'Sell the team': Fed-up fans' passionate cry is spreading through sports

BALTIMORE – It was a cry that emanated, as it often does, from the cheap seats, so high above the playing field that Athletics players on the field at Nationals Park earlier this week did not hear the chant they’re so familiar with yet, for once, was not aimed at their franchise.

“Sell! The! Team! Sell! The! Team!”

On this August evening, it wasn’t desperate and determined fans of the Oakland Athletics imploring owner John Fisher to sell their beloved franchise in the name of competence and to ensure a future in the Bay Area. That future is gone.

No, this time, it was the opposition: Washington Nationals fans, disgusted with their club giving up 54 runs in four games amid a flailing rebuild and uncertain regime change, voiced their displeasure with the Lerner family’s ownership and their desire for more robust stewardship.

Some fans were even clad in T-shirts with the “Sell The Team” message, the Nationals’ iconic curly W flipped upside down to form the “m” in “team.”

Certainly, ire at the executive branch did not begin with Fisher’s gutting of the A’s, subsequent pit stop in Sacramento and, he hopes, ultimate destination in Las Vegas. Yet in the years since “SELL” T-shirts became de rigueur in the background of live shots from A’s games, fans across baseball and the sporting world seem to have found a louder voice.

A USA TODAY Sports analysis shows that 12 MLB teams have engaged in the chant in varying degrees of organization the past three years, perhaps indicating fans have taken a cue from Oakland’s highly-publicized unrest to demand more from their ownership groups.

The three-word plea can come spontaneously, or after significant planning, or sometimes to simply prove a grander point.

In Denver, it was heard when the woebegone Rockies hit a low point this season, a 21-0 loss to the San Diego Padres that dropped their record to 6-33. (No, they didn’t sell the team, but they did fire the manager a day later.)

On Chicago’s South Side, “Sell the team” has been a refrain at least three years running, with longtime owner Jerry Reinsdorf presiding over 101- and 121-loss seasons and another 100-loss campaign in the offing.

Yet the cries have been most extreme in Pittsburgh.

In many markets, the chant occurs late in games, the score lopsided, the crowd count dwindling and those remaining well-served. Yet after more than three decades of almost uninterrupted futility, Pirates fans save their disgust for owner Bob Nutting for the most high-profile moments.

Like Opening Day, where the season wasn’t even an hour old before a plane flew a banner over the stadium bearing the message and chants rang out before yet another loss.

Or Paul Skenes bobblehead day, when a sellout crowd recited the phrase on a day honoring the franchise player. And the team’s third sellout of the season? That was on Pittsburgh legend Mac Miller’s bobblehead day, when lines to get in stretched back to the Clemente Bridge – and the team’s loss that day incited another chorus of chants.

Heck, the protest even commuted up the road to PPG Paints Arena, when Pittsburgh native Pat McAfee hosted his “Big Night Aht” and McAfee was forced to sidebar with WWE broadcaster Michael Cole to explain exactly what the crowd was chanting.

It’s virtually endemic at this point, to the point the Seattle Mariners, now poised to claim an American League playoff berth, caught the “Sell” stray earlier this year, when a group of fans landed on the big screen in shirts that read, “Go Mariners!” only to turn in unison and reveal the message on the other side: Sell the team.

For the players there at the beginning of this run, it conjures up memories but also a desire for things to be, well, normal.

Business for the owners, personal for the fans

Two years have passed since the “Summer of Sell,” when A’s fans organized a boycott of the team and marked the top of the fifth inning of every game – home and road – to remain silent for one batter before beginning a “Sell the team” chant.

It was an emotional two-year ride, during which the A’s finalized plans to move to Las Vegas, fans staged an emotional “reverse boycott” and finally, spent 2024 bidding farewell to the Coliseum, and Oakland.

“It’s crazy because I enjoyed my time in the Coliseum. It’s such a unique place and it’s sad that they’re not playing there anymore,” says Ryan Noda, the A’s first baseman in 2023 now with the Baltimore Orioles. “Talking to (A’s players), they’re like, ‘I’d never thought I’d miss the Coliseum so much, but I do.’ The last two games there were pretty awesome.

“But in ’23, it was pretty crazy. There’d be games when there was nobody in the stands, save for the true diehards. I feel for the fan base. Because it’s such a storied franchise. And it’s sad to see that happen but at the same time, it’s a business, on both sides, when it comes to location and players.”

It’s business, but always personal with fans. Though the A’s may be laying over for three seasons at a Class AAA park in Sacramento, fans nonetheless fill the Yolo County night with chants of “Let’s Go Oakland,” and “Sell the team.”

Brent Rooker, the A’s two-time All-Star outfielder, committed to the long haul when he signed a $65 million extension through at least 2029, which should ostensibly cover their first two years in Las Vegas.

The “sell” movement was at full tilt in his first All-Star season, when the 2023 All-Star Game featured both the now traditional fifth inning chant as well as a “sell” serenade when Rooker came to bat.

Rooker has appreciated the fans’ fervor. Yet 400 games into his Athletics career, increasingly surrounded by high-achieving teammates, he'd appreciate perhaps a bit more fan focus between the white lines.

“There’s both sides to it, I guess. You respect people’s right to voice their opinion,” says Rooker, on pace for his third consecutive 30-homer season. “At the same time, you kind of wish that energy was directed more toward supporting what’s happening on the field, because we’re giving a lot of effort and work really hard and a lot goes into going out and competing every night.

“So, you see both sides of it. you respect people’s rights to voice their opinions. But there are times we wished that energy was directed more at supporting what we’re doing on the field.”

Freedom of speech – just watch what you say

Yet inept or at least inadequate ownership is the hardest thing in sports to shake; barring high corporate crimes or misdemeanors, the owner is the one piece of a franchise that can’t be eradicated.

And that’s why “sell” has swept through several sports.

In the NFL, it hit at Soldier Field last December, during the Chicago Bears’ particularly desultory 6-3 loss to the Seattle Seahawks. Woody Johnson’s New York Jets heard it in an October game at MetLife Stadium.

It was a staple at Washington Commanders games until owner Daniel Snyder finally did, in fact, sell the team, though not until his wife’s image on the scoreboard was greeted with boos and pleas to sell.

And as his latest training camp superstar staredown unfolded, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones took a verbal ribbing and fans toted signs urging him to sell on Aug. 2.

Only drastic times seem to inspire the chant in the NBA, such as when the Detroit Pistons lost their 25th consecutive game in December 2023, or New York Knicks fans grew exhausted of owner James Dolan’s decades of mismanagement in March 2020.

Even Major League Soccer got a piece of the action, with Philadelphia Union fans organizing a Coliseum-like period of silence before launching its sell chant.

Yet fan messages that counter team talking points or state-sponsored pablum are often met with suppression.

Commanders fans were directed to remove bags from their face with the sell suggestion on them. A Knicks fan who chanted “sell the team” says he was “interrogated” by security before exiting Madison Square Garden.

During one of the Pirates’ “sell” chants this season, the team broadcast cut the crowd noise until the chanting ceased. And the A’s “reverse boycott” game has been scrubbed from MLB.TV’s June 2023 archives.

That leaves just the public square – arena, stadium, pitch – for the fan to know they’ll be heard – if not by management, then certainly the participants.

“I guess it goes back to freedom of speech and why the United States is so awesome,” says Noda. “I don’t know how much front offices and owners pay attention.

“But players, we hear it. And going through it for a whole year was weird. But we knew they weren’t saying it to us. We knew they still backed us and treated us like we were players. And they knew how hard we worked and how hard we wanted to get a win. At the end of the day, we kind of just blocked it out on our end and waited for them to cheer.”

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Sell the team': Fed-up fans' passionate cry is spreading through sports

Reporting by Gabe Lacques, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect