But Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on the fourth, and the game was postponed. Reagan threw out the first pitch on April 17 in front of a sold-out crowd of 50,164. Oakland was now an official major-league city (though the Orioles won the game). The Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum along the Nimitz Freeway in East Oakland had opened in 1966. The financing and construction of the stadium was the work of a private, non-profit corporation led by the real estate developer Robert T. Nahas. When the project was completed, ownership of the Coliseum was transferred to the city and county, though Nahas and the other members of the original corporation (including Senator William Knowland and the industrialist Edgar Kaiser Sr.) constituted the governing board, keeping the day-to-day operations and decision-making power away from the Oakland and Alameda County politicians. PLAYERS GROW (AND MANAGERS GO) Rick Monday, the No. 1 pick in MLB’s first-ever player draft in 1965, was supposed to be the A’s big slugger that first season in Oakland.
