Oakland Athletics fans are passionate about their team. And as most fans are wont to do, they’re doing their best to keep the team from moving.
The A’s search for a new ballpark is well documented, especially as O.co Coliseum falls further and further into disrepair — just this season, the Oakland dugout was flooded with sewage during more than one game. Now a local group of fans has taken it upon itself to create a visual plea in the city.
TDK Collective is a group of artists whose specialty is spray painting murals on the walls of businesses in and around Oakland, according to CSN Bay Area’s Field of Teams blog. The group painted a mural aimed at the A’s in downtown Oakland with one word: Stay.
The man behind the vision, 29-year-old high school art teacher Francisco Sanchez, chose to bookend the word “stay” with a depiction of Hall of Fame outfielder Rickey Henderson — symbolizing the club’s past — and an image of his 5-year-old niece, representing a future generation of A’s fans.
The end product is a breathtaking work of art that even drew Henderson’s interest.
“A car stops by and somebody says, ‘Does that mean I’m still alive?’ ” Sanchez told Casey Pratt of Field of Teams. “He said it again and he got out of the car. I kind of turned around and it was Rickey. That was really cool.”
Check out more of the story in the video below, with a hat tip to Yahoo! Sports.
Photo via Twitter/@CaseyPrattCSN
