Tom Hanks Has Strong Message for Oakland A’s Owners for Moving Team to Las Vegas

Tom Hanks is not happy his favorite baseball team is moving away. Last month, the two-time Academy Award-winning actor made an appearance at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles last month to promote his new book The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece. During the Q&A portion of the event, an audience member asked Hanks if he would buy the Oakland Athletics (also known as Oakland A’s) in order to keep them from moving from Oakland to Las Vegas. 

“We’ve lost the Raiders, the Warriors moved to San Francisco, and now they’re going to take the A’s out of Oakland,” Hanks said, per PEOPLE.  “Damn them all to hell.” The moderator John Horn mentioned that there are only 2,000 fans showing up to the games. But Hanks didn’t care as he said A’s fans are “the greatest fans in all of baseball.”

Hanks has been a longtime fan of the A’s as he grew up in the area. In fact, the 66-year-old worked as a vendor at the Oakland Coliseum, selling peanuts during Athletics games. “I went down to sell peanuts and soda, and thinking it would be like in a TV show where you saw the young kid trying to make a thing,” Hanks said in a 2019 interview with Jimmy Kimmel.  “Well, first of all, I got robbed twice. Note to self: Hide those wads of cash. Don’t be walking with a wad of cash in your pocket.”

The Athletics have been in Oakland since 1968. The team is expected to leave Oakland once their lease on their home stadium expires at the end of the 2024 season. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the A’s have begun the process to officially apply to Major League Baseball for relocation. Nevada lawmakers recently signed off on the A’s request for $380 million in public funding to help construct a $1.5 billion stadium located on the Vegas Strip. If the request is approved, it would be the first time a team has relocated from one city to another since the Montreal Expos moved from Montreal to Washington D.C. to become the Washington Nationals in 2005. The A’s began playing in 1901 in Philadelphia and were there until they moved to Kansas City in 1955.