After Thursday, the Red Sox may never play the Oakland Athletics again.

That’s not hyperbole. If A’s ownership gets their way, they’ll bid farewell to the Oakland Coliseum and the Bay Area altogether when their lease expires at the end of this year. They’ve already unveiled renderings for a new ballpark in Las Vegas, with plans to move the team to Sacramento for at least the next three seasons while it’s constructed. (They’re attempting to share Sutter Health Park with the River Cats, Triple-A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants.)

The Red Sox have likely already played their last games at the Coliseum (during their opening road trip in April), so members of the coaching staff were somewhat taken aback when reminded that Thursday night’s series finale at Fenway Park could be the last time they ever face the A’s of Oakland. It made Alex Cora think about a certain Oscar-winning film not telling the full story.

“Moneyball is part of it, but I think in the movie, they forgot that they had studs on the mound. They were really, really good,” the Red Sox manager said of the early-aughts A’s arm farm. “For how good they were at controlling the strike zone and working counts and all that stuff and using guys that probably didn’t fit other programs, they were really good on the mound. They always had a closer, and they were really good. They pulled trades too, from other organizations. So, I mean, this Cinderella thing that people tried to portray, I think they did an outstanding job putting good teams together.”

For Jason Varitek, the atmosphere made the Coliseum what it was.

“The environment there when they have packed stands and how loud that place can get with the band and playing the drums and doing those things, it had been a really great environment for a very long period of time,” the Red Sox captain-turned-coach told the Herald. “The fans made it. And I hate to say that for the fans, because we saw what’s happened when we were out there last.”

“It was a very enjoyable place to play,” Varitek added.

The exception, he and Cora agreed, was when the MLB and NFL seasons overlapped, and the then-Oakland Raiders tore up the field.

“Probably one of the best infield surfaces in the big leagues, when the Raiders weren’t playing,” Cora said. “Towards the end of September, it sucked. Yeah, in September it was horrible. But before? Great, great.”

For Andrew Bailey, thinking about Thursday being his last goodbye to Oakland was especially poignant. The Red Sox pitching coach was drafted by the A’s in the sixth round of the 2006 June draft. He made his Major League debut with them in 2009, winning American League Rookie of the Year that season and being named to the All-Star Game that year and the next.

“Honestly I didn’t even think of that,” he told the Herald on Thursday afternoon. “I remember being in Oakland, knowing that it could be the last time I was ever there. Who knows what the future holds for both the city of Oakland and the organization, but I mean, I couldn’t feel more fortunate to have my career start there. And I’ve said it from Day 1, the opportunity they gave me, I don’t take it lightly.”

“I have a lot of great memories in Oakland, but something that sticks out: I was a big baseball nut going up and Ken Griffey Jr. was one of my favorite players back then, and I got to face him,” Bailey said. “It was actually Easter Sunday in 2009. (My debut) was still fresh. My family was back home in New Jersey, they’re all at my grandparents’ house in Brigantine Island, and I knew there were like, 40 people watching the game. And I got to come in and face Griffey, and he like, flew out to the wall, to the warning track in the Coliseum. That’s an at-bat that I’ll never forget.”

Starting his career as an Oakland A made Bailey the player, coach, and person he is today. He still maintains strong connections with the organization, which has made watching the relocation saga play out all the more unfortunate.

“The infrastructure at that point in time was really supportive of the development of pitchers, and again, that’s one of the reasons I felt so fortunate to be in that type of organization, in the A’s organization, I should say,” he said. “A lot of people in and around the game, we started relationships back in Oakland. Between Ron Romanic and Gil Patterson and Scott Emerson, their current pitching coach here, Garvin Alston, I had a lot of figures in my life when I was trying to figure out the professional game that are still in and around baseball.”

“It’s part of the game,” Bailey said of the move, “But I just think about the employees, and the staff, and the coaches, and the (player development) group, and the stadium workers; people that, I still go back there and see, the security guards that I talk to that have been there for 40 years. It’s really those people. And obviously the players, going through the turmoil of needing to balance their professional lifestyles and jobs to do, and the uncertainty of all that.”

Relocation doesn’t happen often in the modern era. Before the Expos left Montreal to become the Washington Nationals in 2005, MLB hadn’t seen a move since 1972, when the Washington Senators became the Texas Rangers. But no franchise has relocated more than the A’s; when the American League was founded in 1901, the Red Sox and Philadelphia Athletics and Red Sox were two of the original eight teams, and two of MLB’s first championship dynasties.

“It’s been intertwined, the history of baseball between the A’s and Red Sox, a long history in a lot of different ways,” Bailey said. “It’s cool to see the relationship that these organizations have, dating back to Philadelphia and the white elephants.” (After New York Giants manager John McGraw famously told reporters that A’s owner Benjamin Shibe had a “white elephant on his hands,” they made it the team mascot.)

“I had the opportunity to be teammates with Nomar (Garciaparra),” Bailey’s Oakland teammate and current A’s broadcaster Dallas Braden told the Herald. “Learning the history of the Red Sox through a teammate on the A’s, when that teammate is Nomar, that just hits a little different. That just feels a little different. That’s history, coming from the mouth of Fenway.”

The A’s won nine pennants and five World Series between 1902-31, then sold or traded their stars during the Great Depression, including sending Lefty Grove and Rube Walberg to Tom Yawkey’s Red Sox. After more than two decades of decline, the A’s moved to Kansas City after the 1954 season. They’ve been in Oakland since 1968, years before Varitek, Cora, or Bailey were even born.

“Amongst like, some of the successes and failures that I had in that stadium, there’s a lot of great moments,” Bailey said. “Dallas (Braden’s) no-hitter, you know? There’s a lot to go around. I remember there were games we were down by a bunch, like (Matt) Holliday’s go-ahead grand slam.”

“It’s kind of a shocking realization,” said Bailey, “that it could be the last time.”