OAKLAND — Nostalgia hung in the air Wednesday as the A’s took the field for the final home game of the year at the Coliseum.

You could see it in the smile of Lonnie Thompson, an East Oakland kid who grew up to be the friendly face greeting players and media entering the ballpark.

It was stitched in the 55-year-old baseball glove slung over a railing in Section 119, where Steve Davidovich and his family have sat since Oakland A’s baseball premiered here in 1968.

The good years and bad years have come and gone in Gus Dobbins’ three decades working the security detail. They’ve all been good to Dobbins, who stood guard at the player clubhouse where everyone knows his name.

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“If he ain’t here, there ain’t no Coliseum,” A’s legend Dave Stewart quipped, wrapping his arms around Dobbins before first pitch.

Dobbins, a youthful 85, has no plans of going anywhere. That cannot be said about the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, which stands to lose its two longtime tenants, the A’s and Raiders, within the next few years. The future of the hulking gray sports stadium, and the land that surrounds it, is a question mark.

‘The most beautiful stadium’

On Sept. 18, 1966, the Oakland Raiders and the Kansas City Chiefs dug their cleats into a mixture of turf and Kentucky bluegrass grown in the Central Valley town of Patterson to christen the $30 million football stadium. A dozen Oakland Tribune reporters and photographers fanned out to cover the day’s action. A Goodyear blimp hovered overhead. Television cameras captured the lush Oakland Hills. An estimated 50,746 fans caused the first of many traffic jams.

“The sun shone, praise be, and the people came,” the Tribune’s lead story began. “They came in the 7,500 cars … they came in the 65 special and 58 charter AC Transit buses, taxis … they came by foot and some must have come by ox-cart it seemed, the way traffic jammed up.”

The Chiefs beat the Raiders 32-10, but on that day the stadium was the hands-down victor, a Tribune scribe wrote. A Chiefs spokesman called it “the most beautiful stadium” he’d seen. “And I’ve seen them all,” he added.

Though it was first a football stadium, the Coliseum’s layout lent itself to America’s pastime. And in 1968, the Athletics joined the wave of California baseball on their westward journey from Philadelphia to Kansas City to Oakland.

A second home

Plenty has changed since. A wall of luxury suites topped by third-deck seating dubbed Mount Davis, built to lure the Raiders back to Oakland from Los Angeles in 1995, obscures the view of the hills and forever ruined the bleacher experience for baseball. Attendance has dropped. Sewage leaks welcome visiting teams.

But if the crumbling edifice is considered a dump, it’s a dump cherished by longtime fans who have called it home for nearly 50 seasons.

On Wednesday, 13,132 of the faithful sat through a scorching hot day to celebrate when center fielder Mark Canha smashed an 11th inning, walk-off home run to end the 2017 homestand. Next season is the team’s 50th at the Coliseum and the beginning of a countdown to 2023, the projected opening of a new ballpark at Peralta Community College District headquarters near Laney College, if all goes according to the team’s plan.

Davidovich, 74 and sporting a Rollie Fingers-style mustache, wishes the A’s would stay put. Who could blame him? The drive is a shorter commute from his San Leandro home than to Fifth Avenue and E. Eighth Street. He’s witnessed two perfect games, the 1987 All-Star Game and the World Series title runs of ’72, ’73, ’74 and ’89.

“I can tell you everything that happened pitch by pitch,” he said, referring to the years he filled out a scorebook. His family has held season tickets in Section 119 since ’68; he bought his own in 1986. “When people died off, other people moved in.”

A few sections away, usher Georgia Wilton checked the tickets of fans she didn’t recognize. “They’re like a second family,” she said of the regulars. “I’ve watched babies grow up, and now they’re married.”

Changing culture

Just as the A’s joined West Coast baseball half a century ago, the franchise is following a Major League Baseball trend of building more intimate parks near city centers. A’s President Dave Kaval, who earlier this month announced the Peralta site as the team’s preference, is envisioning a ballpark that is part of the fabric of Oakland, nestled in neighborhoods not far from Lake Merritt.

In making his pitch, which still requires environmental review and approvals from government bodies, Kaval said the location promotes the idea of walking, taking transit or riding a bicycle to the ballpark. More than half of fans drive to the Coliseum, he said in an interview last week.

At a ballpark talk on Tuesday, panelist Noah Friedman, a senior urban designer at Perkins and Will, suggested the A’s consider a radical step — build little or no parking. To which urban retail consultant Michael Berne replied: “People are going to drive to the stadium whether we like it or not.”

Fan Doug Hagge, who tailgated in the B Lot well into the game’s second inning Wednesday, said a ballpark development similar to AT&T Park where the San Francisco Giants play would be a cultural change for East Bay fans. For complete Oakland A’s coverage follow us on Flipboard.

“That’s a bummer but look at the place we play in,” the Concord resident said, beer in hand. “We have to move on, baseball is changing. People will find other ways to mingle in downtown Oakland. It’s a vibrant city right now.”

Curtain call for Coliseum?

If the move goes through, the Coliseum complex would be left without a permanent tenant, as the Raiders leave for Las Vegas and the Golden State Warriors cross the Bay Bridge to San Francisco. The A’s in a letter to Peralta board trustees said they aren’t abandoning the Coliseum site and would like to develop new playing fields and even fund a youth baseball academy.

City leaders and community members have talked about building a convention center and hotel, affordable housing and commercial businesses on the 120-acre plus land owned by the city and county.

Scott McKibben, the executive director of the Coliseum authority, has not ruled out the possibility that the site could host a professional sports team.

“Dave Kaval’s clear first preference is Laney,” McKibben said recently. “They have not come to us. But there’s a lot of headwinds that need to be dealt with on that site. Kaval has not said the Coliseum is dead in the water.” Get top headlines in your inbox every afternoon.

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A sports ghost town between 66th Avenue and Hegenberger Road is hard for Lonnie Thompson to imagine. Thompson, a 33-year security guard at the complex, grew up not far away in East Oakland’s Brookfield Village watching the A’s from a seat in the bleachers.

“It might be the biggest swap meet in Northern California. That’s a joke,” he said. But seriously, “it’s like my mom going away or my sister moving out of the country.”