Rank relocations by how much they offended your sensibilities

[BBTV]

1 hour ago, Sport said:

 

That one might be tragic considering the history of the club. Always feels to me like the wrong team moved. Sort of like if the Browns had stayed in St. Louis and the Cardinals had moved to Baltimore. 

Based on success and stars yes, the wrong team moved. I think by the end they were definitely second fiddle, though that was due to their own complete mismanagement, so they pretty much had to, or fold. 
 

I’d love to see how it would have played out had they been run better and been able to sustain themselves as a legit large-market club. I wonder if the Phillies would have picked up the support that they did in ‘50 (albeit they totally lost it) and if they would still be viable by the time the “new era” of publically-financed projects and multi-purpose stadiums came around. 
 

My complete guess is that the A’s would have been Philadelphia’s Cubs (or Yankees), while the Phillies would have ended up in one of the high-populated but not really centrally-located neighborhoods(or even Camden) and been like the White Sox or Mets. 

[Sport]

22 minutes ago, BBTV said:

Based on success and stars yes, the wrong team moved. I think by the end they were definitely second fiddle, though that was due to their own complete mismanagement, so they pretty much had to, or fold. 
 

I’d love to see how it would have played out had they been run better and been able to sustain themselves as a legit large-market club. I wonder if the Phillies would have picked up the support that they did in ‘50 (albeit they totally lost it) and if they would still be viable by the time the “new era” of publically-financed projects and multi-purpose stadiums came around. 
 

My complete guess is that the A’s would have been Philadelphia’s Cubs (or Yankees), while the Phillies would have ended up in one of the high-populated but not really centrally-located neighborhoods(or even Camden) and been like the White Sox or Mets. 

 

Fun to think about. They were sharing a ballpark, right?  I'm reading about Shibe, which I don't know much about and it sounds like towards the end nobody was interested in doing what it took to maintain it or make it accessible for parking cars. Reads like the Phillies couldn't get out fast enough. Maybe if there's two teams they're able to share the financial burdens and upgrades until one of them jumps to the Vet with the Eagles in 1970 while the other stays in Shibe and then that becomes their Wrigley. It's too bad only Wrigley and Fenway survived from that era. 

[infrared41]

12 hours ago, The_Admiral said:

The Guess Who sucked

 

The name or the music?

[Danny the Sheeb]

Being a Thunder fan who never knew the SuperSonics, I can't really be objective about them.  I really hope Seattle gets an expansion team (which they very likely will) in the near future, but I can't be too sad about getting a team near where I live.  If there's any silver lining for Seattle fans, it's that you didn't have to experience the soul-crushing heartbreak of 2016.

[BBTV]

9 hours ago, Danny the Sheeb said:

Being a Thunder fan who never knew the SuperSonics, I can't really be objective about them.  I really hope Seattle gets an expansion team (which they very likely will) in the near future, but I can't be too sad about getting a team near where I live.  If there's any silver lining for Seattle fans, it's that you didn't have to experience the soul-crushing heartbreak of 2016.

I guarantee no Sonics fan views that as a silver lining. 
 

As absolutely gross and disgusting as that move was, I really hate the mindset that “City B stole Team A from City A”. Be mad at TEAM A, not City B.  You can’t “steal” a team. 
 

Sometimes City A doesn’t cooperate with Team A, but more often it’s that Team A is just cheap or dirty asswholes that either wanted to leave or were too inept to stay. 
 

It’s easy for me to say because I’ve never been on the losing end of it (though it very nearly happened in the mid ‘80s), but I couldn’t begrudge FANS of a relocated team, provided they’re not trolling the fans of the team that left. 

[The_Admiral]

49 minutes ago, BBTV said:

As absolutely gross and disgusting as that move was, I really hate the mindset that “City B stole Team A from City A”. Be mad at TEAM A, not City B.  You can’t “steal” a team.

Sure you can, just as you can poach any real business by giving them inducements. Did Oklahoma City or state offer any sort of tax breaks for the Supersonics to move? Did they hand over the master lease to the publicly-owned Ford Center? 

[FiddySicks]

The A’s are a weird one to me. They were my first ever favorite sports team, and brought me so many good memories as a kid. It’s really sad to see them move. 
 

But, truth is, they shouldn’t have been relocated at all. They should’ve been contracted/folded. 
 

 

Vegas is a half brained idea that’ll end up being a total disaster if it ever even happens. But if they’re going to insist on putting a team there, it should be an expansion team. Taking all of the challenges they’ll already have, and attaching that to the most toxic franchise in sports, seems suicidal in so many ways. 
 

I kinda think Vegas is gonna get tired of waiting, tell the A’s to kick rocks, and end up with an expansion team instead. That’ll leave the A’s floundering in South Sac forever. Do we really need any of that? Sacramento is basically my “home” city, and the city I rep for the hardest, and even I don’t really want this. 
 

Just take the A’s behind the woodshed and end it already. I mean, cool. They’ve been around like 150 years. But does that really matter all that much considering the vast majority of the last, like, 40 years have been an unsustainable mess? Why are we perpetuating this? 

[SFGiants58]

4 minutes ago, FiddySicks said:

The A’s are a weird one to me. They were my first ever favorite sports team, and brought me so many good memories as a kid. It’s really sad to see them move. 
 

But, truth is, they shouldn’t have been relocated at all. They should’ve been contracted/folded. 

 

I’m in a pretty similar boat regarding the A’s, except for the “first ever favorite team” part of it. It sucks to see them move, but they honestly shouldn’t have been around by now. Contraction would’ve been merciful.
 

I take a more charitable view, which is that they should’ve merged with Angels and become the Anaheim or LA Athletics in 2001. Or they should’ve stayed in Kansas City (saving Seattle’s entrance into MLB in the process).

 

4 minutes ago, FiddySicks said:

 

Just take the A’s behind the woodshed and end it already. I mean, cool. They’ve been around like 150 years. But does that really matter all that much considering the vast majority of the last, like, 49 years have been an unsustainable mess? Why are we perpetuating this? 

I’d say that they were unsustainable from the word “go” in Oakland, given the area’s decline began not long after they arrived. They were times where they could’ve edged out the Giants and claimed a larger portion of the Bay Area. Hell, that’s what the “San José rights” were all about. But the Giants rebounded and sent the A’s into their final death spiral.
 

Ultimately, if Horace Stoneham had bothered to claim more Bay Area counties in 1958 (beyond SF and San Mateo counties), a lot of headaches would’ve been prevented. No way Charlie O. would’ve payed a “compensatory fee” similar to the one the Angels had to pay to the Dodgers in 1961.

[FiddySicks]

The biggest difference between the Giants and A’s (because you have to remember, there was a long stretch where the Giants were in just as perilous of a situation as the A’s) is that, around the turn of the century, the Giants finally understood that if they wanted a new park, they weren’t going to get a single dime of public money out of ANY of these Bay Area locations. They clued into that, acted accordingly, and funded their own park to massive success. 
 

The A’s never got that message. Part of it was them truly not having the capital to make any of that happen (should’ve sold then), but the bigger part of it was their arrogance to think “Oh, they’ll cave eventually!”, and just sit on their asses until some desperate Bay Area location came knocking. That never happened because the A’s have been run like the Richmond branch of the Dollar Tree. That may have worked in, say, Omaha or wherever. But this is the Bay Area we’re talking about. There’s a stretch of Oakland where people get shot basically weekly and the houses around the area are still worth a million bucks. 
 

:censored:, even the 49ers, who are BY FAR the most successful and followed Bay Area sports team had to build a park on the edge of Silicon Valley because they couldn’t get any public money. Why in the world the A’s thought it was going to be any different for them is a mind:censored:. 
 

 

 

Also, there’s a lot of talk about the Giants “kicking out” the A’s from the Bay Area, and while I think that’s mostly bs and is almost exclusively the A’s fault, could you really blame the Giants for wanting to do that? The A’s have been sucking at the league teat since at least the 90s. They never contribute a thing and just collect on revenue sharing checks every year which they immediately pocket. Why wouldn’t that piss off the Giants? They privately funded their own park to massive success, and now have to cut even more of their earnings off of the top to give to those welfare queens across the bay. I would in the very least want those losers gone from my territory, too. 

[SFGiants58]

16 minutes ago, FiddySicks said:

The biggest difference between the Giants and A’s (because you have to remember, there was a long stretch where the Giants were in just as perilous of a situation as the A’s) is that, around the turn of the century, the Giants finally understood that if they wanted a new park, they weren’t going to get a single dime of public money out of ANY of these Bay Area locations. They clued into that, acted accordingly, and funded their own park to massive success.

 

Exactly - even by the end of Lurie's tenure, he realized that private money was the only way to build a stadium in the Bay Area. This was the guy who spearheaded several failed referendums for publicly-funded stadiums throughout the market (in SF and Santa Clara Counties).

 

Quote

The A’s never got that message. Part of it was them truly not having the capital to make any of that happen (should’ve sold then), but the bigger part of it was their arrogance to think “Oh, they’ll cave eventually!”, and just sit on their asses until some desperate Bay Area location came knocking. That never happened because the A’s have been run like the Richmond branch of the Dollar Tree. That may have worked in, say, Omaha or wherever. But this is the Bay Area we’re talking about. There’s a stretch of Oakland where people get shot basically weekly and the houses around the area are still worth a million bucks.

 

No municipality in the Bay Area was that desperate, especially if it meant alienating other businesses in the city/county or the residents. Freemont, probably the closest the A's got to setting up a stadium plan, met with both business and citizen opposition:

 

 

By "closest," I mean "obvious pipe dream." Oakland wasn't going to bend over with public funds, San José (even with territorial compensation, which would've been astronomic) seemed unwilling to dump taxpayer money into it, and Freemont didn't even seem all that committed to the idea. If your ownership group can't afford/doesn't want to pay for a new stadium, you shouldn't own a team/the team maybe shouldn't exist.

 

Quote

Also, there’s a lot of talk about the Giants “kicking out” the A’s from the Bay Area, and while I think that’s mostly bs and is almost exclusively the A’s fault, could you really blame the Giants for wanting to do that? The A’s have been sucking at the league teat since at least the 90s. They never contribute a thing and just collect on revenue sharing checks every year which they immediately pocket. Why wouldn’t that piss off the Giants? They privately funded their own park to massive success, and now have to cut even more of their earnings off of the top to give to those welfare queens across the bay. I would in the very least want those losers gone from my territory, too. 

This is also how I started to feel about the team once the A’s bitched about losing revenue sharing. Like, Fisher is absurdly wealthy even by sports owner standards. Why can’t he just invest in his stupid teams?

 

Edited August 14 by SFGiants58

[crashcarson15]

On 8/13/2024 at 8:43 AM, Sport said:

 

That one might be tragic considering the history of the club. Always feels to me like the wrong team moved. Sort of like if the Browns had stayed in St. Louis and the Cardinals had moved to Baltimore. 

Yeah, from a historical standpoint, this is one that feels most "wrong" — the A's consistently outdrew the Phillies for most of their existence (not gonna check my work here, but I think it was 22 years straight from '21-'42, for example) and had both actual success in the AL/NL era and was tied to the name more historically associated with Philadelphia baseball. Bad time to have a poor and senile owner/manager/GM, and the Whiz Kids in '50 probably sealed the death certificate.

 

Side note, I have always loved the '54 Athletics jerseys no matter how non-traditional they were for the market:

 

Time to get back into working on my on-again, off-again alternate history pro baseball concept series, I guess!

[B-Rich]

The request was, "Rank relocations by how much they offended your sensibilities", so I'll answer that one truthfully:

New Orleans Jazz -> Utah.

 

Of course , I was a 14 year old boy and huge Jazz fan at the time, so that's my reason.   And having been this young suburban goof in 1979,

I'm a lot older than most of you, who may know little of how and why they moved.  

 

So, allow me to share an article I wrote back in 1999 for a website, a rather thorough (and to my mind) unbiased history and insight into the move and "what if?" if they hadn't. 

Enjoy, or learn , or both:

 

Why did the Jazz leave New Orleans for Utah?  The answer to that question is many-faceted, and will be fully addressed, but one point needs to be made clear first: The Jazz did not leave New Orleans for lack of fan support.  There is a common and widespread misconception around the country to the effect of: “Hey, the Jazz left New Orleans for Utah; that means they didn’t support the team and didn’t deserve to keep the team”.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  As can be seen in the history section above, the Jazz drew tremendously well in the Crescent City and in fact held the single-game record for NBA attendance for many years.  Similar to the city’s other major-league franchise, the NFL Saints, their attendance numbers were more than generous considering the way the team was run and the product that was put on display.

 

The decision behind the team’s move rested squarely with their owner at the time, Sam Battistone.  Battistone’s ownership of the team was not a civic enterprise, the way it often is for local owners.  It was a business venture, and he was a businessman.  In short, keeping the team in New Orleans was not good for his own personal bottom line.

 

Most of the argument (business-wise) for moving the team has been attributed to the Superdome.  It was claimed that it was simply too large of a facility.  With the knowledge that seats would always be available, season ticket sales were scarce (the most the Jazz ever sold was 2,600).  Season ticket sales not only guarantee that a seat is sold for each and every game, it also gives the owners all that money in advance.  This in turn helps them to finance their operations, and the lack of such sales surely hurt the team financially.  Yet it never seemed that the team made an effort to effectively market season tickets, much less game-day tickets.  Another option, that of increasing demand by decreasing supply (by limiting the amount of seats sold, eliminating the general admission ticket, closing off upper levels, etc.) was never tried out.

 

Another problem with the Superdome was its use as a multi-purpose facility.  Battistone has claimed that the Jazz felt like a second-class citizen in the Dome-- behind the Saints, behind the major league baseball team the city was trying to obtain, and even behind the other events such as trade shows, concerts and Mardi Gras balls held in the Dome.  According to the Times-Picayune, Battistone was “rankled” by the contractual relationship between the Jazz and the Dome.  The deal made money for the city, the state and the Superdome, but making a profit was difficult for the team-- for example, the team was charged $5000 for lighting at each of their home games.  The Jazz also never shared in concession revenues or parking revenues at the Superdome.  On the other hand, the team’s former Jazz executive vice-president, Barry Mendelson, said the contractual arrangement with the Dome was fair and was never the problem.  Finally, Battistone further criticized the Dome’s attitude, giving as an example that there was never any contingency plan in case the Jazz did make the playoffs.  However, that is disputed by Superdome manager Bill Curl, who said a list of playoff dates were submitted regularly to the Jazz and were never acknowledged.

 

There were other financial problems that were not related to the Superdome.  Foremost among these was the amusement tax, which was a national high of 11 percent.  Mendelson has stated that the tax was the worst of all the financial factors which led to their departure, that it “just killed us, we were crippled by that tax” (It should be noted that the tax was later repealed in city venues of more than 1800 seats).  Another problem was the lack of corporate support.  Although the city was in the midst of an oil boom, there were few big companies (oil or otherwise) headquartered here.  Less big companies translates to less corporate season ticket sales.

 

Finally, in terms of business, it can be pointed out that Battistone and the ownership group made some terrible business decisions on their own.  For one thing, the team-building philosophy left much to be desired.  Certainly, the decision to trade away draft picks (or LOSE due to compensation pre- fre agency as in the Gail Goodrich/ Magic Johnson situation ) for older veterans was a mistake.  The decision to dismiss Butch van Breda Kolff, who was 14-12 at the time, remains a puzzling and dumb-headed move.  Dave Fredman, who has been with the Jazz since its days in New Orleans, has labeled the managerial decisions “catastrophic”, and stated, “We tried to get good too quickly.  We traded away first-round draft choices and lied to the public about future compensation.”

 

Additionally, the team never seemed to be properly financed-- there always seemed to be cash-flow problems.  In November of their first year of existence, the team fired team president Fred Rosenfeld for unaccountable spending and then began a financial “belt-tightening” operation.  This “operation” involved unloading players for draft picks and cash (examples include the trades involving Stu Lantz, Neal Walk, Jim Barnett and Henry Bibby).  Off the court, Battistone himself was losing money first through his involvement with the World Football League, then later, when his restaurant chain began to founder.  Perhaps the lowest point in the whole business cycle was in the team’s last year in New Orleans, when the team unloaded its only remaining, active star --Truck Robinson -- for lesser players and cash.

 

But business was not the only reason that Battistone moved the team.  There are former Jazz staff, coaches, players and fans who believe that Battistone simply wanted to move the team closer to home, so he did-- regardless of what was going on in New Orleans.  There is a ‘spectrum’ of beliefs here— some hold the ”conspiracy” view that Battistone, a Mormon whose wife was from Salt Lake City, planned to move the team to Utah as soon as it was apparent that the Utah Stars of the ABA were not going to survive.  Others, like Barry Mendelson, see the decision as coming later: he believes that there was an unspoken agreement among the owners in the last year that they would move ‘somewhere more friendly to us—more friendly being geographically’.  Both views have some merit.  Battistone not only passed on moving the team to much more lucrative markets than New Orleans (Dallas, Minnesota, Miami, Cincinnati and St. Louis); he moved to a market that was smaller than New Orleans at the time.  That seems like a personal decision, not a good ‘business’ decision.  And it should be noted that the ABA's Utah Stars had shown there was a fan base—they had drawn crowds of 12,000 plus and had averaged 8,501 per game in the year before they went under.

 

Battistone must also be pointed out as the single reason that the team kept the wholly incongruous name “Jazz” upon moving to Utah.  Most people assumed it was because of the quick move, or that Battistone must have been too strapped for cash to change the uniforms and such.  The organization did sponsor a contest to pick a new nickname and team colors, but Battistone vetoed the idea.  He has claimed that he made up his mind that the trappings would not change, explaining that he wanted those who criticized the Jazz in New Orleans to be reminded it was the same franchise that had later earned success in Utah.

 

Finally, New Orleans is not without fault regarding the team’s move to Utah.  First of all, there was a clear lack of corporate and political support.  Corporate support was lacking not just from a dearth of corporate entities (as indicated above), but also, there was little interest in the team from local business leaders.  A prime example was the initial lack of local investors, and subsequent selling off of local investment in the team.  With the type of booming economy present in New Orleans between 1974-1979, there clearly could have been a consortium of local investors assembled with enough capital to locally own the team, but no one stepped forward to do so.  There was little political effort to retain the team, either.  Ernest “Dutch” Morial was in his first year as mayor during the move, and had more pressing problems on his mind at the time (such as a police strike during Mardi Gras of 1979).  Governor Edwin Edwards was in his lame-duck last year of office, and other local and state officials remained noticeably silent.  Fans were probably the most outspoken about the move, but their response was more a cry of lamentation than a battle cry to save the team.

 

Most of this response of the businessmen, politicians and fans has to be placed in the context of the times, however.  This was 1979, when the NBA was at the nadir of its popularity, running a distant third behind football and baseball.  The NBA Finals were sometimes shown on network television on tape delay after the late news. This was the season before Magic Johnson and Larry Bird entered the league (saving the league, as some have said) and several years before the arrival of Michael Jordan and media-savvy commissioner David Stern.  In short, this was many years before the NBA was “Fan-tastic”, and many years before fans could say, “I Love This Game”.  It was also before the Raiders situation and the whole idea of franchise moves in sports became major news.  In fact, NBA moves were not unusual during this time, as the Rockets had moved from San Diego to Houston in 1971, the Cincinnati Royals became the Kansas City-Omaha Kings in 1972, the Buffalo Braves became the San Diego Clippers in 1978, the Clippers moved to L.A. in 1984, and the Kansas City Kings moved to Sacramento in 1985.

 

Like everyone else, sports fans and pundits in New Orleans often ask the question, “What if..?” One question asked is, “What if the Jazz hadn’t moved to Utah in 1979?”  Even if they hadn’t, there is a big question as to whether they would still be here today.  First of all, local ownership would have had to be obtained—it has been postulated that someone like the now-deceased Al Copeland (founder of the Popeye’s Fried Chicken chain) or a group of local investors could have purchased the team to help keep them in town.  The next obstacle would have been getting the team out of the Superdome.  This would have tied in to the early 1980s move by the NBA in encouraging the move from domes to arenas (as the Supersonics, Jazz and Pistons did).  A great possibility for building an arena for the Jazz would have come in 1984 with the World’s Fair in New Orleans.  An arena could have been developed in conjunction with (and adjacent to) the Convention Center, so that they would each have shared parking, overflow floor space, additional meeting facilities, etc.  Like the Convention Center, it could have been used for World’s Fair purposes, and then opened for business afterwards.

 

But the biggest obstacle to the team staying in New Orleans would have been the oil bust of the mid-eighties.  The drop in oil prices hit New Orleans hard, with many workers losing jobs, many families and “yuppies” moving away, and entertainment dollars in short supply.  It was at this time that the NBA was getting wildly popular, and several teams either moved (the Kings and Clippers) or perused moves (ironically, Utah was among these, nearly being bought and moved to Minnesota).  It would have been tough for an NBA team in New Orleans to survive those lean years.

[TrueYankee26]

Out of the ones that I have been alive for the Sonics to OKC and Chargers to LA feel the foulest as well as the original Cleveland Browns to Baltimore

[The_Admiral]

8 hours ago, B-Rich said:

There is a ‘spectrum’ of beliefs here— some hold the ”conspiracy” view that Battistone, a Mormon whose wife was from Salt Lake City, planned to move the team to Utah as soon as it was apparent that the Utah Stars of the ABA were not going to survive.

 

This is where I'm at on the Jazz move. That water was always going to find its level.

 

Incidentally, it's rather surprising that the Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has not yet gotten into the sports-ownership business. The church already owns TV stations, radio stations, newspapers, shopping malls, hotels, and cattle ranches. Their accountants must have looked into it by now.

[tBBP]

On 8/14/2024 at 12:58 AM, Danny the Sheeb said:

Being a Thunder fan who never knew the SuperSonics, I can't really be objective about them.  I really hope Seattle gets an expansion team (which they very likely will) in the near future, but I can't be too sad about getting a team near where I live.  If there's any silver lining for Seattle fans, it's that you didn't have to experience the soul-crushing heartbreak of 2016.

 

I presume you're referring to the western conference finals of that postseason, wherein Klay Thompson shot the lights right out of OKC's collective heart. But regarding Seattle fans not having experienced soul-crushing heartbreak, well, every Sonics fan who was born in the '80s or before remembers this moment all too well (trigger warning for Seattleites out there):

 

 

You might notice the green and yellow paint on that floor. In case the context isn't clear, that's Dikembe Mutombo, clutching that ball in exuberant glee, proudly displaying some of the most gloriously victorious teeth mankind has ever seen, moments after the eighth-seed Denver Nuggets knocked off the one-seed Sonics, after being down 0-2, in the first round of the '94 Western Conference playoffs...on Seattle's home floor. (This was back when the first round was still five games.) That was also the first time an 8-seed had knocked off a top seed in NBA history. 

[Sport]

I imagine losing your team to another city would be a lot more soul-crushing than losing a close playoff series you were supposed to lose anyway. That's just me. 

 

I was retroactively bummed a second time that the Sonics moved because I managed to live a couple blocks from Key Arena in the one decade when it didn't house an NBA or NHL team. 

[Danny the Sheeb]

On 8/14/2024 at 2:01 PM, crashcarson15 said:

 

Time to get back into working on my on-again, off-again alternate history pro baseball concept series, I guess!

Yowza these look good, how have I never seen these before?

 

11 hours ago, tBBP said:

Believe me, I knew exactly what this was from even though I wasn't born for another decade.  At least Sonics and Thunder fans can bond over shared suffering, I guess.

[infrared41]

11 hours ago, Sport said:

I imagine losing your team to another city would be a lot more soul-crushing than losing a close playoff series you were supposed to lose anyway.

 

It is.

[tBBP]

14 hours ago, infrared41 said:

 

It is.

 

And I assume you'd have intimate subject-matter expertise on both sides of that coin, yes?

[infrared41]

27 minutes ago, tBBP said:

 

And I assume you'd have intimate subject-matter expertise on both sides of that coin, yes?

 

That would be a correct assumption.