Tuesday night was a beautiful night for baseball in the Bay.

The Oakland Athletics–by most accounts the worst team in baseball — beat the Tampa Bay Rays —  the best team in baseball, 2-1 in front of a season-high crowd of over 27,000 A’s fans at the Oakland Coliseum. It was the A’s seventh consecutive victory.

However, A’s fans did not show up because their team (who even after a week-long win streak have just 19 wins and a staggering 50 losses as of Tuesday) are suddenly winning. 

Fans showed up to protest the seemingly inevitable relocation of the Oakland Athletics to Las Vegas and to demand team owner John Fisher sell the team to an owner committed to the California-based fanbase.

Organizers selected June 13 as the date for a ‘reverse boycott’ after Fisher claimed he had no choice but to relocate because of a lack of fan support.

Over 27,000 fans (27,759 to be exact) sought to prove him wrong by packing the Coliseum, Tuesday night. Organizers handed out 7,000 green t-shirts with a clear message printed in white text “SELL,” and made signs, according to AP.

Fans were piling into the Collisuem even in the ninth inning and some fans who traveled hours did not make it to the game but made their support known, such as former A’s player Stephen Piscotty.

Kyle Renner, a man who has been an A’s fan since he was two months old, flew from Utah with his fiancée Kaitlin Robertson on Tuesday to have their voices heard.

Coordinated chants of “Sell the team” and “Stay in Oakland” ushered in the beginning of the top and bottom of each inning respectively. At the beginning of the first and fifth innings, fans stood silent in honor of the Athletics’ 55 years in Oakland.

The reverse boycott was truly a sight to behold. The wave lasted 10 minutes, the right field drummers returned and an A’s game—which in 2023 averaged 8,555 fans per game— was a party again with more than triple the average ‘23 attendance on a Tuesday night.

Even Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao showed her support at the game. 

 “If anybody ever doubted the passion of these fans, just look at the sea of green out here,” Thao said to ESPN. “We’re going to continue to work to keep the Oakland A’s in Oakland. Las Vegas deserves a team — an expansion team. But the A’s must stay in Oakland.”

That much was clear when that same night, the Las Vegas Golden Knights won their first Stanley Cup in front of a rocking home Vegas crowd. The NHL pioneered major professional sports in Sin City by way of Expansion. The NFL, and seemingly MLB are jumping aboard the bandwagon by depriving Oakland of their beloved teams.

Earlier in the day, the Nevada Senate approved $380 million in public funding to support Fisher’s Vegas ballpark proposition.

The A’s donated the ticket sales from Tuesday’s game ($811,107) to the Alameda County Community Food Bank and Oakland Public Education Fund.

The move received mixed reviews from fans, as the “Rooted in Oakland” Twitter account criticized the A’s for using the reverse boycott to make the organization look good.

If the A’s fan dedication was still not clear, take the story of this A’s fan family who got stuck in traffic and settled for watching the game from an In-N-Out parking lot.

A’s fans made every fanbase who has faced relocation proud.