MLB Stadium Saga: Oakland/Tampa Bay/Southside

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

2 hours ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

I'm old, but I remember when the Oakland A's were the coolest franchise in baseball, at a time when baseball was actually cool.

 

Ricky Henderson, Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, Dennis Eckersley, and Dave Stewart...just such a cool group of dudes.

And that's not even the first time the A's were the coolest team in baseball.

 

 

Those A's changed baseball aesthetics. When Reggie Jackson grew a mustache in 1972, he was the first player since the early 20th century to have a mustache. Charlie Finley's first reaction was to fine him; but, after Jackson's teammates began to grow mustaches in solidarity, Finley turned around and embraced it. He actually gave players bonuses for growing a mustache. (The only one who didn't collect was Bert Campaneris, who could not grow a mustache.) He also held promotional days, allowing mustachioed fans in for free.

 

Three or four years later, hundreds of players were sporting magnificent mustaches, including such iconic mustachioed players as Thurman Munson, Sparky Lyle, Mike Schmidt, Davey Lopes, Mike Marshall, Keith Hernandez, Al Hrabosky, Dock Ellis, and many, many more. And it's all thanks to The Swinging A's.

 

Oh, yeah — and they won three consecutive World Series, starting with the 1972 Series against the Reds, who, despite being one of the greatest teams ever, were the very opposite of cool.  The battle of "the hairs versus the squares" was the first World Series that I ever saw, and it profoundly influenced my sense of personal aesthetics (as attested by the excellent mustache that I have proudly worn for more than forty years).

 

This, the mid-1970s, was baseball's golden age.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

The As with Johnny Damon, Barry Zito and the Giambis (they were all there together, right?) were pretty cool too.

 

The As fans deserve better.

[ManillaToad]

I can definitely get on board with the idea that the LCS era of 1969-1993 was MLB's golden age. I mean c'mon, it started with the Miracle Mets and ended with Joe Carter's home run. It's too poetic to ignore.

[WestCoastBias]

18 hours ago, IceCap said:

I donno, the Raiders are doing alright. 

Allegiant had a lot of Broncos fans in Week 4. Everyone talks about this happening to the LA teams but it happens to the Raiders too.
 

If the A’s continue to be cheap asses that sell off the whole team every couple years then the billion dollar Vegas stadium will eventually be empty just like the Coliseum and on weekends it’ll be filled with opposing fans. The A’s don’t have an Oakland problem, they have an owner problem.

[IceCap]

47 minutes ago, WestCoastBias said:

Allegiant had a lot of Broncos fans in Week 4. Everyone talks about this happening to the LA teams but it happens to the Raiders too.

Vegas' status as a destination town for out of towners looking to cap off a weekend Vegas trip by watching their team play is part of why Vegas as a NFL market works. Vegas is an adult theme park, and the NFL- with a limited run time each year- is a perfect seasonal adult theme park attraction.

[Ridleylash]

Exactly; with the NFL, home games are limited enough that each becomes a big event. The NHL and NBA have more home games, but that's also because they have a longer schedule; and 41 home games in an 82-game season is much more valuable than 81 home games in a 162-game season.

 

Most teams in MLB are already having trouble selling out their home stadiums, because baseball's popularity is slipping. I don't see how moving the A's to Vegas does anything for the league overall except temporarily prop up attendance numbers in one specific market, especially one that just put up a :censored:load of taxpayer money for the Raiders in the first place.

[The_Admiral]

I thought we talked a while ago about how the Raiders have so many advertising deals in Los Angeles that they're functionally the third team in town but with an absurd commute. I think they're on the radio there and everything; it's almost a Packers-and-Milwaukee relationship. 

[FiddySicks]

It’s hard to really emphasize to people who weren’t around in that era just how much of a strangle hold the A’s had on the Bay Area. I was born in Castro Valley, which is just up the road from Oakland and as a kid I remember just how much buzz there was around those A’s teams. It was to the point where they nearly ran the Giants out of the west coast completely because the idea was that there was serious doubt as to wether they would ever be able to compete. The A’s even took such mercy on the Giants, they gifted the South Bay to them when they were looking for a new stadium sight (which created a ton of problems down the road). But three decades of cheap ownership and bad decision making completely eroded any of that, and frankly the A’s have nobody but themselves to blame for their struggles. It’s sad, but even moreso when you realize just how much of that struggle was self created. It’s kinda hard to believe now, but the A’s were one of the premier franchises in MLB for quite awhile back in the day. They went to three straight World Series in both the 70s and the 80s (well, last one was technically the 90s, but it was 1990), and won four of them. That’s a track record most teams would absolutely kill for. 

[Sec19Row53]

7 hours ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

 

I'm old, but I remember when the Oakland A's were the coolest franchise in baseball, at a time when baseball was actually cool.

 

Ricky Henderson, Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, Dennis Eckersley, and Dave Stewart...just such a cool group of dudes.

 

Was the late 80s/early 90s the true golden age of baseball? Or do I just have elder millennial narcissism?

I thought you were going to go here, when the A's were really cool:

[Red Comet]

Huh, always saw the A's as the Rays without any sort of postseason success up until they blew everything up. Now it's the worst combination of the Rays payroll and the lack of caring about winning that I'm seeing from the Royals. 

[The_Admiral]

On 11/4/2022 at 6:47 PM, FiddySicks said:

The A’s biggest problem is the one thing MLB seems so willing to ignore, and that’s the ownership group. It’s a group that flat out refuses to put any of their own resources into fixing the problem, and instead would rather beg for handouts from city/state governments.

 

For sure. Wolff is, as Steve Schott was before him, in the same tier of misers as Stuart Sternberg, Carl Pohlad, or the old Royals guy. You know, who had the team after Kauffman but is dead now. The A's do the bare minimum, cry poor, collect revenue sharing, and come out ahead. As long as you're not Jeffrey Loria, where you go about it so blatantly and then have an idiot son-in-law who never shuts up, the owners aren't going to patrol it.

[FiddySicks]

Extra points there for side swiping David Samson. I actually listen to his podcast every so often, as I sort of find his act to be a bit of a breath of fresh air in comparison to the inundation of corporate speak we normally get from these guys, but he’s still a huge blowhard. “1.2 billion, you”  

 

God, what a dick. 

[Red Comet]

2 hours ago, the admiral said:

 

For sure. Wolff is, as Steve Schott was before him, in the same tier of misers as Stuart Sternberg, Carl Pohlad, or the old Royals guy. You know, who had the team after Kauffman but is dead now. 

 

The name you're looking for is David Glass. A former CEO of Walmart, he thought that spending as little money as possible and not even bothering to invest in scouting for Latin America or anywhere else for that matter was how you were supposed to be as an owner. The Royals had their two straight pennants in '14 and '15 in spite of him. 

[The_Admiral]

Yeah, that's it. That guy sucked a lot, but always seemed to go under the radar because of how egregious even worse owners were. Up there with the old Warriors guy as "really bad, but quietly bad," speaking of Oakland.

[63Bulldogs63]

10 hours ago, Ridleylash said:

Exactly; with the NFL, home games are limited enough that each becomes a big event. The NHL and NBA have more home games, but that's also because they have a longer schedule; and 41 home games in an 82-game season is much more valuable than 81 home games in a 162-game season.

 

Most teams in MLB are already having trouble selling out their home stadiums, because baseball's popularity is slipping. I don't see how moving the A's to Vegas does anything for the league overall except temporarily prop up attendance numbers in one specific market, especially one that just put up a :censored:load of taxpayer money for the Raiders in the first place.

 

I'll have to verify but I'm pretty sure the locals aren't the taxpayers paying for the Raiders. Pretty sure my invoice from mandalay last weekend has where that money is coming from.

[BBTV]

8 hours ago, 63Bulldogs63 said:

 

I'll have to verify but I'm pretty sure the locals aren't the taxpayers paying for the Raiders. Pretty sure my invoice from mandalay last weekend has where that money is coming from.

 

But that's tax revenue that could otherwise be put back into the community or used to provide services to residents.  Either way, locals always pay.

[The_Admiral]

Exactly. Doesn't Clark County have some of the worst education funding and outcomes in the nation?

[TBGKon]

On 11/4/2022 at 6:13 PM, WestCoastBias said:

The A's would play in Oakland until the Vegas stadium is done like the Raiders did.

Just because one team did it, doesn't mean they all would do the same.

[GDAWG]

 

 

[spartacat_12]

On 11/5/2022 at 1:41 AM, FiddySicks said:

I’m of the opinion that the only reason the Knights have worked out at all is because of the artificially inflated start they had, and I think that’s going to become more obvious over the next decade. I mean I kinda understand why they were motivated to even do that, as it was a brand new market for any team, and you really do have to hedge your bets on that a bit, but it’s still some real bull:censored: and just goes to show how dysfunctional the NHL is as a whole. It’s got to be of the most OITGDNHL moves I’ve ever seen, and really does nothing to disprove the overall troubles that the league has in finding truly viable markets, especially in the southwest. 

On 11/5/2022 at 2:40 AM, FiddySicks said:

I mean, look at the way they scaled the expansion draft back for Seattle. No matter if that’s stacking the deck or just poor management on the part of the other teams is almost irrelevant. Either way it ain’t a good look. 

 

Firstly, this whole idea that the NHL stacked the deck for Vegas is total revisionist history. Obviously the league made the expansion draft rules a bit more favourable than in the past, but that was to avoid an Atlanta Trashers-type situation where they struggled to be relevant for a decade. When the Vegas roster was announced almost every hockey analyst/outlet was predicting they'd be a bottom 5 team in the league. Even the Golden Knights' management expected them to be bad. They specifically took guys like David Perron & James Neal, who were going into the last year of their contracts, with the intention of flipping them for picks/prospects at the trade deadline. 

 

 

There's no reason why the Knights can't have long-term success in the market. Unlike the Raiders & A's, who are essentially nomads, the Knights are "Vegas's team". I guarantee in the next 15 years we'll start seeing kids drafted to the league from Nevada who decided to play hockey because of the team.

 

 

Secondly, Seattle's expansion draft rules were literally identical to Vegas's. The only difference was that GMs were more prepared & made smarter decisions leading up to, and during the expansion process (i.e. not handcuffing themselves with no-trade clauses, not making shortsighted expansion consideration trades, etc).