Silicon Valley v The Swamp

Kulturkampf on the coast

EtAlers, please welcome guest writer Simon Sharwood, Asia-Pacific editor for technology news site theregister.com, who was eyewitness to the West Coast debut of Major League Cricket last week. Here’s his entertaining report on San Francisco Unicorns versus Washington Freedom.

In Silicon Valley, startup companies that achieve a valuation of a billion dollars are called “Unicorns”. So is San Francisco’s Major League Cricket (MLC) team, which last Thursday played the US T20 league’s first ever game on the West Coast at the 63,000-seat Oakland Coliseum

It was my second visit to the Coliseum after I found myself with nothing to do on a 2022 work trip - I’m a tech journo so San Francisco is a frequent destination - and spotted an Oakland Athletics vs New York Yankees baseball game.

That fixture doubled as the 20^th anniversary reunion of the A’s team that set the major league-record 20-game winning streak depicted in the film Moneyball. Just 36,000 turned out to celebrate the streak, one reason the A’s are moving to Las Vegas and have left the Coliseum without a major tenant.

Viva Las Vegas