Stadium/Arena Saga Omnibus

[The_Admiral]

Yeah, no situation is perfect, especially in an early-to-bed town like DC, where everything shuts down at 11 so that people can get up bright and early to go do evil. I still find crowded public transit much less enervating than trying to get out of a bottlenecked parking lot. That's just me.

[The_Admiral]

2 hours ago, bosrs1 said:

Honestly I've always felt Oracle is overrated. If it hadn't been built on the water it's an otherwise cramped and somewhat pedestrian park.

 

If my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle. It wouldn't be cramped if they hadn't built it where they built it, but the waterfront was the point. It's great. I just wish the team could give up the ghost on trying to sell the naming rights and call it Willie Mays Field. 

 

Candlestick was bad for the Giants but a lot better for the 49ers than Lego Stadium has been. They really should have built a new stadium on that parcel and barnstormed around the Bay for a few years till it was ready (Stanford, Berkeley, Oakland, aforementioned Willie Mays Field). 

[SFGiants58]

24 minutes ago, the admiral said:

Yeah, no situation is perfect, especially in an early-to-bed town like DC, where everything shuts down at 11 so that people can get up bright and early to go do evil. I still find crowded public transit much less enervating than trying to get out of a bottlenecked parking lot. That's just me.

You think that’s bad? Imagine if they’d been forced to build the stadium near Dulles or at one of the NoVa sites.

[Red Comet]

If Horace Stoneham taught us anything, it’s that you should visit stadium sites day and night. 

[DG_YouKnowWhatThatMeans]

41 minutes ago, Sec19Row53 said:

 

Anyway, my views have been made. I'm only making my horse deader. Where mass transit works, fantastic. Where it doesn't work, fantastic as well. I like more grey and less black/white.

 

I don't think this is a unique viewpoint. Yes, things that are good are good.

 

All else being equal, we're better served by investments in transit than highways. Especially in 2021, but would have been nice in 1950-2000.

[Digby]

I enjoy drinking a lot so mass transit is always preferable to me. This as much as anything is why I have historically been lukewarm on MLS. But there are like barely 10-15 markets in North America where public transit is even a realistic option and Tampa is not one as far as I know? 

[bosrs1]

50 minutes ago, the admiral said:

 

If my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle. It wouldn't be cramped if they hadn't built it where they built it, but the waterfront was the point. It's great. I just wish the team could give up the ghost on trying to sell the naming rights and call it Willie Mays Field. 

 

Candlestick was bad for the Giants but a lot better for the 49ers than Lego Stadium has been. They really should have built a new stadium on that parcel and barnstormed around the Bay for a few years till it was ready (Stanford, Berkeley, Oakland, aforementioned Willie Mays Field). 

 

Nah, the Candlestick site sucked. Coldest place in California in mid-summer you could ever watch a night game. That was the one thing that's ok with the move. Yes they hemmed themselves in and built a tiny, cramped and dreary ballpark by modern standards. But the location alone was miles better than Candlestick, and about 15 degrees warmer any given summer night. 

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

1 hour ago, SFGiants58 said:

That's not the stupid part. That was incredibly intelligent of him to do. His stupidity comes from not doing his due diligence when it came to scouting a proper stadium site and finding a better patch of land for such a venture.  That's why I called it a "monument to his stupidity." Maybe "monument to his naivete" would be more appropriate. 

 

That's a good point.  (Unlike Candlestick Point, which was not a good point for a ballpark.)

 

 

1 hour ago, SFGiants58 said:

I'd recommend Home Team by Robert F. Garratt (emeritus professor of English and humanities at the University of Puget Sound) for a Giants-centered perspective. There's an audiobook available, which should be fun. 

 

Wow, great!  Thanks for the tip on that.  I have just bought in in Audible.

 

 

Edit: In the podcast interview, Treder says that Garratt encouraged him to write his Stoneham book.

[TBGKon]

14 hours ago, bosrs1 said:

 

What's wrong with that stadium that they want to bail on it already?

It was never intended to be their home.  They intended it to house their lower tier squad plus their academy.  Its aluminum and modular, so its cheap, but looks nice.

 

This was the former Lockhart Stadium on that site, home to the original NASL Fort Lauderdale Strikers, MLS Miami Fusion, and countless high school football games.  Needless to say it's a nice upgrade.

 

[bosrs1]

18 hours ago, waltere said:

I may be wrong, but isn't the case with MLS that their preferred option is an SSS, but they'll allow otherwise as long as there's ownership crossover between the team and the stadium, because it's about not having their teams be tenants of somebody else. Hence how Arthur Blank's Atlanta FC are allowed to share Megatron's butthole with the Falcons, NYCFC sharing with the Yankees, and I assume the Sounders must therefore share owners with the Seahawks.

 

I'm not even sure it's ownership cross over so much as its control of their revenues. In so many rental situations the team has to split revenue with the landlord which is why rentals are usually not preferred.  But there are exceptions.

 

Also shocked no one remembered the longest such non-SSS situation in the league up in New England. 

[Red Comet]

49 minutes ago, bosrs1 said:

Also shocked no one remembered the longest such non-SSS situation in the league up in New England. 

Robert Kraft owns the New England Revolution. My guess for having them still play at Gillette is so he can fill dates where the stadium would otherwise sit empty. After all, he did fund Gillette Stadium entirely out of his own pocket so it makes sense he’d want as many dates filled as possible.

[Digby]

They have tried to build a SSS in or near Boston proper through the years, though there is some debate as to how serious or competent those efforts have been. But yeah, playing at Gillette rent-free means the urgency is not as severe as it was for say, DCU, and it’s perfectly serviceable as a soccer stadium.
 

At this point I no longer expect the Revs to ever move out, unfortunately.

[goalieboy82]

17 hours ago, the admiral said:

Yeah, no situation is perfect, especially in an early-to-bed town like DC, where everything shuts down at 11 so that people can get up bright and early to go do evil. I still find crowded public transit much less enervating than trying to get out of a bottlenecked parking lot. That's just me.

 

[goalieboy82]

17 hours ago, the admiral said:

Yeah, no situation is perfect, especially in an early-to-bed town like DC, where everything shuts down at 11 so that people can get up bright and early to go do evil. I still find crowded public transit much less enervating than trying to get out of a bottlenecked parking lot. That's just me.

and yes it does close down at 11pm.  

[waltere]

On 6/1/2021 at 11:00 PM, GDAWG said:

 

Oracle Park is a beautiful stadium.  Better than that monstrosity the Rangers are playing.  

 

This is the lowest of possible bars to clear

[FiddySicks]

On 5/31/2021 at 8:20 PM, bosrs1 said:

 

 

Before. Though SF emptying out into the east bay hasn’t been helping matters. The Giants made major inroads in the Bonds/roids era, sealed the deal with the World Series runs, and stuck the knife in the A’s locally when they killed San Jose. I mean more power to them as it was well played and the A’s owners have been clueless off field for 30 years now. 

This is pretty much it. Sucks for the A’s, but they basically made their own bed on this one. They had a full decade to submit the paperwork returning the rights to them, and just never did

[SFGiants58]

Just now, FiddySicks said:

This is pretty much it. Sucks for the A’s, but they basically made their own bed on this one. They had a full decade to submit the paperwork returning the rights to them, and just never did

I’m curious about what that entailed. My reasoning being that I’m hitting a brick wall with trying to a San José A’s write-up for Defunct Saga. I have written 20-25 page history and research papers that were less daunting than summarizing the San José saga (in a way that didn’t perpetuate misinformation) in a clear way.

[bosrs1]

1 minute ago, FiddySicks said:

This is pretty much it. Sucks for the A’s, but they basically made their own bed on this one. They had a full decade to submit the paperwork returning the rights to them, and just never did

 

Worst part, came out very recently that the Giants apparently had no interest in moving to St. Petersburg, or the South Bay for that matter. Which means all of the A's efforts initially to help them stay in the Bay Area by offering to forego the rights on Santa Clara County... were really even more wasted than we already knew.

 

https://newballpark.org/2021/06/02/ghost-of-blue-ribbon-panel-speaks-out-in-favor-of-the-coliseum/

 

I mean again, I'm in awe of how much the Giants then owners played everyone. But again, the A's allowed themselves to be played, and then as you say didn't move to rectify it when it became clear the Giants were full of :censored: about moving to the South Bay. 

 

[SFGiants58]

1 minute ago, bosrs1 said:

 

Worst part, came out very recently that the Giants apparently had no interest in moving to St. Petersburg, or the South Bay for that matter. Which means all of the A's efforts initially to help them stay in the Bay Area by offering to forego the rights on Santa Clara County... were really even more wasted than we already knew.

 

https://newballpark.org/2021/06/02/ghost-of-blue-ribbon-panel-speaks-out-in-favor-of-the-coliseum

 

Given all the TV deal stuff that I’ve detailed earlier and Lurie’s willingness to loan money to the local group, I was pretty sure that letting the Giants actually move (even to Santa Clara County) was never in the cards. Lurie made it clear in statements that public funding measures for stadiums were unpopular with Bay Area voters, with two SF referendums failing along with the Santa Clara County and San José ones. Since SF business folk didn’t take the bleeping hint about Lurie’s goals, he went to the desperate folks in Tampa Bay to really deliver his message
 

Bob Lurie really knew how to play some suckers. He knew how to stir up a storm. Both Santa Clara/San José politicians (e.g., Mayor Susan Hammer) and the desperate St. Pete folks were the perfect marks for his plan to give the Giants good local ownership to solve the Candlescheisse problem. 

 

You could even argue that he played Haas with the San José deal, even though Haas was arguably trying to get one-up on him.

 

1 minute ago, bosrs1 said:

 

I mean again, I'm in awe of how much the Giants then owners played everyone. But again, the A's allowed themselves to be played, and then as you say didn't move to rectify it when it became clear the Giants were full of about moving to the South Bay. 

Indeed. The A’s got complacent and missed the boat to gain even a slight edge in the market. 
 

That post is gonna need a bunch of primary source literature, which will be quite the dive.

[bosrs1]

2 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

 

Given all the TV deal stuff that I’ve detailed earlier and Lurie’s willingness to loan money to the local group, I was pretty sure that letting the Giants actually move (even to Santa Clara County) was never in the cards. Lurie made it clear in statements that public funding measures for stadiums were unpopular with Bay Area voters, with two SF referendums failing along with the Santa Clara County and San José ones. Since SF business folk didn’t take the bleeping hint about Lurie’s goals, he went to the desperate folks in Tampa Bay to really deliver his message
 

Bob Lurie really knew how to play some suckers. He knew how to stir up a storm. Both Santa Clara/San José politicians (e.g., Mayor Susan Hammer) and the desperate St. Pete folks were the perfect marks for his plan to give the Giants good local ownership to solve the Candlescheisse problem. 

 

You could even argue that he played Haas with the San José deal, even though Haas was arguably trying to get one-up on him.

 

Indeed. The A’s got complacent and missed the boat to gain even a slight edge in the market. 
 

That post is gonna need a bunch of primary source literature, which will be quite the dive.

 

Eh I've never bought the argument that the Haas family were trying to play the Giants. Even if the Giants had moved to San Jose I think it's pretty certain they still would have had more drawing potential from SF than the A's would have had. You saw a microcosm of that with the Niners when they moved all but to San Jose and it having no impact positively on the Raiders in Oakland. Sure the dynamics would have been a little different given it's baseball and not football. But fact is East Bay teams other than the Warriors (who were east bay only in location not in practice) have never had much appeal in the city proper. Or anywhere else in the Bay Area for that matter. Other than a few unsustainable years at the close of the 80's, the A's were always second fiddle when on even and even superior footing stadium wise to the Giants. And a San Jose Giants team in a new ballpark would have still had a leg up on the A's all these years financially (maybe even more so not having to pay off a ballpark presuming San Jose would have provided some form of public assistance on an SJ ballpark). And the Giants would still have had the lion share of the draw for most of the last 30 years both in person and on TV due to San Jose being primarily a Giants market even before they had the territorial rights to it (I grew up in the South Bay when the A's were at their absolute peak as a franchise during the Bash Bros. era, and outside my family I didn't need any hands to count how many A's fans I knew).