Name another fan base in any sport that has to throw their own Fan Fest before the season begins, because for the second year in a row, Oakland A's fans will be doing just that. Even before the team announced they were leaving for Las Vegas they had quit throwing Fan Fest events. And people wonder why the fans were so apathetic towards the club and didn't want to provide owner John Fisher with their money.
Last year's event was held at The Plank in the Jack London Square part of Oakland and was a fairly small event, though Amelia Schimmel, the A's public address announcer, came by to call bingo, do some A's trivia, and hand out prizes.
This year's event is looking like it will be a much bigger affair. On February 24th fan groups Last Dive Bar and the Oakland 68's will be putting on what they are calling "Fans Fest", which will be held at Jack London Square. On Tuesday, a very special guest was announced in fan favorite Khris Davis.
Davis is one of the only players in recent Oakland history to receive a contract extension (two years, $33.5 million), but in true A's fashion, he was traded one year into the deal.
The way this came together was that Davis had worked together with Twitter users Coliseum Kingz and NorCal Nodders at a recent card show. When members of Last Dive Bar were picking up some items from Coliseum Kingz's house last week for the ongoing auction (more on that in a moment), LDB asked CK to contact Khrush about the upcoming fan event. Last Dive Bar is paying for Davis's flight and hotel.
KD will also be doing a private signing for mail-ins the day before the event for people that are unable to make it on February 24th.
Last Dive Bar also mentioned that there will be another A's legend in attendance that will be announced on Wednesday. This player has a career 1.65 ERA in the postseason and spent his entire career with Oakland. LDB will be making their announcement on social media a little later today.
As for the aforementioned auction, there has been a number of collectables that have been donated by A's fans for this auction, with the money that's raised going to Schools Over Stadiums in their fight to take away the funding for Fisher's ballpark in Las Vegas.
The auction will last for about nine more days and includes items such as a game-used and signed Matt Chapman jersey, and one of the boxes that was sent to all 29 MLB owners, which will be the only one in circulation outside of a billionaire's grasp. There's also a number of signed cards and baseballs from current and former A's players, and a slew of awesome custom cards featuring Rickey Henderson, Mark McGwire, Dave Stewart, Eric Chavez, and more!
As is the case with any event involving A's fans, this has the makings of being pretty memorable day.
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