MLB Stadium Saga: Oakland/Tampa Bay/Southside

[bosrs1]

1 hour ago, Sykotyk said:

Raiders waited out their lease.  Or, rather, waited for their new stadium to be built. The main argument seemed to be they didn't want to unveil themselves in Las Vegas at Sam Boyd Stadium for a few years, and there was really nowhere else to go.

 

Chargers went to StubHub Center since staying in San Diego was basically impossible. And they were limited where they could play (not at the Coliseum, the Rose Bowl has restrictions on dates, and neither baseball stadium could/would even be considered as viable).

 

Plus, there's the 'aura' of the Raiders that their fans would follow them to Las Vegas, even if via television. So, sticking out two unproductive years in Oakland wasn't exactly a negative like it would've been for the Chargers.

 

The A's though... we saw how bad the support will be when they just THOUGHT they weren't going to play in Oakland. If they sign a deal and construction starts in Vegas... they could count attendance with three digits at some games. The fans would simply shun them. Baseball relies much more on the ticket buyer than other sports. Part of having 81 home games. They'd fare better playing at LV Ballpark for a year or two at exorbitant MLB adjusted rates in the 10k stadium than to even consider playing in Oakland another year. As for the lease having a year left. There's got to be a financial out clause, and I have to imagine they'd pay whatever fee was necessary and recoup the money in Vegas at the small stadium for two years.

 

Agreed. If the move is approved by the owners and it become publicly known, you’ll be able to walk the Coliseum and shake ever fan in attendance’s hand by the end of the second inning. It’ll be bad enough finishing out this year, they won’t play out the current lease. Sand given the feeling in the city, I wouldn’t count on a lease extension to cover the rest of the years to 2028. No they’ll either tough out a couple of years at Vegas Ballpark in Summerlin, or find some other temp venue that’s slightly more temperate, like Sacramento. 

 

I would imagine October 1 will be the Oakland Athletics final curtain call.

[GDAWG]

RIP Major League Sports in Oakland 1960-2023.  

 

 

[SCMODS]

1 hour ago, bosrs1 said:

 

Agreed. If the move is approved by the owners and it become publicly known, you’ll be able to walk the Coliseum and shake ever fan in attendance’s hand by the end of the second inning. It’ll be bad enough finishing out this year, they won’t play out the current lease. Sand given the feeling in the city, I wouldn’t count on a lease extension to cover the rest of the years to 2028. No they’ll either tough out a couple of years at Vegas Ballpark in Summerlin, or find some other temp venue that’s slightly more temperate, like Sacramento. 

 

I would imagine October 1 will be the Oakland Athletics final curtain call.

 

I seriously doubt the Rivercats will share their ballpark with the A's, even for a couple years, when they're now the Giants affiliate. 

[bosrs1]

40 minutes ago, SCMODS said:

 

I seriously doubt the Rivercats will share their ballpark with the A's, even for a couple years, when they're now the Giants affiliate. 

 

Oh I don’t think that’s the likely outcome either. If I were in Vegas and in a position to put money on it I’d say they’re heading to Vegas Ballpark for a few seasons. 

[bosrs1]

1 hour ago, GDAWG said:

RIP Major League Sports in Oakland 1960-2023.  

 

 

 

I believe Oakland has the dubious distinctions of both being the first city to lose all of its teams it once had in all 4 of the Big 4 leagues (Seals, Warriors, Raiders and now A’s) and the first city to lose 3 teams in under 5 years.

[Walk-Off]

As this year's "Southern Nevada Tourism Innovation Act" awaits the current Nevada governor's signature, I want to express my very mixed opinions and very mixed emotions on this issue.

 

On one hand, I find it shameful that John Fisher, his partners, and their allies are looking to inflict such raw deals upon people in both California and Nevada.  Fisher seems all too willing to become the next Walter O'Malley -- that is, someone who takes a Major League Baseball team away from a gritty, largely working-class, ethnically diverse, religiously diverse community full of people who have loved and cared for the team deeply for many decades, and then puts the team in a place with a far warmer and sunnier climate and a much glitzier and more glamorous image.  At least the Dodgers as owned and run by O'Malley had a steady stream of success on and off the field during both their last few years in Brooklyn and their first few years in Los Angeles, and at least O'Malley's hunger for government aid, as far as I know, was confined to wanting a municipal government to condemn a large swath of land so that he could buy said land inexpensively and then build his own new home field for the Dodgers with only his own money.  By contrast, Fisher and his underlings are seeking to force the residents and businesses that occupy any and every square inch of Nevada -- even the residents that live and the businesses that operate in parts of Nevada that are closer to Boise, Idaho than to Las Vegas or even Reno -- to spend years sacrificing hundreds of millions of their tax dollars for a venue that will be exempt from practically any substantive means of taxation, all to host a franchise that, under its current ownership, has been quick to jettison any player or coach the moment that he is thought to become too costly to keep.  In the meantime, the sports fans that the A's would be leaving behind in Northern California will still have to endure the, to put it kindly, thrifty practices of the Fisher clique's "stewardship" of Major League Soccer's San José Earthquakes.

 

On the other hand, I cannot help but feel what would be best described as frustration toward what I believe to be some naïve and unrealistic expectations and preferences within the whole #FisherOut / #SellTheTeam movement.  My impression is that too many current fans of the A's have been expecting one of only three possible courses of action -- Fisher et al. (a) go full speed ahead toward moving the A's to Las Vegas, (b) have a change of heart and reconcile with Oakland for a deal on a new ballpark, or (c) sell the A's to someone who keeps the team in Oakland -- with the latter two scenarios seeming to be treated by these fans as the only two possible consequences of a failure to secure a relocation to Las Vegas.  To me, such thinking overlooks the possibility that Fisher and his associates would try to move the A's to Portland, Salt Lake City, Sacramento, etc. if the Las Vegas option falls apart or that the A's would be sold to a person or group that is even more determined to move the team to a different Bay Area locale (e.g. San José) at best or a market hundreds of miles away at worst.  (In other words, in that last scenario, John Fisher avoids becoming his generation's equivalent of Walter O'Malley, but is instead MLB's answer to Howard Schultz, the man who sold the Seattle SuperSonics to Clay Bennett.)

 

Further hurting the #FisherOut / #SellTheTeam crowd's argument in my eyes is that movement's apparently widespread fanboyism toward Joe Lacob.  He had the Warriors ditch Oakland for San Francisco, and yet we are supposed to take him at his word if and when he says that he would keep the A's in Oakland should he ever get his hands on that team?  Yeah, right!

 

Yet another frequent example of naïveté that I have seen from #FisherOut / #SellTheTeam activists is an insistence that anyone wanting an MLB team in the Las Vegas area should hold out for an expansion franchise.  When one looks at how Fisher and his minions have commanded the A's and what Fisher and his lackeys have been demanding from both Nevada's political leadership and the general public throughout the Silver State, such advice seems to be very sensible.  Unfortunately, such advice also seems to ignore (a) the Las Vegas area's current lack of any MLB expansion team advocacy campaign that is genuinely comparable to the Portland Diamond Project and/or the Big League Utah group and (b) the fact that the Sacramento market, the Portland market, and even the Salt Lake City market are more populous, per-capita wealthier, and definitely less tourism-dependent alternatives to the Las Vegas market for an MLB expansion team in the Western United States.

 

Finally, with regard to something that could have given the A's a brighter and more sustainable future in the Bay Area (though maybe not in Oakland per se), I have to agree with @NYCdog and disagree with @Ferdinand Cesarano on the territorial rights issue.  Yes, the A's made a sportsmanlike gift of South Bay territorial rights to the Giants more than thirty years ago.  Yes, I can understand why anyone with fond memories of the most triumphant era(s) in the history of the A's in Oakland would want the team to keep playing specifically in Oakland.  However, neither of those factors changes the fact that the Giants (a) built what is now Oracle Park within that team's original Bay Area territorial footprint, at a site that is the farthest away from the South Bay of any regular home venue so far in the Giants' Bay Area history; (b) have retained the freedom to locate their permanent home field in many more parts of the Bay Area than do the A's, ever since receiving that South Bay gift; and (c) have a lock on putting their home ballpark in practically any and all of the wealthiest communities in the Bay Area, whereas the selection of ballpark sites available to the A's has been financially poorer per capita in addition to being geographically narrower.  To make matters worse on the territorial rights front, if and when the A's are gone from the Bay Area for good, I expect that the Giants will then make every effort imaginable to have their territorial rights expanded to encompass the few counties that the A's have been allowed to claim.  Should that happen, then any attempt to put a new MLB team in Oakland or even in the East Bay in general would face all of the same hurdles that stand against any effort to bring an MLB franchise to San José or anyplace else in the South Bay.

[TBGKon]

4 hours ago, bosrs1 said:

 

Oh I don’t think that’s the likely outcome either. If I were in Vegas and in a position to put money on it I’d say they’re heading to Vegas Ballpark for a few seasons. 

You can find more info here, but Sacramento is in play because of the media market.

 

https://ballparkdigest.com/2023/05/30/legislators-debate-new-las-vegas-ballpark-sacramento-to-host-as/

 

Quote

But in terms of media revenues, the A’s are in the middle of the pack, thanks to a $53 million deal with NBC Sports California in 2022. Could the A’s receive that sort of money on a Vegas TV rights deal? Currently the Vegas media world is topsy-turvy. The NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights signed a deal earlier this month with Scripps Sports to locally broadcast Golden Knights games for free to residents of Nevada and surrounding states within the team’s broadcast territory. Scripps will air Golden Knights games on its local station KMCC-TV channel 34, which will be rebranded as an independent station before the 2023-24 NHL season begins. Scripps and the Knights will partner on a direct-to-consumer streaming option as part of this partnership. 

 

Staying in Sacramento–at least for two years–would keep the A’s in a much larger media market–Sacramento/Stockton (#20 market in the United States) vs. what will be the smallest media market, #40 nationally, in MLB. The Knights were forced into a play with a Scripps startup because AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain regional sports network, which served Las Vegas, is reportedly shutting down at the end of the MLB season, leaving a local void in Vegas.

 

[FiddySicks]

20 hours ago, NYCdog said:

Also, the SF Giants. Their territorial rights claim on San Jose is literally robbing sports fans throughout the entire Bay Area (Oakland included) from having a second baseball team in the region. That’s why we’re here today, with A’s moving to Vegas.  Otherwise the A’s would’ve been in SJ a decade ago. Now the Giants have the entire region to themselves and they’ll probably fight off any hopes for replacement expansion franchise in Oakland. 

Sigh, no. I’ve said it a million times here before and I’ll say it again. The A’s have absolutely nobody but themselves to blame for not having access to the South Bay. The South Bay territory was (foolishly) given to the Giants by the A’s, who then have OVER A DECADE to claim it back free of charge and just never bothered to file the paperwork. Then both teams were sold, and in the Giants case the rights to the South Bay were factored into the valuation of the team (the Giants owners had the foresight to see that the SB was going to explode, and the A’s just didn’t). The Giants have offered the South Bay back to the A’s, but considering they actually paid for those rights, they want fair compensation for it. The A’s balked at the idea, saying they shouldn’t have to pay a dime for them. It’d be like if someone gave you their underdeveloped back 40, it turned into a new downtown/entertainment district, and then they said “Hey! I want that back now that it’s actually valuable!” It would simply be bad business to gift that back to your in market rivals. It’s also yet another example of the A’s trying to cheap out and shift the financial burden for their operations to anyone else they can that isn’t themselves. 
 

 

 

I know it’s fun to hate on the Giants for this, but it’s ridiculous and off base. It’s some garbage nonsense put out by the A’s and I’m baffled that people are actually buying into it (why do people buy ANYTHING the A’s say at this point?). The A’s have spent the last four decades making dumb business decision after dumb business decision, and that’s probably their biggest single blunder. And now they’re asking the Giants to make an equally dumb business decision “in good faith” to make up for their own idiocy. Hell no, screw that.  Like I’ve said before, the A’s made their own bed, and now it’s time to lie in it. They can off to Vegas, Sacramento, Timbuktu, who cares. Good riddance. 

[Digby]

9 hours ago, bosrs1 said:

 

Why yikes? Earthquakes got their new stadium in San Jose, unlike the A’s. If the A’s had been able to make Cisco Field happen they’d have stayed in the Bay Area at least if not Oakland. 

 

Arguably the most underachieving team in MLS, on and off the pitch. Should be a major market, is actually an afterthought. I wouldn't want to help these guys build anything on the cheap and half-empty, either.

[Digby]

2 minutes ago, FiddySicks said:

(why do people buy ANYTHING the A’s say at this point?)

 

Only when it's a convenient proxy for partisan political arguments.

[bosrs1]

7 minutes ago, Digby said:

 

Arguably the most underachieving team in MLS, on and off the pitch. Should be a major market, is actually an afterthought. I wouldn't want to help these guys build anything on the cheap and half-empty, either.

 

Oh I agree, this Vegas venture is going to flop harder than LeBron James if Fisher doesn’t ultimately sell. The Earthquakes are what results when Fisher does get his stadium, you still have a poorly run team, just in a new venue. And given the effort that will be needed to make the A’s successful in Vegas…

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

6 hours ago, Walk-Off said:

Fisher seems all too willing to become the next Walter O'Malley

 

No one should ever compare O'Malley to Fisher.

 

 

6 hours ago, Walk-Off said:

O'Malley's hunger for government aid, as far as I know, was confined to wanting a municipal government to condemn a large swath of land so that he could buy said land inexpensively and then build his own new home field for the Dodgers with only his own money. 

 

And that is why such a comparison is wrong.  O'Malley fully intended to build a ballpark at the current site of the Nets' arena.  But he ran into the immovable object of New York politics of the day, the unaccountable Robert Moses.  If Fisher had been behaving like O'Malley, the A's new Oakland ballpark would have been built already.

 

 

6 hours ago, Walk-Off said:

Walter O'Malley -- that is, someone who takes a Major League Baseball team away from a gritty, largely working-class, ethnically diverse, religiously diverse community full of people who have loved and cared for the team deeply for many decades,

 

This is pure fiction.  O'Malley did not leave Brooklyn of his own choosing. The only reason that Dodger Stadium is in Chavez Ravine rather than on Atlantic Avenue is the corruption in New York politics that allowed an unelected person to accumulate so much power.

 

Robert Moses is sometimes referred to as the New York City parks commissioner; but that doesn't come close to capturing his power, which exceeded that of mayors and governors, and spanned generations. Moses was so entrenched, with multiple overlapping posts within the City and State government, that he had already given O'Malley a firm "no" on the idea of accumulating the land for the footprint of a privately-built Downtown Brooklyn stadium before anyone else in the New York City government even knew what was going on.

 

By the time the actual elected government of New York City got wind of this fiasco, O'Malley had already built a relationship with a Los Angeles government that had embraced him and that was willing to provide him with everything that New York City (in the person of Moses) had refused to provide. All that New York City could offer at that point was a municipal stadium in Queens at the site where Shea Stadium was later built, an offer which is obviously inadequate.

 

The important point is that O'Malley didn't abandon Brooklyn; rather, he was kicked out of Brooklyn by Moses.

 

For the full story, read the excellent book The Dodgers Move West, by Neil Sullivan.

 

[tp49]

3 hours ago, TBGKon said:

You can find more info here, but Sacramento is in play because of the media market.

 

https://ballparkdigest.com/2023/05/30/legislators-debate-new-las-vegas-ballpark-sacramento-to-host-as/

 

 

And as I said somewhere earlier in this thread just because Darrell Steinberg said something doesn't mean it's in play.  The River Cats don't play in his city or even in Sacramento County (West Sacramento and Yolo County respectively).  The reason as that article states Steinberg was being coy about things, is because like 99.9% of what he says this is coming out of his rear end.  Take what he says with a gigantic grain of salt because nothing Darrell's said over his tenure as mayor came to fruition.  Unless something is coming from the mayor of West Sacramento or Yolo County officials you can safely ignore Darrell.

 

This is even before we broach the issue of what corporate sponsorships they would be able to get locally because as a government town Sacramento is devoid of major corporations.  I'm also not certain they'd draw very well in Sacramento either as over the last decade-plus Sacramento's become a far more solidly Giants town.

 

My prediction is they'll either play those two years out in Las Vegas with a very small possibility of a split with Reno to try and drum up some interest statewide or stay in Oakland barring the city terminating the lease early.  Of course IIRC most baseball fans in Reno are Giants fans and they'd run into the same issue with sharing a ballpark with a minor league team.

 

tl/dr: No chance the A's use Sacramento as a temporary home.

[bosrs1]

1 hour ago, tp49 said:

And as I said somewhere earlier in this thread just because Darrell Steinberg said something doesn't mean it's in play.  The River Cats don't play in his city or even in Sacramento County (West Sacramento and Yolo County respectively).  The reason as that article states Steinberg was being coy about things, is because like 99.9% of what he says this is coming out of his rear end.  Take what he says with a gigantic grain of salt because nothing Darrell's said over his tenure as mayor came to fruition.  Unless something is coming from the mayor of West Sacramento or Yolo County officials you can safely ignore Darrell.

 

This is even before we broach the issue of what corporate sponsorships they would be able to get locally because as a government town Sacramento is devoid of major corporations.  I'm also not certain they'd draw very well in Sacramento either as over the last decade-plus Sacramento's become a far more solidly Giants town.

 

My prediction is they'll either play those two years out in Las Vegas with a very small possibility of a split with Reno to try and drum up some interest statewide or stay in Oakland barring the city terminating the lease early.  Of course IIRC most baseball fans in Reno are Giants fans and they'd run into the same issue with sharing a ballpark with a minor league team.

 

tl/dr: No chance the A's use Sacramento as a temporary home.

 

You think they’ll actually play another lame duck season in 2024 after the embarrassing :censored: show 2023 has been?

[tp49]

2 hours ago, bosrs1 said:

 

You think they’ll actually play another lame duck season in 2024 after the embarrassing show 2023 has been?

If they don't go straight to the Las Vegas Ballpark in the interim then yes I do.  We've seen that ownership either isn't embarrassed by or cares about the low attendance figures.  Considering that the River Cats couldn't wait to dump the A's for the Giants when the franchise agreement came up I don't think they would have any interest in hosting the "couch surfing" A's.  I understand that the Kings now own the River Cats but it wouldn't make much business sense for them to let the A's play at Sutter Health Park.  Thus, it'll either be Las Vegas or Oakland.

[NYCdog]

6 hours ago, FiddySicks said:

Sigh, no. I’ve said it a million times here before and I’ll say it again. The A’s have absolutely nobody but themselves to blame for not having access to the South Bay. The South Bay territory was (foolishly) given to the Giants by the A’s, who then have OVER A DECADE to claim it back free of charge and just never bothered to file the paperwork. Then both teams were sold, and in the Giants case the rights to the South Bay were factored into the valuation of the team (the Giants owners had the foresight to see that the SB was going to explode, and the A’s just didn’t). The Giants have offered the South Bay back to the A’s, but considering they actually paid for those rights, they want fair compensation for it. The A’s balked at the idea, saying they shouldn’t have to pay a dime for them. It’d be like if someone gave you their underdeveloped back 40, it turned into a new downtown/entertainment district, and then they said “Hey! I want that back now that it’s actually valuable!” It would simply be bad business to gift that back to your in market rivals. It’s also yet another example of the A’s trying to cheap out and shift the financial burden for their operations to anyone else they can that isn’t themselves. 
 

 

 

I know it’s fun to hate on the Giants for this, but it’s ridiculous and off base. It’s some garbage nonsense put out by the A’s and I’m baffled that people are actually buying into it (why do people buy ANYTHING the A’s say at this point?). The A’s have spent the last four decades making dumb business decision after dumb business decision, and that’s probably their biggest single blunder. And now they’re asking the Giants to make an equally dumb business decision “in good faith” to make up for their own idiocy. Hell no, screw that.  Like I’ve said before, the A’s made their own bed, and now it’s time to lie in it. They can off to Vegas, Sacramento, Timbuktu, who cares. Good riddance. 

Sounds like I offended a triggered Giants fan haha. Take off those orange tinted shades, your bias is clearly showing. I don’t have a dog in this fight at all. 
 

Again - the rights were a favor from Walter Haas. They were contingent on a ballpark being built in Santa Clara County. That obviously never happened. Like you said, when Lurie sold, Peter Magowan bought Walter Haas’s “favor” from Lurie (not the A’s) as part of the sale of the franchise, even though Magowan never had any intention of building there. He had his eyes set his own vanity, legacy project in South China Basin (which Oracle Park).
 

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/giants/article/mlb-doc-south-bay-18087162.php

 

Quote

The Chronicle obtained minutes from a June 1990 owners meeting in which a resolution was passed for the Giants to acquire exclusive rights to Santa Clara County. The minutes, however, suggest the territorial rights were contingent on a ballpark being built in Santa Clara.

 

The Giants are culpable in this. They never built in Santa Clara County. That was the stipulation. They should’ve returned the favor to the A’s to see if they could negotiate a ballpark in South Bay or fail there too. The A’s never got that chance. 

[Lights Out]

Wow. This guy doesn't just hate baseball, he resents the paying customers too.

[kimball]

23 hours ago, B-Rich said:

WTF do flamingos-- the tropical shore birds-- have to do with dry, desert Las Vegas?

 

Las Vegas has had an iconic casino named The Flamingo since the inception of large scale casino gambling. That name is attributed to  its mobster owner, Bugsy Siegel, in honor of the flamingos near his Hialeah, FL racetrack (not the urban myth that it came from a nickname for his long-legged girlfriend, Virginia Hill).

 

The name "Flamingos" would thus be a corporate connection, which is a big no- no in major league sports today.  It would be on par as naming the team the "Las Vegas Caesars" or "Las Vegas Sands". 

 

 

True. Good points. I think more than anything I was just pointing out a desire for a Vegas name, especially one that isn't a cowboy or desert name. But, aside from the gambling connection, etc. Flamingos are much an iconic imagery of Vegas. 

[bosrs1]

53 minutes ago, Lights Out said:

Wow. This guy doesn't just hate baseball, he resents the paying customers too.

 

 

I mean he’s completely wrong on the ballpark part, but he’s dead on with the reverse boycott. Getting a literal average sized MLB crowd after 2 months of campaigning felt a bit underwhelming. I was hoping they’d near sellout but alas… It was too little too late anyway.

[Lights Out]

4 minutes ago, bosrs1 said:

 

 

I mean he’s completely wrong on the ballpark part, but he’s dead on with the reverse boycott. Getting a literal average sized MLB crowd after 2 months of campaigning felt a bit underwhelming. I was hoping they’d near sellout but alas… It was too little too late anyway.

 

The reverse boycott drew about the same as the max capacity at the new ballpark in Vegas that Manfred is so excited about.

 

That quote was straight out of the Mark Fabiani playbook, except it's even more unbecoming when it's the commissioner of the entire sport saying it.