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The San Francisco Giants closed out a two-game series against the Oakland Athletics on Sunday. The Giants 4-2 10th inning win was the last game the team will play in Oakland as the A’s will be relocating after the 2024 season. The Athletics will temporarily move to Sacramento in 2025 before permanently relocating to a new stadium in Las Vegas… probably.
The impending move has been hard on Oakland’s fans. But even former rivals are feeling the pain of losing the team to another city. Former Giants closer Sergio Romo understands what the A’s mean to the area as he recalled the special atmosphere when San Francisco played Oakland.
“I got a ton of love for the Bay. I’m bummed out that the Bay Area’s losing something that really, really did unite us, in my eyes — it brought us together,” Romo told San Francisco’s KNBR, per the station’s official account on X.
Romo pitched for eight teams in his 15-year career. However, he’s best remembered for his time with the Giants. Romo spent nine seasons in San Francisco, starting out as a setup man before becoming the team’s closer.
He won three World Series rings with the Giants (2010, 2012 and 2014) and was dominant out of the bullpen. Romo recorded three saves and 10 strikeouts without giving up a run in six World Series appearances. He had a 0.00 ERA, 0.500 WHIP and 15.0 K/9 in six innings pitched.
Ex-Giant Sergio Romo will miss the San Francisco/Oakland rivalry
Romo also dominated the A’s throughout his career. In 20 appearances, the righty reliever had a 2.45 ERA, 0.764 WHIP, four saves and 20 strikeouts in 18.1 innings.
However, the well-traveled Romo also pitched for the A’s. He spent the 2021 season in Oakland and posted a 4.67 ERA, 1.249 WHIP, three saves and 60 strikeouts in 61.2 innings. After leaving the A’s Romo spent time with the Seattle Mariners and the Toronto Blue Jays in 2022 before signing a minor league deal with San Francisco to retire as a Giant.
Referring to the weekend's two-game set between the Giants and the A’s in Oakland, Romo was impressed both with the quality of play and the passion of the fanbase that showed up. “They got some pretty solid pitching matchups this week and they were still locked into these close ballgames,” he told KNBR. “It wasn’t created noise. It wasn’t computer-generated noise that they had going on. This was legitimate excitement … Fans in the stands rooting, paying attention to the game.”
The Athletics moved from Kansas City to Oakland in 1968. The A’s won six American League Pennants and four World Series championships while in Oakland. The team’s most recent World Series victory came in 1989 when the A’s swept the Giants in a “Battle of the Bay” that included a 6.9 magnitude earthquake.
Romo appreciated the unique rivalry between the A’s and the Giants. “It said ‘ok cool, yeah you can rock your green and gold, we’ll rock our orange and black, much respect. Let’s just meet on the ball field.’ I thought it was great. I thought it was a good thing,” he said via KNBR.
