Review: Goodbye, Oakland (2025)

By Andy Dolich and Dave Newhouse

The story about how a guy from Buffalo even came across this book is an odd one, if you'll pardon some city-dropping.

I was recently in Athens on vacation. Down in the basement, next to a temporary breakfast area (the place was remodeling), was one of those libraries where visitors were welcome to take a book and/or leave a book. About three-quarters of the selections were in the Greek language, which certainly sped up the skimming process. 

But there were some English-language books, and I noticed a book called "Goodbye, Oakland." Even better, one of the authors was veteran newspaper reporter Dave Newhouse. Ever since I had dinner with Dave in a small group the night before Super Bowl XVIII in Tampa, I've been a fan of his. Therefore, it was an easy call to pick one up and read it. 

Good decision. This is a well-done look around the sporting scene in Oakland - past, present, and future. 

These are tough times in the other city by the bay in Northern California. It may not have hit people who don't live in the region that Oakland is having a very tough stretch when it comes to sports teams. The Raiders packed and left for Las Vegas, and the Warriors packed and left for San Francisco (a lesser tragedy perhaps because of the short distance, but still painful to many). When this book was originally written in 2023, the future of the Athletics was at best up in the air. 

But now we know that the A's are at least planning to end up in Las Vegas as well. The team is playing in a minor-league stadium in Sacramento for the time being. No one seems to know how long "the time being" will last. Construction supposedly has started on the new place, but there's said to be a funding gap on how to come up with $2 billion for it. You'd think that would have been figured out before the steam-shovels arrived. 

With the Athletics' departure from Oakland now in the books, it seems, authors Andy Dolich (a former sports team executive in the Bay Area) and Newhouse provide some updates in a 2025 edition on what the situation was and review what happened. The triple move is not a happy story for the natives of course, and the authors are quite angry over it all. 

At one point in history, Oakland was something like the promised land for pro sports. It entered the game when the Raiders were admitted in the American Football League in 1960. It took some time, but eventually the team thrived. Charlie Finley took his baseball team from Kansas City to Oakland for the 1968 season, and the Warriors actually moved from San Francisco to Oakland in pursuit of a better home in 1971. All won championships in Oakland. To see the city's entire major-league history come to such an abrupt end within a short period of time is rather painful. 

The book really gets off to a great start with stories about the teams and personalities in the old days, particularly when it comes to Davis and Finley. There's little objectivity here, understandable under the circumstances. Davis moved the Raiders out of Oakland twice over the years - you'd think once was enough - and Finley ranks as one of the truly odd personalities in sports ownership history 

Eventually, Dolich and Newhouse get to a series of profiles about some of the major personalities of this era. For the out-of-town reader, some of them are going to be a bit more relevant than others. Names like Franklin Mieuli, Dave Stewart, Jim Otto, Rick Barry, Tony LaRussa, and Billy Martin are given an in-depth look, and we know enough background information to make them enjoyable. A few others who receive chapters are more local celebrities, such as a junior college football coach and a local baseball instructor. Those don't work quite as well when read from a distance, although they do add a bit of "on the ground" perspective. Those stories are mixed in with comments from fans, politicians, urban studies experts, etc. Even some Las Vegas residents get to express an opinion on the twin moves of the Raiders and A's to their city.

The politics and legalities of the moves themselves are particularly difficult to explain, even in hindsight in some cases. Meanwhile, it's also not easy to rewrite a book on the fly, and some of the wording along the way has become a little choppy. 

The important point, though, is that "Goodbye, Oakland" gets the point across that the California city has received a raw deal over the years. Will it ever get a second chance at "major-league status?" Hard to say. But it's easy to root for the city going forward, based on what is contained in the book.

Four stars

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Review: Nolan (2026)

By Tim Brown

Baseball has had plenty of superstars over the years. It's also had plenty of legends. Sometimes the two categories overlap.  

Nolan Ryan has elements of both in his life story, but the legend has something of a lead at this point in history. 

This was someone who broke into the major leagues at the age of 19. He was still playing at the age of 46, still throwing fast balls that players half his age couldn't touch. Ryan won 324 games, threw 5,386 innings, and struck out 5,714 batters.  In other words, he struck out more than a batter per inning during the course of 27 years. Radar guns weren't used to measure pitcher's speed for much of Ryan's career, but most eyewitnesses say no one has ever thrown the ball harder. 

In an age when starting pitchers frequently don't make it to the sixth inning, Ryan had 222 complete games. All of baseball had a total of 25 in 2025, and the leaders had two each. Ryan had 26 in a season twice. 

And how about seven no-hitters? Think anyone will ever break that record unless the rules are rewritten? Me neither.  

Get the idea? They don't make pitchers like this any more, so author Tim Brown is on to something good when he takes on the hurler in a biography, "Nolan." 

Brown's initial problem is that for a superstar, Ryan had an unconventional career. He appeared in one World Series, but only had a small role in the New York Mets' stunning championship of 1969. The pitcher did take part in the 1980 and 1981 playoffs, but his Houston Astros fell short of the Series. Otherwise, he didn't participate in any October baseball. There's not much team glory to cover here. 

While Ryan won a lot of games, he lost a bunch of them too - 292. That's the most in the modern era (since 1961), 26 ahead of Gaylord Perry. The biggest conclusion that can be drawn from that is Ryan played for some mediocre or worse teams that didn't give him enough offensive support. His 294 wild pitches are the most of any player since 1901. You might not have realized that Ryan never won a Cy Young Award. He could have done so in 1973, when he set the one-season record for strikeouts with 383, but finished second. 

Brown - who worked with Jim Abbott on that pitcher's fine book - makes a good decision, then, to step away from a straight-forward recap. After all, this isn't the first book about Ryan. Nolan and his wife both wrote one, and others chipped in too. Brown instead focuses on several aspects and moments of Ryan's life, telling the overall story that way. He takes a look at Alvin, Texas, which is proud as you'd expect of his native son. The author looks at how a scout had to talk the Mets into drafting him in the 11th round, 

The book includes Ryan's use of intimidation on the mound, stories about/from his family, the reaction of teammates and opponents to Ryan's abilities, the last pitch in his career, and life after baseball ... among some other topics. Brown certainly does his homework here, with all sorts of interviews and references including some time with the man with the fastball called "The Express."  

A few minor problems do pop up here. There's not much of an attempt to ponder where baseball's hardest thrower ranks with the all-time greats, since the resume is so unusual. Others have tried to do so, but the results have been somewhere in the top 40 pitchers ever, but not in the Top Ten. Meanwhile, Ryan comes off really well here, to the point where it seems a little overdone in spots. The standout player certainly was an admirable player and person, but some of the praise is a little over the top. 

Brown's writing also is a little interpretive in spots,  which is another way of saying overwritten. For example, there's a spot where the benefits of a strikeout are listed - the offense simply stops for a batter. That means no activity of any time, from homers to singles to sacrifices to errors to outs that advance runners and so on. 

Overall, "Nolan" gets good grades for telling a new generation about this great player. Accept no duplicates - he was an original. 

Four stars

Learn more about this book from Amazon.com. (As an Amazon affiliate, I earn money from qualifying purchases.)

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