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Walk-Off

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    High fly ball into right field, she is ... GONE!
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  1. Walk-Off
    Maybe it is just me, but I think that one of Balsillie's most fatal flaws in his dealings with the NHL was an apparent narrowmindedness as to how he wanted to bring a team to Hamilton. IIRC, Balsillie was unwilling to lobby for an expansion franchise. His NHL modus operandi was strictly trying to buy a US-based team with the intent of moving it to Hamilton. Even the Pittsburgh Penguins — a team with a history dating back to 1967, back-to-back Stanley Cup titles in the 1990s, and a location in a traditional hockey market and a well-established major professional sports market in general — were targeted by Balsillie for acquisition and relocation in 2006.
  2. Walk-Off
    The basic problem with the American Airlines Center as the Dallas-Fort Worth PVF team's home court is that as long as that arena hosts both the NBA's Mavericks and the NHL's Stars, a third sports team whose season overlaps with at least half of the NBA and NHL seasons will have a lot of difficulty in getting attractive dates for matches.
  3. Walk-Off
    Over the last few years, some people here in the CCSLC have accused Major League Soccer of adding teams mainly to prop itself up financially through expansion fees. Is it possible, then, that the NHL and its teams — even with a very different relationship from what MLS has with its clubs — have run into a troublesome monetary situation that is causing a compulsion, or at least a temptation, to get quick and easy funds by expanding to a shockingly gargantuan number of franchises? Speaking of expansion and expansion fees, the Houston market is so much bigger than the Salt Lake City market that I wonder if the NHL is preferring to save Houston for an expansion team and thus enable each of its existing franchises to gain a cut of a hefty expansion fee payment from Tilman Fertitta. Another possible reason for SLC beating out Houston in the Coyotes "sweepstakes" is that Ryan Smith might have a chummier relationship with the NHL brass in general and with Gary Bettman in particular than does Fertitta.
  4. Walk-Off
    I agree that an MLB team in Nashville would be economically more viable than one in Salt Lake City or especially Sacramento. However, the MLB establishment's apparent present-day aversion to cross-country relocations of franchises leads me to believe that an A's franchise that sees its Las Vegas ambitions fall apart is far more likely to play in another western US market (e.g. moving to SLC; moving to Portland, Oregon; or staying in Sacramento) while MLB saves Nashville for either an expansion team or a relocation of a franchise from either a fellow Central Time Zone market (e.g. the Chicago White Sox or the Kansas City Royals) or the Eastern Time Zone (e.g. the Tampa Bay Rays).
  5. Walk-Off
    I am sure that an NHL team in Salt Lake City would eat up disposable income that could otherwise go to a local MLB club. Even so, I think that the Big League Utah organization and the MLB franchise that it desires can survive and coexist with an arrival of the NHL in SLC. 1. Ryan Smith, the man being rumored to bring the Coyotes to SLC, is unaffiliated with the Larry H. Miller Company, the main backer of Big League Utah. 2. The State of Utah has passed separate laws regarding NHL and MLB venues this year. One law provides $900 million in funding for an NHL-friendly arena. The other law establishes $900 million worth of funding for an MLB-specification stadium.
  6. Walk-Off
    ESPN: Inside the meetings that officially moved the A's from Oakland to Sacramento
  7. Walk-Off
    https://le.utah.gov/~2024/bills/static/HB0562.html Line #1674 of the Utah law enabling state funding of an MLB park in Salt Lake City's Power District "require[s] the major league sports team [playing at said venue] to be given a name that includes [']Utah.[']"
  8. Walk-Off
    While reports suggest that the main sticking point in negotiations with Oakland was the drastic increase in rent ($97 million for a maximum-five-year lease extension, later revised to $60 million for a three-year lease extension) that the A's would have needed to pay to stay at the Coliseum beyond this year, I suspect that the Oakland government ruined any chance of a deal also through its insistence that MLB (a) guarantee the city a window of opportunity for an expansion team, (b) require the A's to leave behind their nickname and colors, or (c) force a sale of the team to an ownership committed to keeping the franchise in Oakland. Even if John Fisher were willing to accept Oakland's terms, the MLB commissioner's office could have pressed Fisher into backing off from an agreement with Oakland due to the demands that the city was making upon MLB as a whole.
  9. Walk-Off
    NewBallpark.org: SidewA’s and the 32nd Team This blog article provides some salient opinions on the next round of negotiations among Oakland, the A's, and MLB. I find the following point to be especially relevant: "With no sign that John Fisher plans to reverse course on the Las Vegas move or sell, any pitch for an A’s sale can only be characterized as the kind of Hail Mary not even Al Davis would have loved. The expansion promise is pointless, as no one actually believes Oakland will be able to put together real deal terms in only a year, including a billionaire willing to subsidize an Oakland team indefinitely while all of the details for the elusive dream ballpark plan come together. Besides that, who would be crazy enough to ink an exclusive negotiating agreement with Oakland, whose track record on such agreements is downright dreadful."
  10. Walk-Off
    ESPN: Oakland to present Athletics ownership with lease extension "In addition, the city is asking for a commitment from Major League Baseball on one of three options: (1) a one-year exclusive right to solicit ownership of a future expansion team; (2) vote to leave the A's colors and name in Oakland, or; (3) facilitate the sale of the A's to a local ownership group." As noble as the Oakland government's intentions are, I am concerned that a demand that any of those three things happen will be a deal breaker for MLB.
  11. Walk-Off
    The Arizona Republic: Arizona Coyotes quietly post new arena proposal renderings on app
  12. Walk-Off
    "Mental Health Check for Oakland A's fans"
  13. Walk-Off
    "Five (frustrating) NHL predictions for 2024"
  14. Walk-Off
    These renderings underwhelm me mainly because of the absence of what Gaming and Leisure Properties, Inc. (the ultimate owner of that 35-acre plot of land) and Bally's might build next to the ballpark. To me, that detail — or lack thereof — prevents the renderings from having a discernible sense of scale and thus keeps alive the big question of whether the ballpark can and does genuinely fit in a mere nine-acre corner of the plot, with a new Bally's-operated resort presumably filling the other 26 acres. On another note, while some contributors to this thread have discussed the proposed ballpark's resemblance to the Sydney Opera House, it should be noted also that the head of one of the architecture firms for the project claims that (a) the shape of traditional baseball pennants inspired the roof and (b) the ballpark's overall design resembles a "spherical" armadillo.
  15. Walk-Off
    Since others have touched on the Detroit Tigers-Pittsburgh Pirates league swap, @jlog3000, I will focus on another flaw that I see in your proposal. You have the National League have a team in Montréal again while keeping the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League, you insist that every MLB team have a prioritized interleague rival, and then ... you pass up the opportunity to create a Toronto vs. Montréal rivalry — an all-Canadian, seemingly no-brainer matchup — and instead give the new Montréal team a prioritized rivalry with ... the Boston Red Sox? Why? Is it just for the sake of having a baseball equivalent of Canadiens vs. Bruins? If prioritized interleague rivalries in MLB must exist, I think that a saner approach with this particular alignment of teams would be the Blue Jays vs. the new Montréal club, the Red Sox vs. the Philadelphia Phillies, the Tigers staying in the AL, the Pirates staying in the NL, and the Tigers and the Pirates being each other's prioritized rivals.
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