A's lose 2-1 to Giants as fans unite to keep baseball in Oakland

The Bay Bridge Series got started on Tuesday with the Oakland A's unsurprisingly losing 2-1 to their Bay Area rivals San Francisco Giants in a stadium packed full of folks.

The game attracted a monster crowd of 40,014 fans, more than four times what the A's are bringing to their own Oakland Coliseum on a per-game basis, with a point to prove: baseball needs to stay put in Oakland and the Bay must keep their two teams in place.

Supporters of both the A's and the Giants collaborated on a rare occasion and for once to try to let everybody know that both fandoms want the two teams to keep their rivalry going forever.

For that to happen, though, the A's would need to ditch their efforts to relocate from Oakland to Las Vegas... or the MLB and/or the owners of the other 29 franchises in the league would need to vote against the move.

A's and Giants fanatics donned "SELL" shirts on Tuesday at Oracle Park in Frisco, "Unite The Bay" posters were handed at the gates of the ballpark, and during the fifth inning, both factions banded together to chant "Sell the team!" to A's owner John Fisher, as reported by The Mercury News.

"Stay in Oakland!" was the other chant, quite a sighting and a hearing coming out of the walls of Oracle considering the fierce hatred that Giants fans have for their fellow Bay inhabitants.

Speaking in pure sporting terms, it wasn't the greatest of baseball games. There were nine combined hits, no home runs, and the only mildly interesting thing was the matchup entering the bottom of the eighth frame with both teams tied at one run apiece.

After Frisco took the lead in the fifth inning on a sacrifice fly by Casey Schmitt that scored Wilmer Flores, JJ Bleday was the man of the minute for the A's in the eighth when he put a ball past the infield defenders and into the open field to bring Aledmys Diaz home.

Too bad (but too expectedly, as always) for the A's, the Giants took no time in replying and just half an inning later they sent Mike Yastrzemski to the plate for him to double and score Luis Matos this time.

Going with an opener kinda worked for the man tasked with pitching first (Tayler Scott) but once he went to the bench letting Ken Waldichuk pitch the next 4.2 frames things went downhill and were later confirmed to end in a losing effort when Lucas Erceg allowed the winning run.

Second meeting scheduled for Wednesday, when maybe the Giants fans keep rooting for their A's counterparts to stay in Oakland so they can keep beating them multiple times on a yearly basis while keeping them at a bridge's distance.

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