soul and core of a place that’s turned out cultural legends such as Digital Underground, MC Hammer, Keyshia Cole, Too Short, En Vogue and Tony! Toni! Toné!, it all makes way too much sense. But no, instead we’ve got a culture of doom and dismay, with owners crying about fans not showing up because raw sewage is flowing through the last walk-up dugouts in the big leagues.

When you see it up close with your eyes, it’s heartbreaking. Nevermind the larger story about the city losing three pro sports teams in five years, it’s a shame. Butler is the closest thing we’ve seen to true Oakland swagger in YEARS and he’s going to be stationed in West Sacramento for the next few years where few people will have any idea.

In his first full season in MLB, Butler has hit .265 with 22 home runs, 57 RBIs, 18 stolen bases and logged 3.1 wins above replacement in 124 games.

“That is the particular guy, if you were running an organization that you would want to put a lot of marketing money behind, somebody that is personable, that can play and, you know, and that has that connection with the fans,” Trent Henderson, son of the late outfielder Dave Henderson, who played for the A’s from 1988 to 1993, said Thursday at a fan event after the game in which fans gathered following the last out. “He would be perfect franchise guy.”

There are of course myriad reasons Thursday was such an oddly depressing but cathartic day. In the Bay, fans are a little too singularly angry with Fisher to think of the larger picture, which is fair. But as soon as you see the people who show up to tailgate and have supported and boycotted this team in various forms over the years, it’s easy to tell why a scoundrel like Fisher doesn’t like it. This man does not see any part of himself in that culture.

There is zero chance that Fisher has ever split a sack with his homeys to get faded. He has no clue at all who rapper Del the Funky Homosapien is, never mind “Mr. Dobalina.” If rapper Dru Down himself — son of funk musician Bootsy Collins — walked onto the field with his curls going crazy, Fisher would be clueless. Meanwhile, after the game when players and team staff are scooping up dirt to keep for the memories, the stadium public address system is blasting the Luniz’s I Got Five On It remix, when Richie Rich drops the iconic line “Believe that, toking, where you from?” and the lower bowl yells “OAKLAND” in unison, because that’s just what you do when that happens.

Fisher has no idea why grown adults are wearing gold grills to his game, unironically. It’s sad how for a city with as much culture as any in the bigs, that the MLB commissioner’s office wasn’t fighting tooth and nail to keep that team there, since diversity is apparently such a priority. Instead, a bunch of other owners cravenly let a miser ruin one of the best brands the game has ever seen.

“I think he’s just a piece of s—, and he’s not good at business, because this area is very profitable. And if you look at people like his friend, like [Golden State Warriors majority owner] Joe Lacob, right, you get people that understand how much money is in the Bay Area, how much we’re already spending already. It’s not like everybody out here is just broke, and half the people that come to the games aren’t just people that live in Oakland,” Sacramento Kings play-by-play announcer Gary “G-Man” Gerould said after the game. Nearby, some 60-plus-year-old women were taking shots sitting in the back of an open SUV tailgate. “He would rather go somewhere where he thinks people are gonna spend more money. You it can easily get the people here to spend even more money. Just if you give us something, fix the lights, give us one player, right, like we got, you got players like Khris Davis that are coming back to the team and taking pay cuts just to play with us? Yeah, Black man. But I don’t know who in his right mind is gonna come and play for a minor league team with minor league pay on a minor league stadium in the hottest city in California, on AstroTurf outside.”

That said, Butler has had a monster year. He’s had TWO three-run homer games this year. He leads off for a reason. He comes from a pedigree and a friend group of other young players who also aren’t afraid to be themselves. The first time I met him, we were sitting with friends and family when his minor league season was over, and they were all back home to watch Atlanta Braves center fielder Michael Harris II the year he won Rookie of the Year in 2019. He was talking about how playing video games is the savior who keeps their friend group tight. If you know, you know.

Thursday was a confounding day. So much potential, so much love, so much passion, all being thrown away because a bunch of rich guys are too scared to stand up to some dork who doesn’t know the difference between a smeeze and a slider. You don’t have to be an A’s fan to get angry about it.

Meanwhile, right there, is a portal to the past and future embodying everything the game claims it wants out of its young players. Exactly the potential star that Oakland needs, night in a night out, denied an opportunity to truly connect with a fan base.

“That was the most fans I’ve ever played in front of in my life. And just to have the atmosphere, have them behind us, you know, getting loud every time somebody gets on base, or a big strikeout, for sure I will remember this,” Butler said before the team crammed onto buses — even after a home game —because the organization was concerned about potential violence outbursts following the tilt. “I mean, just like any other offseason, you can’t take offseason off just because you had a good season. You got to go in and work harder and try to do better next year.”

For the fans there that day, however, there is no next year.