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Walk-Off

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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.
  16. Walk-Off
    From what I remember, the MAC revoked the past football-only membership of UMass because the Minutemen had insisted upon staying in the Atlantic-10 in other sports. Thus, I am curious as to how much of an edge -- if any -- the MAC holds over the A10 in media rights revenue these days. As for Western Kentucky University as a MAC member, that school has long had to deal with its home television market (Bowling Green, Kentucky) being one of the thirty smallest TV markets in the United States. Meanwhile, Middle Tennessee State University is within the Nashville TV market, one of the thirty largest in the United States. As nice as it would be for the MAC to add WKU by itself to get back to an even number of members, I am cynical enough to wonder if the MAC would rather take in the Hilltoppers only in conjunction with MTSU and (to even out the numbers) a third school.
  17. Walk-Off
    @TrueYankee26, if I am looking at this correctly, the Blackhawks are listed twice, both the Milwaukee and Norfolk teams have Admirals as their nickname, and San Antonio is home to both a relocated Sharks franchise and an expansion team.
  18. Walk-Off
    South Side Sox: Satire: Sharks swimming with the White Sox What if Jerry Reinsdorf and a would-be business partner of his went on Shark Tank to try to get money for their proposal for The 78?
  19. Walk-Off
    As sarcastic as this whole take seems to be, and as much of a slow-pitch softball as that interview is, at least the full article brings up Reinsdorf's threat to move the White Sox to the Tampa Bay area in the latter half of the 1980s and the resulting extraction of Illinois state tax money to keep the Pale Hose in Chicago via their current ballpark. Meanwhile, conspicuously absent from that whole interview and article is any mention of Reinsdorf's meeting with the mayor of Nashville two months ago, a detail that seems to undermine any notion that Reinsdorf is somehow more loyal to the Chicago area than are any and all of his co-investors in the Chisox. Finally, as much of a "stan" for a Nashville MLB team as I am, the difference in size between the Chicago and Nashville markets is such that I beg to differ with Reinsdorf's insinuation that a Nashville White Sox team would be worth more than that franchise has been as the Windy City's "junior" MLB club.
  20. Walk-Off
    In that kind of battle, I would take Jerry Reinsdorf and the White Sox over the McCaskey family and the Bears any day. At least to me, Reinsdorf, for all of his faults and flaws, gives off an impression of being very certain about what he wants. By contrast, the McCaskeys have seemed to spend many years hemming and hawing over where to locate a new stadium for the Bears, what kind of new stadium the Bears should have (e.g. seating capacity, permanently outdoor vs. retractable roof vs. permanently indoor, etc.), or even whether or not to have the Bears leave Soldier Field in the first place.
  21. Walk-Off
    The way that things are going, I would not be surprised if the A's are still without a plan in place for a new permanent home in any location by 2029. Another thing that would not surprise me is if MLB's next commissioner -- whoever that might be -- is much more aggressive about expansion than Rob Manfred has been. While Manfred has consistently conditioned any future addition of teams to MLB on firm resolutions of the respective ballpark situations of the A's and the Rays, his successor might not be so patient with regard to expansion.
  22. Walk-Off
    If I understand the report correctly, Jerry Reinsdorf seems to be pursuing funding from the State of Illinois, which is what he did for the current home of the White Sox more than three decades ago, rather than from the City of Chicago or Cook County.
  23. Walk-Off
    Ballpark Digest: Report: Reinsdorf to seek $1B in state money for new Chicago White Sox ballpark
  24. Walk-Off
    Here is how I would align the NBA if (a) the league expands to 32 teams and, as frequently rumored, puts those new franchises in the Las Vegas and Seattle markets; (b) the league reverts to two divisions per conference and uses the same names for divsions as when it last had two divisions in each conference; and (c) all of the existing teams stay in their current respective markets. Eastern Conference Atlantic Division Boston Celtics Brooklyn Nets Miami Heat New York Knickerbockers Orlando Magic Philadelphia 76ers Toronto Raptors Washington Wizards Central Division Atlanta Hawks Charlotte Hornets Chicago Bulls Cleveland Cavaliers Detroit Pistons Indiana Pacers Milwaukee Bucks Minnesota Timberwolves (conference shift) Western Conference Midwest Division Dallas Mavericks Denver Nuggets Houston Rockets Memphis Grizzlies New Orleans Pelicans Oklahoma City Thunder San Antonio Spurs Utah Jazz Pacific Division Golden State Warriors Las Vegas Battlers (expansion) Los Angeles Clippers Los Angeles Lakers Phoenix Suns Portland Trail Blazers Sacramento Kings Seattle SuperSonics (revival via expansion)
  25. Walk-Off
    "The Giants obviously still play there." That statement by Rob Manfred is one more reason for my longstanding suspicion that the MLB establishment has regarded the A's as a geographically expendable franchise and has seen Oakland as a geographically expendable location for a team.
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