By Cody Stavenhagen, Sam Blum and Stephen J. Nesbitt

Before he was one of the most famed actors of a generation, Tom Hanks was a boy in the Bay Area. He could see the lights of the Oakland Coliseum from his family’s home in the Lower Hills.

The A’s moved to Oakland when Hanks was 12. When he looks back now on 56 years of fandom, Hanks’ mind goes to Game 3 of the 1972 World Series, Oakland’s first time hosting a World Series game.

“When the A’s were in the World Series, the world came to Oakland,” Hanks wrote in an email to The Athletic. “Not San Francisco. Oakland.”

Hanks watched the TV broadcast and peered out the window as storm clouds rolled in. “A freak storm that featured the stub of a funnel cloud, like a tornado forming,” he recalled. First pitch was delayed as the Coliseum and the Hanks house were soaked with rain and pelted with sleet. That the game was postponed only extended Oakland’s moment at the center of the baseball universe.

​​The A’s won three World Series while Hanks was in high school. He went to “Hot Pants Day.” He witnessed Willie Mays’ final at-bat. He served as a Coliseum vendor, selling popcorn in the stands and sweating profusely on Opening Day when Vida Blue dazzled (“phee-nom”). Those A’s and the memories they gave him remain imprinted in Hanks’ memory. “Vida Blue. Joe Rudi. Mudcat Grant,” he wrote. “Campy Campaneris. Sal Bando. Ray Fosse. The original Reggie Jackson. Thank you, boys!”

Now the team Hanks loves is leaving Oakland. They’ll play their final game at the Coliseum on Thursday afternoon, then head to Sacramento and, sometime down the road, Las Vegas. The sense of finality has hit the same for so many A’s fans, from the diehards in the right-field bleachers to Hanks himself.

In the last days of the Oakland A’s, The Athletic contacted former A’s and notable fans — athletes, actors, musicians and politicians — to hear their favorite A’s memories and what it’s like saying goodbye.

Those short on time sent short missives. Milwaukee Bucks star Damian Lillard, who wears No. 0 in part to represent Oakland, replied, “It’s devastating for Oakland. Another sports team gone, another loss for the entire Oakland/Alameda (East Bay) communities. It’s sad to see the entire Coliseum complex empty.”

Los Angeles Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh lived his boyhood baseball dream coaching first base for the A’s in spring training. “That’s one of my most cherished memories, no doubt,” he said.

Others elaborated in conversations that went down memory lane and often alternated between therapy session and anger management. For so long, Oakland at least had the A’s. Now there will be nothing left.

“How in the world,” Hanks wrote, “does Major League Baseball turn inside-out one of the most storied franchises in the history of the game? The Oakland A’s — not the East Bay Athletics or the California Golden A’s — the Oakland A’s could have/should have been the Northern California version of the the Cubs in Wrigley, the BoSox in Fenway, Pittsburgh’s Buccos on the Allegheny, Cleveland’s Guardians on the shores of Erie — beloved ball-teams with eternal hope every Opening Day until the millennium comes.

“I don’t blame that loss on the city managers of Oakland, nor the taxpayers of Alameda County. The owners and baseball blew the lead.”

Before Tony La Russa was a Hall of Fame manager, he was a light-hitting 23-year-old infielder who made the A’s Opening Day roster in 1968. He appeared in the first major league game at the Coliseum, with 50,164 filling the stadium, and roped a pinch-hit single to left field in the ninth inning.

“Coming to Oakland,” La Russa recalled, “they came in with a lot of (hope for the) future. And you’d put their history against anybody’s during that period. I think everyone that’s been a part of this is a combination of sad and angry.”

That’s a common refrain from former A’s.

Dennis Eckersley, the Hall of Fame closer who had 320 saves and won a World Series win with the A’s, moved back to the Bay Area a few years ago. If he hadn’t, Eckersley said, “it wouldn’t hurt so much. But the closer we get, where we’re (living), it’s gotten uglier inside. I’ve taken it on. Like, you can’t throw it all away. Whatever happened happened, memories and that sort of thing.

“But still, it hurts. I used to think, ‘Oh, no big deal. They’re leaving.’ But, oh my God, it’s the end! It sure does feel ugly inside.”

Rickey Henderson grew up in Oakland and became one of the most celebrated players in franchise history. Dave Stewart was a dominant postseason presence, winning World Series MVP in 1989. Both lamented the departure to the San Francisco Chronicle in March, though they placed more emphasis on the city’s role rather than on A’s owner John Fisher.

“It’s disappointing to see the A’s leaving,” Henderson, a special assistant to the A’s president, said. “But we’ve gone through so much with all the teams. The city, there’s something they’re not seeing. When you have a city that had three big-name professional sports teams, and you can’t keep any of them, something’s wrong.”

Eckersley took his 5-year-old twin grandchildren to the Coliseum last weekend. They got a kick out of the big-head mascot race between innings. It dawned on Eckersley that they, and so many young fans like them, will never have a chance to build their own memories at the old ballpark where he spent so many great seasons. He’ll tell the twins, “Remember when we went that one night?” And he’ll hope they do.

“Sometimes it helps people to be mad,” added Eckersley, who said he’s especially sad for the stadium workers he’s seen there for decades. “I’ve got that tendency where I get pissed off and just don’t want to deal. But it is what it is, and it’s sad. And I’m going to feel it. And I do.”

Saying goodbye to the Coliseum with one of the greatest who ever played. A lot of great memories in Oakland. #athletics ⁦@Athletics⁩ ⁦@baseballhall⁩ pic.twitter.com/jENitxOuO9

— Dennis Eckersley (@Eck43) September 22, 2024

For La Russa, Thursday’s finale will bring him back to standing there for the home opener in 1968. He was there when it all began. Now he’s forced to watch it end.

“It’s hard to get through,” La Russa said. “The franchise had a great history and deserved a better fate.”

Last week at Oracle Park — home of the San Francisco Giants — Green Day stepped onto the stage. Lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong paced up and down holding a microphone close to his face. He touted the band’s East Bay roots, its eternal connection to the Bay Area. And then …

“We don’t take no s— from people like John f—— Fisher, who sold out the Oakland A’s to Las f—— Vegas,” Armstrong said. “I f—— hate Las Vegas. It’s the worst s—hole in America.”

Armstrong was born in Oakland and raised in Rodeo. He attended last season’s “reverse boycott” at the Oakland Coliseum. He is an investor in the independent Oakland Ballers, and earlier this year during a show at Toronto’s Rogers Centre, he posted a video of himself spray-painting over the A’s logo inside a stadium tunnel. He painted a “B” over the “A” and crossed out the word “Athletics.”

Armstrong declined an interview request. “Nothing more to add,” his publicist wrote in an email. (A few days later, at Oracle Park, Armstrong evidently had more to add.)

A long list of musicians with Oakland roots have stayed loyal to the team’s last remaining major pro sports franchise. MC Hammer (real name: Stanley Burrell) grew up dancing, singing and performing outside the Coliseum. He caught the eye of then-owner Charlie Finley, who hired the young Burrell to work as a bat boy. Legend has it Jackson first gave Burrell his “Hammer” nickname because he resembled Hammerin’ Henry Aaron. Years later, per a Rolling Stone cover story at the peak of Hammer’s fame, A’s players Dwayne Murphy and Mike Davis gave Burrell a loan as he worked toward releasing his first album.

That’s my Big Brother Chris celebrating our 3rd consecutive World Championship next to Reggie Jackson.
I spoke with my other brother Big Lou earlier whom was the assistant clubhouse manager. We lived at the Coliseum !!!
We shed a collective tear for the Eastbay.
The team is… pic.twitter.com/nodsoBjXxY

— MC HAMMER e/acc (@MCHammer) September 22, 2024

The Bay Area rapper Too $hort (real name: Todd Shaw) often posts photos of himself in A’s gear on X, and recently posted on the site that he grew up selling sodas at the Coliseum. “Day one fan over here,” he wrote, “no bandwagon!

Adam Duritz, lead singer of Counting Crows, moved to California as a child. His father had been a fan of the Philadelphia A’s. The franchise was in the midst of its 1970s golden era, and Duritz was hooked. He cut school, took BART to the Coliseum and sat in the bleachers with a $2.50 ticket. (He learned recently that Counting Crows drummer Jim Bogios did the same.) By the late 1980s, Duritz was going to 50 games a year. He saw Henderson break the stolen base record and watched Nolan Ryan twirl his sixth no-hitter. Duritz identified with the underdog A’s in the Moneyball era and cherished every minute.

Now living a much different life, Duritz still gets nostalgic any time he walks out of a tunnel and into an open stadium. Green grass. Green seats. The sense of awe. “It reminds me of the Coliseum when I was a kid,” he told The Athletic last week, “and you could look up before they built Mount Davis, you could see the hills behind it.”

A few weeks ago, Counting Crows was on tour with Santana. Karl Perazzo, Santana’s percussionist, walked into Duritz’s dressing room one day and said, “Hey, I’ve got someone for you to talk to.” La Russa was on the phone. “It was just very cool for me as a huge fan,” Duritz said, “to talk to him for a little while about those days.”

Duritz, who followed the team’s elongated stadium saga, briefly hoped the A’s could complete their plan to build a ballpark at Howard Terminal. More than anything, he felt as powerless as any other A’s fan.

“It’s completely outside your purview as a fan,” he said. “You do feel that distance too, because, like, one day it’s gonna be fine, and then it’s not, and then they have a plan, and they don’t, and I’m kind of used to that with sports in the Bay Area.”

Duritz says he will still love the A’s even when they are gone. But there are parts of him that loathe Las Vegas, and parts that miss the A’s colorful characters from bygone years, and parts that wish time could be frozen when he was a kid sitting in the bleachers at the Coliseum.

“Well,” he said, “it’s pretty heartbreaking.”

Over the past five decades, A’s fandom has reached far and wide, even to the highest level of public office in the United States. President Barack Obama is an outspoken Chicago White Sox fan, for which Theo Epstein offered a “midnight pardon” when the World Series champion Chicago Cubs visited the White House in 2017, but long before he ever supported the South Siders Obama had another favorite team.

“I didn’t become a Sox fan until I moved to Chicago,” Obama once said on a Washington Nationals broadcast. “I was growing up in Hawaii, so I ended up actually being an Oakland A’s fan.”

Obama was 11 when the A’s won Oakland’s first World Series in 1972.

Two thousand miles away from Obama in Honolulu, and not far from Hanks in the Lower Hills, two girl friends from Mills College were in the back of a convertible as it cruised along Grove Street in Oakland that night.

“We just rolled down the streets honking horns,” Representative Barbara Lee, from Oakland, recalled. “Yelling, screaming, applauding and congratulating the A’s.”

The celebration continued as the A’s captured back-to-back-to-back World Series titles. The A’s became a source of booming public pride. As Oakland emerged as a center of Black culture, its baseball team was led by Black stars such as Jackson, Henderson, Stewart, Blue Moon Odom, Bill North, Claudell Washington and Blue, who Lee came to know through activism work.

“In many ways, Oakland is a city that has always exemplified Black excellence,” Lee said. “Black culture. Black power. Leadership. The A’s were a part of that milieu. It was our team. There were so many African-Americans who saw these players like I did — as icons and heroes — and were proud.”

U.S. Rep Barbara Lee represents Oakland, and is a longtime fan of the A’s. (Courtesy of Barbara Lee)

Last year, as Lee ran against former 10-time MLB All-Star Steve Garvey in a U.S. Senate special election primary, she was endorsed by Henderson, Stewart, Dusty Baker, Shooty Babitt and Tye Waller, all of whom played or coached for the A’s.

As the A’s and the City of Oakland haggled over stadium deals for years, Lee occasionally welcomed A’s executives to her office in Washington D.C. for conversations about how to keep the A’s in Oakland. “It was a long process,” she said. “It was a grueling process.” And, in the end, a hopeless one.

After the A’s announced their intentions to relocate to Las Vegas, Lee introduced a bill, the “Moneyball Act,” requiring that the owners of a relocating club compensate the city they left. But the Oakland A’s could not be saved.

“It still hasn’t settled in,” Lee said. “That’s just how difficult it’s been for me and for a lot of people in Oakland. The Oakland A’s are us, and we are them. You feel in many respects abandoned.”

Lee recited the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression …

“I don’t know if I’ll ever get to the fifth,” she said.

Acceptance.

When Hanks was in Los Angeles last year to promote his novel, a former A’s employee in the audience at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre asked Hanks if he would buy the A’s to keep them in Oakland.

“I haven’t done that well, guys,” Hanks joked.

That didn’t stop him from airing his frustration.

“We’ve lost the Raiders. The Warriors moved to San Francisco. Now they’re going to take the A’s out of Oakland,” Hanks said. “Damn them all to hell.”

I asked Tom Hanks if he would buy the A’s to keep them in Oakland… pic.twitter.com/fhMU2y7v0H

— Mike Ono (@skoshi_tiger) June 14, 2023

That sentiment is shared by fellow actor Blake Anderson, star of the show “Workaholics.” Anderson grew up in Concord, in the East Bay. He shrugged off so many rumors of the A’s relocating that he eventually became numb to them. A’s fans were “strung along and teased” for so many years, Anderson said, and all that false hope led to a feeling that they’d lost the A’s long before they left.

“With Oakland fandom,” he said, “you just know what it’s like for teams to evacuate.”

There are two reasons Anderson became an A’s fan.

The first is Henderson. As a kid, warring factions within Anderson’s family would try to sway him toward the Giants or the A’s. Then Henderson came back and won MVP.

“Nobody was cooler than Rickey Henderson, man,” Anderson said. “That sold it for me. I was such a young, impressionable kid, and there was so much more swagger on that side of the bay.”

The second reason was Will Clark. But not that Will Clark. Anderson had a youth baseball teammate with the same name as the Giants first baseman. Anderson was not a strong hitter, and he remembers stepping to the plate and hearing his teammate say, “Here comes another strikeout.”

“It was f—ing Will Clark, dude,” Anderson said.

Needless to say, he was all in on the A’s. In high school, he and his friends waited at the exit of the players parking lot at the Coliseum. His favorite player, Terrence Long, autographed the bill of Anderson’s black A’s cap. Then came Jason Giambi, whose walk-up music was the nWo Wolfpac theme song.

“We’re like, if we yell, ‘nWo for life,’ he’s going to stop the car,” Anderson recalled. Giambi hit the brakes and signed.

Anderson was 5 when the A’s won the 1989 World Series. He doesn’t claim that one.

“I don’t feel like as an A’s fan I got my championship,” Anderson said. “That was going to be my crowning achievement as a fan, living through one of those. That’s where I get super bummed out. I was always imagining being like those Cubs fans who waited 100 years and were like, finally, we can hoist the trophy.”

Let’s get weird!

Thank you @UncleBlazer for throwing out today’s first pitch! #DrumTogether pic.twitter.com/mH0MnElnTm

— Oakland A’s (@Athletics) April 23, 2022

Only one emotion has surprised Anderson throughout this A’s saga: He still cares. He told himself he’d stop following, but he couldn’t. He’s grown to love the newest cast of A’s — Brent Rooker, J.P. Sears, Lawrence Butler, Mason Miller. He likes that they didn’t throw this season away. “I felt pride for the team again,” he said. As the team heads to Sacramento, he’s sworn to invest in the A’s at least until these guys disperse.

Anderson drove from Los Angeles to Oakland to watch Wednesday’s game with his mother, step-father, brother and a high-school buddy.

“I’ve got to go before it’s gone,” he said beforehand.

Anderson didn’t get tickets for the final game Thursday, but since he’d already be in town, he said, “maybe I’ll just BART in and kick it in the parking lot.” Those lots were where he made some of his best memories, where he met friends, where they shotgunned beers, where they reveled and toasted the green and gold.

Anderson wondered how he’d feel on the A’s last day in Oakland. He’d felt almost every emotion at the Coliseum before. He was there when Jason Isringhausen clinched the AL West in 2000. (“Nothing matched that kind of joy.”) He was there when Derek Jeter’s flip turned the 2001 ALDS. (“That was our year.”) But this would be different. Not euphoria or anguish. Just emptiness. Anderson figured he’d take a few laps around the old place, remember the good times, then give the filthy cement floor a kiss goodbye.

— The Athletic’s Evan Drellich, Chad Jennings and Eric Nehm contributed to this report.

(Illustration by Meech Robinson, The Athletic; Photos: Michael Zagaris / Oakland Athletics / Getty Images; Andrew D. Bernstein / NBAE via Getty Images; Lachlan Cunningham / Getty Images)

Maarten Paes is the starting goalkeeper for Major League Soccer team FC Dallas. Yet he can walk down a busy street in Dallas, Texas, and nobody will notice him.

That is not the case online. Or in Indonesia.

Like his team-mates in the Indonesia national team, Paes is mobbed when he visits the country and has a huge social media following, far bigger than would be expected of a player yet to trouble football’s uppermost echelons.

Paes, 26, was born in the Netherlands but became an Indonesian citizen in April and was shocked by the rapid growth of his socials — he has 1.7million followers on Instagram and 1.2m on TikTok.

“You already know before it happens because you’ve seen it happen to other players. It’s such a huge country and they are all in love with soccer,” Paes says.

The 26-year-old knew he was eligible to play for Indonesia for a couple of years but at the end of last year, the team reached out to him again. “At that time, my grandmother was declining in her health,” he says.

“She’s from there and I spoke with her a lot about it. It was a thing I could do that would make her smile at the end of her life. That was huge for me. She said, ‘I would really love if you would do that’. So she encouraged me and it was an honour to do it for her.”

After news broke that he was switching to Indonesia, his life changed. “That was when I felt I needed to get a relationship with my social media in a different way, where you can put it away for a while because it can be a little bit overwhelming,” he says. “It’s surreal that suddenly you’re getting adored by so many followers and such big crowds.”

Paes, who represented the Netherlands at youth level, played his first two games for Indonesia during the recent break. He says the goalless draw against Australia, who were 109 places above Indonesia in FIFA’s world rankings, in front of more than 70,000 fans at the Gelora Bung Karno Stadium was eye-opening.

“It was like for the first time it all hit me, how big it is,” he says. “You see it on the internet, you see the numbers and you can’t really wrap your head around it. Then we couldn’t leave the hotel without security.”

Oxford United, who sit ninth in the Championship, England’s second tier, rarely generate big numbers on social media, but in August, a video they posted on Instagram hit 5.2million views.

Australian A-League side Brisbane Roar experienced a similarly curious upturn in engagement across social channels this month too. Like Oxford, Brisbane’s videos posted to Instagram are usually viewed thousands of times. Yet back-to-back videos posted to Instagram garnered 4.5million and 1.7million views for Roar.

The explanation? You’ve guessed it: the summer arrival of two Indonesian soccer superstars, in the form of the national team’s youngsters Marselino Ferdinan and Rafael Struick.

Ferdinan is a 20-year-old attacking midfielder who signed for Oxford from Belgian second-division side Deinze last month. Struick is a 21-year-old forward who joined Brisbane (owned by Indonesian conglomerate Bakrie Group) from ADO Den Haag, in Dutch football’s second tier, this month.

Neither arrived as a household name, at least in Europe or Australia, nor were they from well-known clubs.

Within days of Ferdinan joining Oxford, their follower count on Instagram grew from 83,000 to 226,000. Some of Brisbane’s previous posts received less than 10 replies. Struick’s announcement had 9,000.

This is the Indonesia effect. The country in south-east Asia has a population of more than 280million people and football is the No 1 sport. Cue adoration for national team players and fanaticism online and offline.

To illustrate the point, below are some stats compiled by The Athletic to compare Indonesia’s starting XI with the United States men’s national team’s starting XI — but we’re not looking at expected goals or progressive passing. We’re comparing Instagram followers.

Indonesia’s starting XI for their World Cup qualifier against Australia had a collective Instagram following of 26.9million. The 11 clubs they play for have a combined following of under 10m on the same app.

In comparison, USMNT’s last starting XI from their friendly against New Zealand had a combined following of only 1.4m.

That number could have been higher but Christian Pulisic, the AC Milan forward with 7.8m followers on Instagram, was on the bench.

What comparing the two starting XIs should highlight is the level of support for Indonesian players compared with, for example, a country of more than 335million people that will host the men’s World Cup in 2026.

The only players in the starting XI for Indonesia’s goalless draw with Australia who have fewer followers than the club they play for are Rizky Ridho, who plays centre-back for Indonesian Liga 1 side Persija Jakarta, and Justin Hubner, who is at Wolverhampton Wanderers in the Premier League.

Hubner, 21, joined Wolves’ youth ranks in 2020. He has yet to feature for the senior side and plays the majority of his games at academy level — but with the national team, he is treated like he plays week in and week out for Real Madrid, such is the fanfare he experiences online and in person.

“I can’t leave my hotel (in Indonesia) because there are people waiting for me, running to me. Everywhere I go it’s crazy,” Hubner tells The Athletic. “If I go into a shop and then walk out, there will be maybe 100 people waiting. I’m their idol, so they are waiting for me, for pictures and autographs.”

More on the world of social media and football…

Hubner was born in the Netherlands and played alongside Xavi Simons (an Instagram star as a teenager at Barcelona, he had one million followers before he was 14 and now plays for RB Leipzig) in Dutch youth national teams. With Indonesia once a Dutch colony, a growing number of players in the national team have dual citizenship.

“I had maybe 5,000 followers on Instagram and when the fans realised I had Indonesian blood it went to 30k and now I’m at 2.7million,” says Hubner. “In terms of social media, everything has just grown so fast. Everything from brand deals too. There’s so much coming to me now. It’s a dream.”

The day before speaking to The Athletic, his deal with deodorant firm Rexona was launched. “A lot of team-mates here at Wolves say, ‘Can I change my national team to Indonesia?’, as a joke.

“But the guys here support me and are happy for me. They also want followers because it’s nice to have, but it is not about followers, the important thing is that I’m playing for the national team and what comes with it is really nice.”

Hubner went on loan to Japanese side Cerezo Osaka last season and says there were always Indonesia fans there to watch him, but when he travelled back to England following the two World Cup qualifier games against Saudi Arabia and Australia, there was no welcome party like there would have been at Jakarta airport. He returned to his apartment alone and without the need for security.

“It’s a different world,” Hubner says about his quiet life in Wolverhampton. “When I come back to Europe it is like I am living my own life, no stress. In Indonesia, there is a crazy side. You have no privacy, wherever you go there’s always people recording you, it’s nice but it is also good to get back to your own space and privacy.

“When I landed in Indonesia, I tried to hide myself with a cap and a mask but they recognised me straight away. Even the security and police wanted pictures with me. There was 50 to 60 people who wanted a picture. My family are also quite famous now. I made an Instagram account for my mum and she has nearly 50,000 followers. Everyone recognises her. The first time she went to Indonesia, she was asking why people wanted pictures with her.”

When fans meet Hubner he says it is not uncommon for them to be overawed with emotion. Some have cried. His mother, Brigitte, has received direct messages from fans who dream of marrying her son. This star factor is something clubs are trying to tap into.

“Dallas have been noticing it,” goalkeeper Paes says. “There’s been a big boost in terms of engagement for the club. If I play for a club, I like to help them as much as possible because they help me a lot too. My main focus is to keep the balls out of the net for them, but help to build this club, build awareness.”

Oxford, Ferdinan’s new club, are co-owned by Erick Thohir, an Indonesian businessman who helped restore them to the second tier after a 25-year hiatus. Thohir was also appointed head of the Football Association of Indonesia last year and is behind the drive to improve the national team, youth teams and wider football across Indonesia.

“The exciting thing about Marselino is that he is the best young Indonesian talent,” says Thohir. “He’s 20, he’s been playing and training in Belgium.

“We need to be investing in young players at Oxford. He’s young but he has played more than 20 times for our national team, so the Oxford manager wants to give him a chance, and that’s the most important thing.

“If he brings more awareness to Oxford, it is an extra value.

“We want to see an opportunity for any players who can play,” he adds. “So let’s see if Marselino can survive in Oxford because we don’t give any red carpet or VIP treatment. He has to compete.”

(Top photos: Robertus Pudyanto, Mohamed Farag, Zhizhao Wu, Noushad Thekkayil, Getty Images; design: Meech Robinson)

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has announced that it will appeal against the “no fault or negligence” finding in Jannik Sinner’s anti-doping case.

WADA is seeking a “period of ineligibility of one or two years,” in which the world No. 1 tennis player and two-time Grand Slam champion would be barred from competing in the sport at all levels. Sinner won the U.S. Open in New York just three weeks ago.

Sinner, who is currently playing at the China Open in Beijing, said he was “surprised” by WADA’s decision.

“Obviously I’m very disappointed and also surprised of this appeal, to be honest, because we had three hearings. All three hearings came out very positively for me,” he told reporters after beating Roman Safiullin to reach the last eight in Beijing.

“We always talk about the same thing. Maybe they just want to make sure that everything is in the right position.”

In a further statement, a “disappointed” Sinner added that there had been “three separate hearings in each case confirming my innocence” in the case.

“Several months of interviews and investigations culminated in three senior judges scrutinising every detail through a formal hearing,” the statement continued.

“They issued an in-depth judgement explaining why they determined me not at fault, with clear evidence provided and my cooperation throughout.

“On the back of such a robust process both the ITIA and the Italian anti-doping authority accepted it and waived their rights to appeal.”

Sinner added that the need for a “thorough investigation” was understandable and that he would “cooperate fully” in the investigation, but questioned why the process needed to be reopened.

Sinner tested positive for clostebol, a banned anabolic steroid, on two occasions: March 10, in-competition at the BNP Paribas Open held in Indian Wells, Calif, and March 18, out of competition.

An independent tribunal convened by the ITIA and conducted by Sports Resolutions ruled that Sinner bore “no fault or negligence” for those positive tests in a hearing on August 15, but still found Sinner to have committed two anti-doping violations, for which he was stripped of his ranking points, prize money, and results from that event.

It accepted the Italian world No.1’s explanation that Sinner’s physiotherapist, Umberto Ferrara, had brought an over-the-counter healing spray containing clostebol to Indian Wells. His trainer, physiotherapist, Giacomo Naldi, cut his hand, and then used the spray on that cut. Naldi then conducted massages on Sinner, which led to transdermal contamination with the clostebol from the healing spray.

Sinner parted company with Naldi and Ferrara on the eve of the U.S. Open.

WADA is now challenging the decision that Sinner was not at fault for his violation. In a statement released today Saturday September 28, it said: “The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) confirms that on Thursday 26 September, it lodged an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in the case of Italian tennis player, Jannik Sinner, who was found by an independent tribunal of the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) to bear no fault or negligence having twice tested positive for clostebol, a prohibited substance, in March 2024.

“It is WADA’s view that the finding of “no fault or negligence” was not correct under the applicable rules. WADA is seeking a period of ineligibility of between one and two years. WADA is not seeking a disqualification of any results, save that which has already been imposed by the tribunal of first instance.”

In response, the ITIA issued its own statement.

“The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) acknowledges the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) decision to appeal the ruling of No Fault or Negligence in the case of Italian tennis player Jannik Sinner, issued by an independent tribunal appointed by Sport Resolutions on 19 August 2024. Under the terms of the World Anti-Doping Code, WADA has the final right to appeal all such decisions,” an ITIA spokesperson said.

“Having reached an agreed set of facts following a thorough investigative process, the case was referred to a tribunal entirely independent of the ITIA to determine level of fault and therefore sanction because of the unique set of circumstances, and lack of comparable precedent.

“The process was run according to World Anti-Doping Code guidelines; however, the ITIA acknowledges and respects WADA’s right to appeal the independent tribunal’s decision in the Court of Arbitration for Sport.”

Jannik Sinner won the U.S. Open in the immediate aftermath of the ITIA ruling on his anti-doping case. (Al Bello / Getty Images)

In the ITIA’s full decision, Professor David Cowan said that “even if the administration had been intentional, the minute amounts likely to have been administered would not have had […] any relevant doping, or performance enhancing, effect upon the player.”

A positive test for clostebol carries a mandatory provisional suspension from tennis, but two further independent tribunals upheld Sinner’s appeals against those suspensions, which were active between April 4 and April 5 and April 17 and April 20. The success of those appeals meant that the two positive tests, and the attached suspensions, were not made public until the conclusion of the ITIA’s investigation into Sinner’s case. This drew allegations of double standards from some of Sinner’s tennis peers, but is in line with ITIA protocol.

In a statement released at the conclusion of the investigation, Sinner said: “I will now put this very challenging and hugely unfortunate period behind me.” The best men’s tennis player in the world will have to resume it now.

GO DEEPER

What players’ reaction to Sinner’s doping case says about their trust in their sport

‘The news that Sinner will have been fearing’

Analysis from Charlie Eccleshare, tennis writer

Sinner emerged from months of uncertainty to win the U.S. Open three weeks ago. Now he has been put back under investigation, and the renewed scrutiny of the initial ITIA ruling that will come with it.

It wasn’t as though the world No. 1 necessarily appeared liberated in New York — his post-match press conference after the final was as much subdued as it was celebratory — but there was an air of Sinner having temporarily closed a chapter behind him.

The prospect of a WADA appeal was always there however, and Saturday morning brought the news that Sinner will have been fearing. He was able to compartmentalize pretty well during the five months from being told of the positive test to it becoming public in August. He even won the Cincinnati Open two days before the full decision in his case was released.

But in his post-final press conference in New York, he acknowledged that his demeanor and personality had changed during the investigation.

“Obviously, it was very difficult to enjoy certain moments,” he said.

“Even the way I behaved or how I entered the court in some tournaments was no longer the same as before.”

Jannik Sinner answered numerous questions about his case at his pre-tournament press conference and throughout the U.S. Open. (Jamie Squire / Getty Images)

This decision from WADA, and the attached seeking of a ban of up to two years, will be another big challenge of his mentality.

When the independent tribunal convened by the ITIA ruled that Sinner bore “no fault or negligence” — the key term that WADA is challenging — numerous players, some of them high-profile, expressed a view that the swiftness of his case pointed to double standards in the sport.

In the higher echelons of tennis there will surely be dismay at the world’s best male player facing a doping investigation, as WADA’s appeal will now be referred to CAS.

(Top photo: Kena Betancur / AFP via Getty Images)

Having etched her name across the record book during the 2024 WNBA season, Caitlin Clark has been named the league’s Rookie of the Year, league sources told The Athletic on Friday.

That Clark won the award came as little surprise considering how prolific her debut season was.

Clark broke both the WNBA’s single-season and single-game assist records. She scored the most points by a rookie ever, and the most points by a point guard ever. She became the first rookie to record two triple-doubles and the first Fever player ever to record a triple-double.

Those are just some of her many accomplishments among averaging 19.2 points and 8.4 assists per game — numbers that were even better in the second half of the season — and led the Fever to their first postseason appearance since 2016. Indiana also improved its win total by seven in 2024.

Clark, the No. 1 pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft, entered the league as the most-anticipated rookie in league history. She flourished at Iowa for four seasons, leading the Hawkeyes to two Final Fours and setting the women’s NCAA Division I and major college women’s basketball scoring records.

The spectacle around Clark followed her to the professional ranks. While Clark dazzled fans and tormented opponents, she also played an instrumental role in a season of explosive growth for the WNBA. Six different league television partners set viewership records this year for its highest viewed WNBA game, and all six included the Fever.

Attendance in Indianapolis hit a record high, with an average of 17,036 fans packing Gainbridge Fieldhouse for home games. Indiana led the league in attendance for the first time in WNBA history.

Friday’s news, however, is not a reflection of the off-court Clark Effect, but her successes between the court’s four lines.

“She’s been special,” Indiana coach Christie Sides said ahead of the playoffs. “She came into the best league in the world, the best women’s basketball league in the world. She found her footing. She’s continued to get better. She’s put herself in position to be called one of the best players in the league. That’s incredible for a rookie.”

GO DEEPER

From shaky start to playoff bound, how Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever revived their season

For the first half of the season, the Rookie of the Year race seemed as if it would be among the tightest ever. Through the first two months of the season, Angel Reese helped the Sky remain in playoff contention. She had 14 double-doubles in 20 games and broke Candace Parker’s consecutive double-double streak.

Reese, like Clark, earned All-Star honors and was awarded WNBA Rookie of the Month in June. She set the league’s single-season total rebound record (446) and recorded the highest per-game rebound average in WNBA history (13.1).

The No. 7 draft pick, Reese would have become only the third player taken after No. 6 in the WNBA Draft to win Rookie of the Year. But her second half proved different than her first. Chicago slumped and Reese eventually was ruled out for the rest of the season on Sept. 8 with a wrist injury. The Sky missed the postseason.

During the season Clark and Reese downplayed the importance of the race.

“I’m sure (Angel) would give you the same exact answer—I’m sure she has given you the same exact answer,” Clark said in late August. “So for us, everybody can write that, but our focus is on winning basketball games. It’s as simple as that.”

Said Reese: “We don’t either care about Rookie of the Year. I think you guys have made it a big thing. We haven’t. We both want to win. We’ve been wanting to win, and that’s what we’ve done in our collegiate career.”

Clark became the third consecutive No. 1 pick to win top rookie honors.

“I know there’s a lot of room for me to continue to improve,” Clark said after the Fever were knocked out of the playoffs by the Connecticut Sun. “I feel like I had a solid year, but for me, the fun part is I feel like I’m just scratching the surface.”

Collier wins DPOY award

From the beginning of the regular season until its conclusion, the Minnesota Lynx had one of the WNBA’s top defenses. And that defense now boasts the league’s top defender after Napheesa Collier was named the 2024 WNBA Defensive Player of the Year award winner, league sources told The Athletic on Friday.

The Lynx finished the year first in opponent field goal percentage (41), first in opponent 3-point percentage (30.1), first in opponent assist rate (18.6), and a close second in defensive rating (94.8). Collier’s versatility was key to all their success as an anchor Minnesota’s defense.

Often Collier was tasked with guarding an opponent’s top frontcourt players. At other moments, she rotated over to provide crucial help.  She was especially impactful against top competition as the Lynx went 7-4 against the other top-four playoff seeds, including Minnesota’s Commissioner’s Cup victory.

Collier finished second in the WNBA in steals per game (1.9) and eighth in blocks (1.4 per game). According to Synergy Sports, opponents shot only 34.3 percent against her.

“I’m so proud of Phee’s defensive work in 2024. Her commitment to all aspects of our defense — deflections, denials, steals, blocks, rebounds — anchored one of the top defensive teams in the league and led to her best season yet as a pro,” Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve told the AP.

Minnesota finished second in the WNBA standings and swept the Phoenix Mercury in the first round of the playoffs. The Lynx, winners of four WNBA titles, will be looking to win their fifth this postseason. If they do, they would move into first place for titles won by an active WNBA franchise, breaking a tie with the Seattle Storm.

Tipoff for Game 1 of their semifinal series against the third-seeded Sun is set for 8:30 p.m. ET on Sunday.

Required reading

(Photo: Dylan Goodman / NBAE via Getty Images)

It was one of the ugliest off-court moments in recent NBA history. After Derrick Rose was found not liable for the alleged gang rape of his former girlfriend in 2016, jurors took pictures with the former league MVP outside the Los Angeles courthouse.

Rose, the longtime Chicago Bull, was free to start his career with the New York Knicks as just a basketball player, a former superstar felled by injuries who was trying to approach his previous heights after repeated recoveries knocked him off his seemingly divined path. That is a story, as sports fans, we have seen before and innately understand. He wouldn’t have to face the pesky distractions of an ongoing case or the incongruous blemish a different verdict would have caused. The verdict made it easier to forget about the case and focus on his career, if you were so inclined.

Rose went on to play in the NBA for eight more seasons, a noble professional career he ended officially on Thursday when he announced his retirement. After some rocky years trying to relocate his early brilliance, he became a valuable depth guard and a veteran mentor. Rose’s path, strictly on the court, is similar to the career arc of Vince Carter, who will go into the Hall of Fame next month in no small part for figuring out that transition better than any player ever.

With Rose, it isn’t that easy, is it? Nor should it be. Being found not liable is not the same thing as being found innocent. And if Rose is allowed to speak glowingly about how basketball was his first love and how it has allowed him to grow and evolve, then it is only right that his retirement serves as an opportunity to remind us who he was as one of the league’s brightest stars.

And for at least one moment, he was awful — and it showed us how unwell our culture was at the same time.

Almost by definition, a civil trial asks a jury to determine whether the plaintiff’s or defendant’s version of events is more believable. Even without spending time getting into the history of women’s sexual history being used against them in cases like this one — and that is a hell of a sentence fragment to consider — what Rose conceded did happen was and remains jarring.

• Yes, he and his friends went over to have sex with the woman, who was Rose’s girlfriend for two years.

• Yes, Rose repeatedly sent sexually explicit videos to the woman, asking her to engage in group sex, despite her refusal.

• No, Rose did not understand the concept of consent.

Those things aren’t up for debate. Sure, it would be naive to think some of those things don’t happen regularly with other athletes, celebrities and just regular people. That does not make it OK to slide the findings of the case under the on-court moments of a memorable and unique career. Those things did happen; that was how he operated in this instance.

That it happened 11 years ago and was tried eight years ago is irrelevant. Yes, Rose put together a remarkable career, a hometown player bringing one of the league’s marquee teams out of a lost decade and into the thick of title contention. It is understandable that Rose’s fans, and particularly his Chicagoan fans, developed a deep emotional link to him.

That doesn’t condone us forgetting about the people for whom Rose’s continued presence in the league made it harder to follow the sport. Rose’s case reminded us of the entitlement that athletes can enjoy and from which they can benefit. Rose likely wouldn’t have been impacted by this, but the NBA and NBPA collectively bargained a new policy on domestic abuse, sexual violence and child abuse that went into effect within a year of Rose’s case ending. It is an imperfect policy because we live in an imperfect society, and we cannot say if it has changed the behavior of people within the league. Incidents still occur, of course, and it can sometimes feel as if the main thing the policy has done is make team-building easier.

All of that makes Rose’s retirement complex. It is nearly impossible to hold what he did on the court and what the trial revealed about him together, but it is also irresponsible not to try. We don’t live in a world that affords us that luxury. Any attempt to separate the two is fundamentally selfish, an effort to neatly cordon off the brilliant from the brutal.

The best thing about being a sports fan is discovering what humans are capable of in exceptional circumstances. It’s the worst thing, too.

(Photo: Elsa/Getty Images)

Football shirts were once an item of clothing for a) players to wear at work, and b) fans to sport on the terraces in solidarity with the lads out on the pitch.

Now, what must seem abruptly to the uninitiated, they have become the uniform for British music festivals and a source of inspiration for major fashion houses.

Several moments signalled the shift to football shirts becoming mainstream during the 2010s.

For example, Drake, the Canadian music artist, wore the 2015-16 season’s pink away shirt of leading Italian club Juventus, leading to an internet scramble from his fanbase. And two years later, the landscape changed completely again when Nigeria unveiled their kit for the 2018 World Cup finals.

“After 2016, we’d seen quite a few years of blank kits,” says Phil Delves, a kit collector, designer and influencer. “Many people rightly refer to the Nigeria kit (in 2018) and the interest around that, and I think while the design itself isn’t the craziest design we’ve seen, everything was massively amplified because of the moment it arrived and the fact it was coupled with a major tournament.”

Juventus in Pink

2015 – The latest instalment of the Juve pink kit was seen in 2015. It wasn’t just made famous by the big names, such as Pogba, on the pitch but reached a larger audience thanks to rapper Drake.

Hopefully there will be another great pink kit soon! pic.twitter.com/BGoucrstPM

— Classic Football Shirts (@classicshirts) August 2, 2018

Before Nigeria took to the pitch at that tournament in Russia, the shirt they wore as they did so had taken on a life of its own. Designed by American artist Matthew Wolff as a tribute to that African nation’s performance in reaching the knockout phase of the 1994 World Cup, in what was their debut on the global stage, the kit featured a green and white torso with triangle-patterned black and white sleeves.

The bold and vibrant design in 2018 represented the nation’s history and an emerging ‘Naija’ culture centred on a hopeful view of the country’s future, embodied by a new generation of exciting players and a growing arts sector.

Following the kit announcement, internationally famous music artists, including Wizkid, the Nigerian singer from whom Bukayo Saka has borrowed the ‘Starboy’ nickname, and Skepta, a rapper born and raised in London to Nigerian parents, wore the shirt.

Nigeria’s jersey for the 2018 World Cup was a significant moment in the scene (Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images)

At the same time, England were enjoying their most successful international tournament since making the semi-finals of the 1996 European Championship, and staunch and casual fans alike went shopping for retro kits to wear while watching the games.

Shortly after that 2018 World Cup, serial French champions Paris Saint-Germain announced a collaboration with Nike’s Jordan Brand worth around €200million (£168m; $223m at current exchange rates). The striking black-and-white kits produced under the deal drew eyes from around the world as global superstars in football, including Neymar and recent World Cup winner Kylian Mbappe, played for PSG in the Champions League wearing a logo associated with U.S. basketball legend Michael Jordan.

This was not the first time PSG had taken inspiration from other fashion sectors — their 2006-07 Louis Vuitton-inspired away kit was among the first of its kind — but it marked a period when the once-niche collaboration between fashion and football went mainstream.

PSG’s Louis Vuitton-inspired away kit from 2006-07 (Pascal Pavani/AFP via Getty Images)

“For us as a business, the summer of 2018 is a real turning point,” says Doug Bierton, CEO and co-founder of Classic Football Shirts. “We opened our first retail store in London, and we got to see first-hand the passion and hype.”

Classic Football Shirts started life in 2006 when Bierton and co-founder Matt Dale went searching for a Germany kit from the 1990 World Cup for a fancy dress party. After purchasing the shirt from eBay, and an England one with Paul Gascoigne’s name printed on the back, the duo noted the dearth of authentic retro jerseys available online.

Bierton and Dale set up a business to buy and sell football shirts, reinvesting their profits into new stock. Less than two decades later, Classic Football Shirts has more than 1.3 million Instagram followers, stores in major cities in the UK and the United States and expects revenues north of $50million in 2024.

Following a $38.5million (£29m) cash injection from investment firm The Chernin Group in May, the company announced several other strategic investors this month. The new investors include actor and Wrexham co-owner Rob McElhenney, recently retired USWNT legend Alex Morgan and global sports and entertainment agency Wasserman.

Bierton is as equipped as anybody to chart how the business has developed from a relatively niche collector industry into one of the most prominent subcultures within football and fashion.

A model wearing a football shirt at the 2018 Paris Fashion Week (Christian Vierig/Getty Images)

“It was much more underground,” says Bierton. “It was only after the 1994 World Cup and the advent of the Premier League that football shirts started being produced with any volume, so when we set up the company in 2006, there was a limited range to look back to. When we began, shirts from the 1980s were more fashionable — like, indie style, the skinny Adidas trefoil type.

“People weren’t buying 1990s shirts from a fashion point of view because the baggy stuff wasn’t really on-trend. It was more ‘I want to get a David Beckham shirt because I’m into shirt collecting or just football in general’. But as the years go by, kids get older. People are harking back to different eras.”

Still, diehard football fans are only a portion of the industry.

Over the years, high-end fashion brands including Giorgio Armani, Dior, Stella McCartney, Yohji Yamamoto and Balenciaga have partnered with football teams to design special kits. Celebrities with no apparent ties to the sport, such as pop stars Rihanna and Sabrina Carpenter — the latter wore an England shirt over a Versace dress at the ‘Capital Summertime Ball’ festival in the UK during the recent Euros — have jumped on the hype train.

With the rise of ‘Blokecore’, an internet trend popularised on TikTok where people of all ages and genders wear retro football shirts with casual outfits, there are no limits on who wears these kits or where.

“We did a string of pop-ups in the autumn in the U.S. last year, and the turnout was insane,” says Bierton. “We had lines down the block in Los Angeles, New York and Miami.

“It was unbelievable to see the range of stuff people were wearing. It was a combination of hardcore fans who loved the game and wanted a shirt to show their knowledge and passion and those who think football shirts are pretty cool to wear. We had someone ask a customer why they were wearing an old Sheffield Wednesday shirt, and they responded, ‘I don’t even know what Sheffield Wednesday is!’.”

Some old football shirts are worth more than others (Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)

As the industry has grown, the chances of strolling into a charity shop and finding a rare shirt with a unique design have significantly declined.

People are far more conscious of the cost of used football shirts, and resellers and larger third-party retailers have increased the prices to reflect the demand. In some cases, legitimate good quality shirts in adult sizes, like the Netherlands kit from their victorious 1988 Euros campaign, can fetch more than £1,000 ($1,300). An authentic USMNT “denim” pattern shirt, worn by the host nation during the 1994 World Cup, regularly demands prices above £500.

Coupled with the increasing prices of contemporary shirts, which typically range from around £60 to £80 for the ‘replica’ version to more than three figures for the ‘player-issue’ versions produced for Premier League clubs, sales of fakes are now on the rise. According to Corsearch, a global leader in trademark and brand protection, the online market for counterfeit football shirts for Premier League clubs has risen to £180million per year.

“In the past two or three years, there have been a lot more fakes knocking about,” says Jack Mcandrew, owner of Sound Trout, an online independent vintage retailer. “It’s due to social media and the influencers who have been wearing football shirts, in some cases even wearing fakes themselves without realising, indirectly increasing the demand and creating opportunity.

“I’ve come across a lot, even from sellers who I know to be reputable. But because the shirts are so in demand and the quality is so high, people fall for them. It’s funny, because the factories that make the fakes aren’t even just doing the ones that are considered cool and coveted, like the Atletico Madrid home shirt from 2004-05 with the Spider-Man kit sponsor, they also do random generic ones.

“I’ve had to be a lot more careful. If a shirt is from the 1990s and it’s in ‘mint’ condition, nine times out of 10 it’s probably too good to be true.”

Authentic USMNT “denim” pattern shirts, worn during the 1994 World Cup, regularly demand prices north of £500 (Ben Radford/Getty Images)

For independent store owners like Mcandrew, the growing counterfeit market means they have to be extra careful when buying shirts from online outlets or inspecting in person at car-boot sales.

Classic Football Shirts, which operates a significantly larger operation with more than 160 employees, has staff responsible for sifting through fakes and procuring legitimate retro classics from all corners of the planet.

“We’ve got a rigorous authentication process,” says Bierton. “This includes looking at labels and product codes and comparing them to shirts we have. We used to have a thick written manual, and now it’s computer-based, but we have a team of around 20-odd people working on the process. It gets more challenging, particularly with the quality of fakes now produced, but once you’ve worked here for a couple of months, you can usually tell the difference.

“It’s still the case that over half the classic shirts are sold to us by people through the website. But there are crazy jobs within the company, basically hunters, whose role is to go out and find shirts in the wild for us. They go around the world, making connections to find old shirts.”

As the trend has popularised, it has become more of an international industry. While there have always been collectors worldwide — Classic Football Shirts sold its first jersey to a Liverpool fan in Norway and has had interest from “hardcore” kit enthusiasts from South Korea since its inception — subcultures have developed reflecting specific interests within populations.

“Particularly in the U.S., many fans are drawn to ‘hero printing’,” says Bierton. “It’s about players as much as teams. I think of the U.S. customers as similar to myself regarding Italian football of the 1990s. I wouldn’t necessarily support any of the teams, but I love the idea.

“I would have a Parma shirt, a Sampdoria shirt, a (Gabriel) Batistuta, (Francesco) Totti or (Roberto) Baggio shirt. That’s the Premier League to a lot of fans from the States. They might like Thierry Henry, Wayne Rooney or Sergio Aguero. They tend to be more interested in the technical aspect in Asia, preferring the player-issue shirts.”

The 1990s remain the golden era for long-time shirt collectors and those who have immersed themselves in the trend more recently. Manchester United and England tops with Beckham’s name printed on the back are among the most popular on Classic Football Shirts, competing with Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi ones.

With the introduction of ‘icon’ cards on the Ultimate Team mode of the EAFC video game, legends of the era such as Zinedine Zidane and the original, Brazilian Ronaldo have maintained their relevance to younger generations, and their shirts remain some of the most coveted.

Football in 1997 – when players’ shirts were definitely baggier (Alex Livesey/Allsport)

“The ’90s is the high water mark,” says Bierton. “There’s much more freedom of expression in the kits. They’re bolder, and they’re baggy. It’s not ‘Fly Emirates’ on the front of the shirt; it feels pre-commercialisation. It feels like there is still something pure about these shirts.

“There’s something about the 1990s and early noughties that has managed to capture the imagination of younger generations.”

GO DEEPER

A 1989 Liverpool kit and Beckham’s underpants: Why U.S. investors have bet £30m on retro football shirts

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Dan Goldfarb)