Stadium/Arena Saga Omnibus

[GDAWG]

2 minutes ago, Ridleylash said:

Any talk of contraction is a non-starter when we know the MLB is really looking to expand. Does anybody really think prospective owners will want to pay the MLB's desired expansion fees fresh off the heels of multiple franchises completely folding?

 

Especially when multiple other leagues are talking about it, anyways; baseball isn't anywhere near the juggernaut it used to be to make someone want a team in that league over an NBA or even NHL team.

 

Where they expand will determine whether or not the A's stay in Oakland or goes to Las Vegas.  Otherwise it will probably be Nashville and a team in the Carolinas (Charlotte or Raleigh) as expansion teams.  

[McCall]

24 minutes ago, GDAWG said:

 

Where they expand will determine whether or not the A's stay in Oakland or goes to Las Vegas.  Otherwise it will probably be Nashville and a team in the Carolinas (Charlotte or Raleigh) as expansion teams.  

They won't expand until the A's and Rays situations are resolved. It wouldn't make sense to either take away prospective markets from two existing teams in "bad" situations, nor would it make much sense to add two new teams while STILL dealing with those other two situations. If they were to end up relocating to Vegas and Nashville, and MLB didn't feel there were two solid markets to expand to, then they would delay expansion until such time as they have two additional markets that they'd be satisfied with adding.

[GDAWG]

15 minutes ago, McCall said:

They won't expand until the A's and Rays situations are resolved. It wouldn't make sense to either take away prospective markets from two existing teams in "bad" situations, nor would it make much sense to add two new teams while STILL dealing with those other two situations. If they were to end up relocating to Vegas and Nashville, and MLB didn't feel there were two solid markets to expand to, then they would delay expansion until such time as they have two additional markets that they'd be satisfied with adding.

 

Lost opportunity for a minority led MLB team with the Nashville Stars if the Rays move there since the group is led by former MLBer Dave Stewart (with significant financial backing of course).

[McCall]

7 minutes ago, GDAWG said:

 

Lost opportunity for a minority led MLB team with the Nashville Stars if the Rays move there since the group is led by former MLBer Dave Stewart (with significant financial backing of course).

I don't know if he's part of any actually ownership group or just part of the organization trying to lure a team to Nashville. They're not just targeting expansion, but rather relocation, as well. So I don't think he'd be heartbroken, as long as Nashville ended up with a team.

[FiddySicks]

5 hours ago, Digby said:

Also worth noting Oakland has never been a big attendance draw since even before the slow destruction of the Coliseum. They had good numbers during the late 80s, and middle-of-the-pack numbers during peak Moneyball. Otherwise pretty consistently near the bottom. They’d probably never top the list but it’s still a rough history, especially compared to the same time that the Warriors and Raiders were famously well-supported in the same location. 

Yeah there’s two big things I think people are overlooking on this. I don’t think people realize just how much of a foothold the A’s have lost over the last decade due to the conglomeration of all of their issues. Like, they’ve been absolutely hemorrhaging support with all of this, and even the die hards have had enough. But that’s the other thing, as you pointed out. The A’s have NEVER really knocked your socks off when it comes to attendance and a following, even during their heyday. There was even a thought back before AT&T Park was built that maybe the Bay Area as a whole just wasn’t that great of a market for pro baseball. But then the Giants got their own park built in a perfect location on basically their own dime (which is the first fully privately funded MLB park since Dodger Stadium in the 60s) and totally flipped the script. The real big issue all of these owners are having is they’re all trying to preach the same nonsense about the importance of public funding, but then the Giants just went ahead and knocked down that nonsensical curtain and have made money hand over fist because of it. I think they paid off the loan on the park in like half of the time they had to do so it’s been so successful. The A’s chances at public funding basically died right then and there, and the only ones who haven’t caught on to that yet are the A’s themselves. People are tired of their act, and most of Northern California is ready for them to leave, if legit ANYONE else will take them. 
 

I mean, :censored:, even the Sacramento Kings, who are still the most dysfunctional pro team in California and are most certainly not in the Bay Area (therefore having none of the prestige when it comes to location) realized they would have to fund at least half of their own building. The the A’s have been asking for isn’t just absurd, it’s insulting. They’re asking for the thing to be nearly fully publicly funded, and they want to keep basically all of the revenue. Like, good luck, guys. That may have flown in the 1990s (but even for the A’s it didn’t), but it sure as isn’t going to work now. People would rather light the coliseum on fire and watch it burn than fund another billionaire’s money making toy.
 

the A’s. All of their problems are self created due to their own stupidity, lack of any foresight whatsoever (like, how the :censored: do you not forsee the South Bay growing enough to warrant the land back when you had thirty years to JUST TAKE IT BACK! That’s all they had to do. File a form. And they never did. Good :censored: this team is dumb), and just shameless greed. The minute they’re gone, the better off everyone will be. 

[The_Admiral]

19 hours ago, WestCoastBias said:

But the Coliseum might as well be Mongolia, I mean have you ever been there? It's a complete hole, why do you think the Raiders are in Vegas and the Warriors are in San Francisco now?

I think yurt too hard on them.

 

19 hours ago, WestCoastBias said:

I get the feeling that if this was a midwest city this forum would defend the team to the end

Oakland is spiritually midwestern and thus why I've always had a soft spot for them.

[Walk-Off]

On 3/5/2023 at 2:30 AM, who do you think said:

The Giants sell out the park for eternity while the A's have been buried and forgotten for over two decades, so clearly Northern California is not a strong two-team region.

 

From 1960 through 1999 -- before the Giants began to play at a ballpark that they have been apparently able to "sell out" for "eternity" -- Candlestick Park was the Giants' home field.  A blend of often mediocre play by the home team and frequent and chilly wind gusts at and around "the Stick" throughout a typical baseball season (especially during night games) caused the Giants to rack up many seasons of below-average attendance figures ... even when the A's (whose first season in Oakland overlapped with the Giants' ninth season at Candlestick) were also attracting disappointingly few spectators to their home games.

 

In fact, the Giants struggled so much to draw fans to Candlestick that they not only came close to being bought by some rich Floridians who would have relocated that team to St. Petersburg and its now-infamous domed ballpark for the 1993 season (i.e. one more way that the Rays' existence could have been prevented), but were also almost sold by Horace Stoneham (yes, the man who brought the Giants to San Francisco in the first place) to a group of wealthy Canadians who would have moved the team to Toronto for the 1976 season.  (A few months later, the American League gave those same Canadian businessmen the Toronto expansion franchise that debuted in 1977 as the Blue Jays.)

 

So -- to use @who do you think's logic -- do the Giants' suboptimal attendance statistics throughout their four whole decades at Candlestick mean that "nobody" was "caring" about the Giants for all of that time?

 

Furthermore, as best as I can tell, taking that same poster's stubbornly and fanatically pro-contraction worldview to its seemingly ultimate logical conclusion means that neither the MLB commissioner's office nor the National League should have ever let the Giants be moved out of the Bay Area or even sold to anyone willing and able to pay in full for a new ballpark for the Giants within the Bay Area ... but, instead, either the commissioner's office or the NL should have confiscated the Giants franchise from Horace Stoneham and dissolved the team outright during the 1975-76 offseason, when Stoneham was trying to sell the Giants to those Torontonians.

 

If the Giants deserved to survive long enough to replace the dismal, discomforting environs of Candlestick Park with a much more appealing venue in an area much closer to the heart of San Francisco, then both the A's and the Rays deserve any and every reasonable opportunity possible to secure new places to play, whether in their present respective home markets or elsewhere.  To think otherwise would be unfair, unjust, and hypocritical.

 

On 3/5/2023 at 2:30 AM, who do you think said:

If only that dumbass 98 expansion never happened. The A's could have just bounced to Arizona by now and be doing their piddling hospitality house operation in the airplane hangar, and the Rays wouldn't exist in the first place. 

 

I think that, had the additions of National League teams in the Denver and Miami areas for 1993 been the absolute last time so far that MLB had expanded, the A's would have been much more likely to become the Tampa Bay Athletics than transform into the Phoenix or Arizona Athletics.

 

On one hand, the City of St. Petersburg completed construction of what was originally the Florida Suncoast Dome in 1990 ... with neither a commitment from any existing MLB team to move to that ballpark nor any pledge from MLB to award an expansion franchise that would play at that venue from the start.

 

OTOH, Maricopa County, Arizona's government did not pass the sales tax increase that was to help pay for Downtown Phoenix's "airplane hangar" of an MLB-specification ballpark until the spring of 1994 -- which happened to be around the time that MLB formed a committee to evaluate expansion from 28 clubs to at least 30.  This set of circumstances leads me to believe that Maricopa County would not have dared to raise that tax for that particular publicly stated purpose unless most of the politicians there thought that their county and the Phoenix metro area in general were very likely to get an MLB expansion team in the then-near future.  Furthermore, even if (a) Maricopa County had gone ahead and raised that tax with much less confidence regarding the Phoenix area's ability to earn an MLB franchise and (b) further MLB expansion in the 1990s or beyond had proven to be unlikely, politicos in that county could have easily either reversed the tax increase or re-designated the extra tax revenue toward a different matter well before any existing MLB team could have tried to move to the Phoenix area and get its hands on all of that money.

 

On 3/5/2023 at 9:27 AM, BBTV said:

TB's lack of team served as a negotiating tactic for teams that could threaten to move there.  Ironically, it probably made MLB more money without a team than it has with one.

 

I am of the opinion that, without the Florida Suncoast Dome / Tropicana Field having been completed in 1990 with a baseball-focused layout and an MLB-level seating capacity right from the beginning, the Tampa-St. Petersburg area would have been in no better a position as a negotiating tactic for teams trying to get better ballparks than were pre-1993 Denver and Miami, pre-1998 Phoenix, pre-2005 Washington, D.C., etc.  For all of the flaws that St. Petersburg has as a host city for an MLB club and the Trop has as a big-league ballpark, I think that no one can deny how daring it was for St. Pete to go ahead and build a major-league-caliber baseball venue on speculation.

 

To give an example of the extent to which that stadium seemed to give the Tampa Bay area an edge as a bargaining chip in MLB circles, I can remember the Chicago White Sox threatening to move to St. Pete while the Florida Suncoast Dome was under construction in the late 1980s.  The powers that be inside the Illinois State Capitol were intimidated enough by the Pale Hose's relocation threat to stop the clock (literally) to pass a law that alloted a nine-figure sum of taxpayer dollars to enable the Chisox to replace the original Comiskey Park with a new baseball palace right across the street.

 

On 3/7/2023 at 3:49 PM, FiddySicks said:

the A’s. All of their problems are self created due to their own stupidity, lack of any foresight whatsoever (like, how the do you not forsee the South Bay growing enough to warrant the land back when you had thirty years to JUST TAKE IT BACK! That’s all they had to do. File a form. And they never did. Good this team is dumb), and just shameless greed.

 

When it comes to territorial rights situations, I have no sympathy whatsoever for either MLB team in the Bay Area.  I think that the A's were (if not still are) naïve fools for letting the Giants have exclusive territorial rights to the South Bay region without requiring the Giants to locate their permanent home ballpark in one of those South Bay counties in order to keep such rights and without demanding a compensatory swap of territorial rights (e.g. to San Francisco and San Mateo counties) if and when the Giants were to move permanently to a South Bay locale.  However, I think also that the Giants have been a bunch of selfish, greedy jerks for having been unwilling even to share those South Bay territorial rights with the A's ever since the Giants chose to waste those rights by putting their current ballpark on the opposite side of Candlestick Point.

Edited March 9, 2023 by Walk-Off

[B-Rich]

6 hours ago, Walk-Off said:

 

From 1960 through 1999 -- before the Giants began to play at a ballpark that they have been apparently able to "sell out" for "eternity" -- Candlestick Park was the Giants' home field... 

 

 

Frickin' well-written, comprehensive,  on-point, factually backed-up,  and historically accurate post, my man.  

 

[who do you think]

On 3/7/2023 at 2:47 AM, WestCoastBias said:

The on field success makes them relevant and they do matter.

 

No it doesn't, no they don't.

 

On 3/7/2023 at 7:07 AM, McCall said:

If you have a good on-field team in a bad market, you relocate them to a good market, not just drop them. If you relocate them, that new market gets to start off with a good team, which would help it be more successful from the beginning.

 

Every single post of yours makes me want to keep regurgitating the "nobody cares" bit.

 

On 3/7/2023 at 9:58 AM, gosioux76 said:

You seem to be discounting the value of having a good fan experience.

 

Sports fandom is nothing more than tribalism, and we tend to assume that if you're part of the tribe then you must support it through any and all circumstances. But if the venue stinks and the experience is terrible, then I can't blame even the most die-hard of fans for not wanting to attend. That doesn't make them any less of fans, but it does suggest that the problem isn't necessarily the team's performance or any lack of interest. 

 

Are people are getting slimed with raw sewage between innings like some Nickelodeon show gone wrong? It's a baseball game. Visiting fans of popular teams don't seem to have a problem coming out. Go ask people from New England about the fan experience at Fenway before current ownership bought the team.

 

8 hours ago, Walk-Off said:

So -- to use @who do you think's logic -- do the Giants' suboptimal attendance statistics throughout their four whole decades at Candlestick mean that "nobody" was "caring" about the Giants for all of that time?

 

They very nearly moved to Tampa (and would be in the same hell the Rays are in right now) until they were saved at the 11th hour. The Giants moving would have been unfortunate historically and probably worth going the extra mile for (which may have happened anyway), but the A's are a lifelong jobber franchise with no significant ties or rivals. They are not the same.

 

Also, the fact that Giants games used to be empty when the A's were doing well, but now the Giants are a yearly sellout while the A's play to tumbleweeds, kinda supports the notion that Northern California isn't a two-team baseball region, huh?

[SCMODS]

Hell, Finley should've kept them in KC. They would've eventually gotten the ballpark the Royals play in now. 

[FiddySicks]

9 hours ago, Walk-Off said:

 1.) If the Giants deserved to survive long enough to replace the dismal, discomforting environs of Candlestick Park with a much more appealing venue in an area much closer to the heart of San Francisco, then both the A's and the Rays deserve any and every reasonable opportunity possible to secure new places to play, whether in their present respective home markets or elsewhere.  To think otherwise would be unfair, unjust, and hypocritical.

 

2.) When it comes to territorial rights situations, I have no sympathy whatsoever for either MLB team in the Bay Area.  I think that the A's were (if not still are) naïve fools for letting the Giants have exclusive territorial rights to the South Bay region without requiring the Giants to locate their permanent home ballpark in one of those South Bay counties in order to keep such rights and without demanding a compensatory swap of territorial rights (e.g. to San Francisco and San Mateo counties) if and when the Giants were to move permanently to a South Bay locale.  However, I think also that the Giants have been a bunch of selfish, greedy jerks for having been unwilling even to share those South Bay territorial rights with the A's ever since the Giants chose to waste those rights by putting their current ballpark on the opposite side of Candlestick Point.

Very well written post, but I’d like to highlight these two passages and sort of add to them. 
 

1.) The thing is, both the Rays and especially the A’s absolutely HAVE been given a fair opportunity to do just what you’re saying. I know a bit less about the Rays situation, but for the A’s, the issue has ALWAYS been the unreasonable desire for public funding. They’ve had several locations that would be suitable, but have always run into roadblocks when it comes to who’s actually going to pay for it (and for that matter, who is going to keep the profits). I don’t think anyone is being “unfair, unjust, and hypocritical” to the A’s, they’re simply always coming to the table with proposals that are borderline absurd from a funding standpoint. They always want the city/county/state to assume all of the risk while they reap all of the rewards and profits, and cities have told them no in that one, and for very good reason. That part of all of this has always been consistent, and even somewhat simple. 
 

2.) On the Giants point, I have to disagree about them being “greedy jerks” or “selfish”, because the current ownership group paid for those rights. Part of the purchase price for the Giants when they sold to the current ownership group included the territorial rights to the South Bay. Now you can argue if you want that it wasn’t the right of the old ownership group to sell those rights along with the club (legally, they were, though. As I said earlier, those rights fell to the Giants when the A’s never bothered to claim them back, which they could’ve done free of charge for many years), but either way, that’s what happened. Why should the Giants ownership group just give up those assets to their competition when they paid for those rights? Not only that, they HAVE offered the rights to the South Bay to the A’s, but expect them to pay a fair market price for them (just as you would expect of you were selling any piece of property/land), and the A’s have always balked at the price. I sort of understand the idea that they should be willing to help more because the A’s helped them, but you also have to realize just how much the demographics of the Bay Area have changed since the A’s gave those rights away. It would be like if you had some land that wasn’t of much value to you so you gave it as a gift to someone. Just because they decided to build a city center there 30 years later and the land value sky rocketed doesn’t mean you can come crawling back expecting to get that regifted to you because there’s more money in it now. That would be nice, but this is Major League Baseball we’re talking about here, not UNICEF. The A’s simply made a dumb as all deal, had the opportunity to correct it, never did, and are now whining that they’re not getting a mulligan. Nice try, but, come on now. What business sense would that make from the Giants standpoint? 

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

3 minutes ago, who do you think said:

The Giants moving would have been unfortunate historically and probably worth going the extra mile for (which may have happened anyway)...

 

Good so far.

 

4 minutes ago, who do you think said:

...but the A's are a lifelong jobber franchise with no significant ties or rivals.

 

Yikes!  Someone doesn't know his history.

 

 

[gosioux76]

54 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

Good so far.

 

 

Yikes!  Someone doesn't know his history.

 

 

To be fair, the Seventies weren't really worth remembering anyway. 

[Sport]

7 minutes ago, who do you think said:

 

Are people are getting slimed with raw sewage between innings like some Nickelodeon show gone wrong?

 

 

In Oakland? Yeah kind of. 

 

 

7 minutes ago, who do you think said:

It's a baseball game. Visiting fans of popular teams don't seem to have a problem coming out. Go ask people from New England about the fan experience at Fenway before current ownership bought the team.

 

That's an illusion created by discrepancies in inventory. The visiting fans have the same problems coming out, they're just clustered into fewer games. Red Sox fans that live in Tampa aren't some magical breed of human better at driving to St Pete than Rays fans, they're just asked to do it fewer times each baseball season. If they had to fill 81 dates they would have the same problem "coming out".  

 

 

 

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

28 minutes ago, gosioux76 said:

To be fair, the Seventies weren't really worth remembering anyway. 

The 70s, when the A's won more World Series (three) than any other team.

[McCall]

2 hours ago, who do you think said:

Every single post of yours makes me want to keep regurgitating the "nobody cares" bit.

And every post of your makes me want to repeat that you don't speak for anybody but yourself. Literally no one else. And quite honestly, I don't think anybody would want you to speak for them, to avoid any implication of association, alone.

 

But you did hit the nail on the head when you referred to your posts as "regurgitation".

[gosioux76]

1 hour ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

The 70s, when the A's won more World Series (three) than any other team.

In case it wasn't clear, that was the point I was trying to make. 

[Digby]

But even in the 70s... the team struggled with attendance and a crappy stadium and were the subjects of relocation rumors all the time. How times have changed!

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

47 minutes ago, gosioux76 said:

In case it wasn't clear, that was the point I was trying to make. 

 

Ah. It should have been clear. Duh on me.

[VampyrRabbit]

3 hours ago, FiddySicks said:

Very well written post, but I’d like to highlight these two passages and sort of add to them. 
 

1.) The thing is, both the Rays and especially the A’s absolutely HAVE been given a fair opportunity to do just what you’re saying. I know a bit less about the Rays situation, but for the A’s, the issue has ALWAYS been the unreasonable desire for public funding.

 

The biggest issue for the Rays is the rotten lease they signed for the Trop, and it's one that St Pete refuses to let them out of so they are still in that Mausoleam.

Of course, The Rays top brass still want a s***load of public money for a new stadium, as shown with the whole TB/Montreal pipe dream.