The A’s do less than the bare minimum

I never watched Miguel Marte play baseball. In his time in the Oakland Athletics farm system, he played mainly in leagues without any televised broadcasts and he was out of baseball by 2012. It’s odd to me that I find myself so upset by the news of Marte’s passing from COVID-19 at the age of 30. It’s not that I’m callous, but I am a Paramedic and I have seen my fair share of people die from this virus or other illnesses. I’ve become hardened to death, some days I think that’s good, other days I think it’s bad. Still, I find myself writing about Marte because I am fuming over how his death was handled by the Oakland A’s.

A tweet announcing his passing and a link to a GoFundMe is the extent of attention that A’s gave to Marte’s passing. To be honest, the A’s could have ignored Marte’s death and no one would have been the wiser. Instead the A’s chose to tweet that Marte had passed and to offer their condolences. That isn’t all that bad, it’s the least an organization he was a part of for five seasons could do. There are layers in the A’s tweet and their handling of Marte’s death and that is where my anger begins to build.

The link to the GoFundMe is where the problems start. There’s nothing wrong with fans or fellow ballplayers donating to a fund to help Marte’s widow and two children try to survive. An organization like the A’s sure as hell should be doing more than tweeting a link to a GoFundMe. The A’s are valued at $1.1 billion, while their principal owner, John Fisher, is worth an estimated $2.2 billion. Those numbers make my blood boil. Billions of dollars in value and actual worth, yet the A’s, and by extension Fisher, can only be bothered to tweet out a link to a fundraiser for Marte’s family.

If the A’s actions ended there that would be bad enough. Nope, the A’s are using this opportunity to be the organization that just keeps giving and giving to the “Wow, look at how crappy we are” pile. Go ahead and visit the GoFundMe linked above and click on the donations. In the top donations section, there are donations from ballplayers and fans for as much as $500. The top donation belongs to the Oakland A’s themselves. The A’s and Fisher, with all the billions they have at their disposal, made a very generous donation of $1,000 to the Marte family. The A’s gave the equivalent of half a section worth of sold tickets for one game and proudly attached their names to said donation.

GoFundMe

I have my issues with Major League Baseball and ownership. Anyone seeking to vet me would find a longstanding history of me being at odds with MLB as an organization and the owners as a group. Even if I liked the owners what the A’s did in this situation would infuriate me. They gave a link to a fundraiser and a drop in the bucket for a donation to the family of a former player who died at the age of 30. There’s nothing for the A’s to be proud of when it comes to the way they have handled Marte’s passing and how Fisher authorized the team to throw a few dollars at the family like they were poor French peasants begging for bread.

Miguel Marte and his family deserved much better than they are getting. Marte’s wife, Jasmin, deserved a long life with her husband and their kids deserved a father to grow up with. With those dreams having been dashed Jasmin and her children at the very least deserved more help from the Oakland A’s than a link to a fundraiser and a donation that John Fisher’s accountant won’t even notice when balancing the books. The A’s could have done so much more for the Marte family. Instead, they have chosen to take the cheap low road, and what’s even worse is that they see no problem with what they did.

I have my issues with Major League Baseball and ownership. Anyone seeking to vet me would find a longstanding history of me being at odds with MLB as an organization and the owners as a group. Even if I liked the owners what the A’s did in this situation would infuriate me. They gave a link to a fundraiser and a drop in the bucket for a donation to the family of a former player who died at the age of 30. There’s nothing for the A’s to be proud of when it comes to the way they have handled Marte’s passing and how Fisher authorized the team to throw a few dollars at the family like they were poor French peasants begging for bread.

Miguel Marte and his family deserved much better than they are getting. Marte’s wife, Jasmin, deserved a long life with her husband and their kids deserved a father to grow up with. With those dreams having been dashed Jasmin and her children at the very least deserved more help from the Oakland A’s than a link to a fundraiser and a donation that John Fisher’s accountant won’t even notice when balancing the books. The A’s could have done so much more for the Marte family. Instead, they have chosen to take the cheap low road, and what’s even worse is that they see no problem with what they did.