Mesa, Arizona – Baseball fans visit Cactus League's spring training for varied reasons. For some, make your spring holiday vacation to see your favorite team within the desert heat. Some fans come to play as a part of a piece event. For the Berk family, it’s a family reunion to participate in A's Spring Training Games.
The Berks plan a weekend yearly to prepare a reunion during spring training. Part of the family lives in East Bay, while a part of the family lives within the Phoenix area.
“We have a group of 50 or 60 people here today,” said David Berk, a die -hard athletics fan since 1974 when he visited his first game as a baby. “We have done it for so long where the A calls us in January and we find out which weekend we want to do and we get group cards.”
The group was the primary within the Grassy Hohokam stadium for the sport on Saturday against the Milwaukee Brewers.
Berk was delivered to Fandom as a baby in Castro Valley by his father John, who became a fan of A after college. John passed on his love for athletics games to David, who then passed on like to his sons, each of whom were on the Family Reunion.
For the primary time since 1967, athletics within the Oakland Coliseum won’t play regular seasonal games. The team will temporarily play games within the Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento before he officially results in Las Vegas – one other former Franchise Oakland, the Raiders – within the principal entertainment.
For all Oakland fans, nonetheless, this has resulted in the Colosseum for many years after many years of memories and funny times.
“I was probably in the games of a thousand A,” said John Berk. “These are many games.”
The fans of the spring training game from Brewers-A had mixed opinions on Saturday about whether or not they would go to Sacramento or to not see the athletics game. Both John and David Berk said they might participate in an A game in Sacramento, but they might not only make the trip for the sport.
“I have some friends and relatives who live in the Sacramento area,” said John Berk. “So it is possible that we will spend a weekend to visit my brother -in -law and catch a game in Sacramento.”
On the opposite hand, some athletics fans, resembling long -time fan James Ibbeson, who’s now excited outside of Reno, Nevada, the A game in Sacramento. Ibbeson used to live in Oakland and watched the second game within the history of the Colosseum on April 18, 1968. Ibbeson says his son has already tried to purchase tickets for athletics games in Sacramento.
“There were no improvements in Oakland, they had to come to Vegas,” said Ibbeson. “I think this park will be filled every day … without a doubt in my head.”
The Berk family expressed dissatisfaction much like many Oakland fans through the years. The fans expressed her displeasure about how owner John Fisher directed the team by holding boycotts and demonstrations about games.
“You have no reason to move,” said Felix Berk, one in all David's sons. “You don't do it for baseball, but for money. It is not really a baseball decision.”
For quite a lot of reasons, A games from A in spring and summer will proceed within the BERK household. John Berk is a member of a fantasy baseball league, through which only the American league players belong. Therefore, he’ll follow athletics for the statistics.
For David Berk, he believes that his passion for the team will replace every frustration with the team that leaves East Bay.
“If you asked me a year ago, I would have said” No, I'm done with it, “said Berk.” I'm a giant A fan and I don't know if I can just switch it off. It might be difficult for me to support them financially, but I’ll still follow the team. “
Even if he continues to follow the team, David Berk admitted that it is “really depressing” that the 57 seasons of the A in the Coliseum, including four World Series Championships and 21 Playoff appearances, are over.
“I'm quarter-hour away from the Colosseum, I used to be probably in a thousand games in my life,” he said. “My children are now 14 and 16 years old. I threw them here for spring training when they were two months old. They were probably two or three hundred games in the Colosseum in their life.
“All of that is over. It's just a big a part of our lives.”
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