Stadium/Arena Saga Omnibus

[Dilbert]

This got me thinking. Is the Bay Area really big enough to support two teams? They've had the Giants and A's since 1968. They had the 49ers and Raiders from 1960-81 and 1995-19. Sure large metros like New York and LA can handle it but can the Bay Area?

[Walk-Off]

On 5/14/2021 at 3:16 AM, Wings said:

Personally I think Fisher will end up selling the A's to Warriors owner Joe Lacob and a bunch of his rich buddies. They'll build a new ballpark at the Coliseum site and try to revitalize the area around it. A soccer specific stadium for the Oakland Roots might be included in a revitalized complex. 

 

Under the ownership of Joe Lacob and some rich buddies of his, the Golden State Warriors moved out of an arena within the Coliseum campus in Oakland and into a new venue in San Francisco.  So, the idea that Lacob -- whether by himself, with his fellow co-owners of the Warriors, or with a different set of investment partners -- would buy the A's and keep them at the Coliseum site (even with a new stadium inside that property) makes no sense to me at all.

[Alex Houston]

Considering the Bay Area is just under 8 million, in the last population estimates, a second team would totally be plausible. Probable? As the old saying goes, winning fixes everything. 

Though that does beg the question. What would it take for the A's to start becoming the sexy, trendy option compared to the baseball giants across the bridge? With us here in Chicago, geography is a huge part obviously, but I'm not sure if Easy Bay really hates San Fran that much. Maybe Californians are too busy enjoying great weather and a bunch of other amenities, I don't know. You'd think as a Sharks fan, I'd have more of a lead on this, but, eh. 

[The_Admiral]

10 minutes ago, Alex Houston said:

What would it take for the A's to start becoming the sexy, trendy option compared to the baseball giants across the bridge?

 

New park, be good. The A's were the trendy team for a while in the '80s and '90s while the Giants were the loser team in the concrete hellhole.

[tp49]

6 hours ago, Joke Insurance said:

And why 'not really' for Sacramento? Just curious.

No corporate base to draw from, no stadium site, no political will to build a stadium suitable for an MLB team, and murderous summer temperatures just to name a few reason why not.

[McCall]

28 minutes ago, Alex Houston said:

Considering the Bay Area is just under 8 million, in the last population estimates, a second team would totally be plausible. Probable? As the old saying goes, winning fixes everything. 

Though that does beg the question. What would it take for the A's to start becoming the sexy, trendy option compared to the baseball giants across the bridge? With us here in Chicago, geography is a huge part obviously, but I'm not sure if Easy Bay really hates San Fran that much. Maybe Californians are too busy enjoying great weather and a bunch of other amenities, I don't know. You'd think as a Sharks fan, I'd have more of a lead on this, but, eh. 

It will always be big brother (SF)/little brother (Other), but I believe it can work. It just seems that, now, San Jose is the ideal second city to San Francisco. So while it's very possible, it's just not probable given circumstances that are business-related and not necessarily market viability-related.

[MJWalker45]

29 minutes ago, Alex Houston said:

Considering the Bay Area is just under 8 million, in the last population estimates, a second team would totally be plausible. Probable? As the old saying goes, winning fixes everything. 

Though that does beg the question. What would it take for the A's to start becoming the sexy, trendy option compared to the baseball giants across the bridge? With us here in Chicago, geography is a huge part obviously, but I'm not sure if Easy Bay really hates San Fran that much. Maybe Californians are too busy enjoying great weather and a bunch of other amenities, I don't know. You'd think as a Sharks fan, I'd have more of a lead on this, but, eh. 

Winning, and a stadium that isn't falling apart while you're winning. There's a reason they only hosted one All Start Game since 1987 and Cleveland's hosted two. 

[The_Admiral]

The Oakland Coliseum was probably significantly nicer than Candlestick in 1987.

[BBTV]

I've only spent limited time in SF, but I can't really imagine tons of people from the west side of the bridge trying to drive to Alameda county to see the A's.  It would be one thing if there was good mass transit to get there, but I suspect that the geography of the bay kinda naturally creates two markets within one.

[-kj]

East Bay has some of that "Oakland vs everybody" thing going on, especially San Francisco.

[FiddySicks]

9 hours ago, Dilbert said:

This got me thinking. Is the Bay Area really big enough to support two teams? They've had the Giants and A's since 1968. They had the 49ers and Raiders from 1960-81 and 1995-19. Sure large metros like New York and LA can handle it but can the Bay Area?

The Bay Area absolutely has the population to support a second team, but it’s lacking one major thing. The land. The main issue is that you have two metro areas right next to each other, less than 15 miles apart, but they’re separated by a giant body of water with somewhat limited access points in between. If you cut out the bridges, BART, and ferries and went around the bay, it’s nearly 100 miles from Oakland to San Francisco. That in itself creates a bit of an interesting culture separation that I haven’t really seen in other areas. 

 

And pretty much everything around the bay is pretty crammed in with things that would be difficult and expensive to modify. San Francisco itself is only 49 square miles and there really isn’t an inch left to build on. It’s a lot of the same in the East Bay and South Bay, and any of the land left is pretty much in a semi desert climate. If they ever did consider going to go that far out east, they might as well just move to Sacramento at that point. 

[ManillaToad]

I wonder how the Royals would react to having to switch divisions if the A's moved somewhere east

[The_Admiral]

10 hours ago, FiddySicks said:

And pretty much everything around the bay is pretty crammed in with things that would be difficult and expensive to modify. San Francisco itself is only 49 square miles and there really isn’t an inch left to build on. It’s a lot of the same in the East Bay and South Bay, and any of the land left is pretty much in a semi desert climate. If they ever did consider going to go that far out east, they might as well just move to Sacramento at that point. 

 

Right before the financial crisis, I remember a lot of talk about how more people would be doing daily suburban-Sacramento-to-SF commutes to the extent that they would converge into one metropolitan area like Washington-Baltimore. I thought that was pretty crazy. Turns out housing in San Francisco has only gotten more insane.

[DG_YouKnowWhatThatMeans]

Nothing unites people across the aisles like housing discrimination. Move the A's elsewhere in the Bay, but make sure to call them the Alameda NIMBYs.

[Red Wolf]

Crap, forgot to do my bit. Move the A's to Little Rock! Or Memphis. Whichever. Alternatively make them a traveling team that goes to all of the cool minor league parks, one of which might be near me.

 

More importantly, how can I believe this is anything when the A's have been threatening to move forever? I guess at some point it's probably real sort of like all of the doomsday predictions are going to be closer to real than the last one.

[LMU]

1 hour ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

Nothing unites people across the aisles like housing discrimination. Move the A's elsewhere in the Bay, but make sure to call them the Alameda NIMBYs.

The funny thing about Alameda is that they could theoretically put the stadium in the decommissioned naval air base (the one made famous on Mythbusters) but with the only access to Alameda being a couple small bridges from the bad part of Oakland that wouldn’t happen.

[Alex Houston]

On 5/14/2021 at 5:04 PM, McCall said:

It will always be big brother (SF)/little brother (Other), but I believe it can work. It just seems that, now, San Jose is the ideal second city to San Francisco. So while it's very possible, it's just not probable given circumstances that are business-related and not necessarily market viability-related.

 

This comment conjures up an interesting question: In the same MSA with 8 million as I pointed out before, what city is considered second to San Fran? I mean, San Fran isn't even that big, as Fiddy pointed out, from square miles and population, but it's always included in the Top 3 cities when you start talking west coast markets. You'd automatically think Oakland was runner-up because of the sports teams, Berkely, proximity to SF, etc. But in the last 20 years, it really seems like San Jose has leapfrogged them.

And on that point, San Jose feels like one of the weirdest cities that has prospered in the last thirty years. Like, despite rooting for their hockey team, their city honestly seems kinda drab, like a bunch of suburbs lumped together and I know it's silly saying that since that's all SoCal is too, but there's just a different feel and impression of that spot, at least to an outsider like me. 

[tp49]

4 hours ago, Alex Houston said:

 

This comment conjures up an interesting question: In the same MSA with 8 million as I pointed out before, what city is considered second to San Fran? I mean, San Fran isn't even that big, as Fiddy pointed out, from square miles and population, but it's always included in the Top 3 cities when you start talking west coast markets. You'd automatically think Oakland was runner-up because of the sports teams, Berkely, proximity to SF, etc. But in the last 20 years, it really seems like San Jose has leapfrogged them.

And on that point, San Jose feels like one of the weirdest cities that has prospered in the last thirty years. Like, despite rooting for their hockey team, their city honestly seems kinda drab, like a bunch of suburbs lumped together and I know it's silly saying that since that's all SoCal is too, but there's just a different feel and impression of that spot, at least to an outsider like me. 

San Jose has the largest population of the Bay Area cities and is now the third largest city in the state, San Francisco is second and Oakland is a a distant third.  San Jose is kind of drab and the downtown isn't impressive, probably because of the airport approach path right over it but there's a lot of money there that came in from Silicon Valley.  San Francisco is and always will be iconic, San Jose is second now, and nowadays all Oakland seems to be is a crime ridden cesspool. 

[The_Admiral]

A friend of mine moved out to Oakland and lived there for about six months. She said it felt like a real city and reminded her of Chicago while San Francisco felt like an adult theme park. And this was years before San-Francisco-as-adult-theme-park really set in.

[Walk-Off]

https://ballparkdigest.com/2021/05/13/with-as-in-play-what-comes-next/

Edited May 17, 2021 by Walk-Off
Clarifying the weblink