Among the wreckage that John Fisher leaves behind in his Vegas heist of the Oakland Athletics is an American institution at live sporting events. Just as the A’s players, staff and fans arrived at the Coliseum for the team’s last game in Oakland, the bootleg shirt vendors were right there alongside them.

They peddle merchandise with copyrighted logos alongside beloved, and trademarked, characters and images that without a doubt have not received proper approval. The graphics are sometimes off-center, off-color, or just plain awful, and yet many that show up to A’s home games stop to peruse the collections that have become mainstays of the BART bridge that leads to the stadium, or the parking lots alongside the tailgates.

When the A’s leave town, the bootleg vendors and their merchandise will leave, too. No more shirts with Charlie Brown telling Snoopy, “You’re right, Snoopy. John Fisher sucks.” No more shirts with Taz, Bugs Bunny or Hello Kitty wearing A’s gear. And, of course, no more bootleg shirts commemorating the last Oakland A’s game at the Coliseum.

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Andre from Pasadena sells a T-shirt to Taylor Goodson on the Coliseum BART pedestrian bridge before the final home game of the Oakland A’s at the Oakland Coliseum in Oakland, Calif., on Sept. 26, 2024.

But while the products these purveyors sell might lack authenticity in a strictly legal sense, it does not mean that the people pushing this stuff necessarily lacked authenticity themselves. Only some vendors felt comfortable speaking with SFGATE at all. Those who were willing to lend their voice to us, however, shared in the melancholy that washed over the Coliseum on Thursday, even if those emotions led to some pretty good money throughout the day.

This was the case for two longtime veterans of the game: Ken Hopkins and Mike Fahey. The two men had a combined 38 years of experience selling shirts outside baseball stadiums and were stationed right next to each other by the south gate of the Coliseum, alongside some taco vendors. Like many of the other vendors, the shirts they sold commemorated the end of the Oakland era for this franchise. Theirs read, “Thanks for the memories,” with baseball card-like images of the all-time Athletics greats such as Rickey Henderson, Dennis Eckersley and Rollie Fingers. Naturally, the color selection matched the A’s: Kelly green, yellow, black, white and gray.

Ken Hopkins sells tome T-shirts in the Coliseum parking lot before the final home game of the Oakland........

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