The FBI raided the home of the Oakland Mayor, and a recall initiative gathered enough signatures to move forward:
Oakland United to Recall Sheng Thao (OUST), the campaign spearheading the recall effort, submitted 40,000 signatures before the July 22 deadline.
Supporters of OUST say they want Thao gone because of the high crime rate, the firing of the Oakland police chief, and the loss of the MLB team the Oakland Athletics.
PJMedia.com
It seems Oakland went from No There to Negative There.
The Athletics submitted applications to trademark “Sacramento Athletics” and “Sacramento A’s” after saying the team would just be called the Athletics or A’s. I suspect this is to prevent others from selling clothing with Sacramento A’s on it.
This article details the latest in negotiations between the Athletics and the City of Oakland on a lease extension for the Coliseum.
The city is proposing the five-year lease with the opt-out after three to safeguard itself in case there are construction delays in Las Vegas or the deal falls through. According to the offer sheet obtained by ESPN and KGO-TV, the city has dropped previous requirements that called for MLB to keep the A’s name and colors in Oakland, as well as a demand that MLB guarantee the city a future expansion team.
…
In addition, the city is asking for a commitment from Major League Baseball on one of three options: (1) a one-year exclusive right to solicit ownership of a future expansion team; (2) vote to leave the A’s colors and name in Oakland, or; (3) facilitate the sale of the A’s to a local ownership group.
ESPN.com
They are going to make the Athletics pay up to stay in Oakland, asking for $97 million dollars. The team now pays a fraction of that.
I believe this is the first time a team didn’t just up and move. The Giants were ready to leave San Francisco for Tampa Bay, but negotiations got them to stay. Most team just move and play in an improved minor league park until a new venue is ready, or a better park that was built to attract them.
Las Vegas is so hot, however, that it would be tough to move an MLB team there without a climate controlled stadium. So this move is going to continue to be the strangest of all time.
In another unanimous vote, the owners approved the move of the Athletics from Oakland to Las Vegas:
After announcing in 2021 plans to pursue a “parallel path” in which it would weigh stadium deals in Oakland and Las Vegas, the team chose Vegas in April 2023, with Manfred saying MLB would waive its relocation fee, estimated to be around $300 million.
ESPN.com
I assume a relocation fee is there to discourage teams from moving. Waiving the fee seems like a bad idea, as other teams will cry hardship and try to get the fee waived if they really want to move. This could open the door to other relocations, although I suspect the expansion fees when the league goes to 32 teams will make up for that.
The owners vote today on approving the Athletics move to Las Vegas. Oakland fans lobbied the owners to vote no:
When some owners were arriving Tuesday, a plane pulling a banner that read “A’S BELONG IN OAKLAND –#VOTENO” flew above the hotel where they are meeting adjacent to Globe Life Field, home of the World Series champion Texas Rangers.
That is part of a last-ditch effort to stop any approval of the move. At least half of the owners were sent special “Stay In Oakland” boxes from Bay Area fans packed with a green Athletics cap, a baseball card featuring his likeness and a note telling him all the reasons he should vote no on the team’s planned relocation.
Chron.com
The remain side needs eight votes. I would think the Giants would vote yes, as they would get rid of some competition. People don’t really become fans of the remaining team, however. Giants and Dodgers fans didn’t flock to the Yankees, and I know a couple of Expos fans who are very invested in the Nationals. I could see the four southwest teams, (Dodgers, Angels, Padres, and Diamondbacks) voting no, as a team in Las Vegas might draw away some fans from those games.
There could also be some anti-gambling sentiment in a few owners, and they may be fearful of a scandal on the order of the 1919 White Sox. Baseball, and most major sports, have embraced the new, less restrictive gambling environment, so that issue is likely off the table.
In the end, the commissioner knows how to count votes. If he thought the owners would say no, he would not be calling for a vote. Unlike Captain Renault, I will be legitimately shocked if the owners turn down the move.
The mayor of Oakland met with Rob Manfred to try to keep the Athletics in Oakland. Here is the story from The Athletic, which contains links to the documents supplied to Manfred, and a summary from ESPN. One thing I was not aware of:
Baseball’s collective-bargaining agreement states the A’s needed to reach a binding agreement for a stadium by Jan. 15, 2024, or lose the money it would receive from revenue sharing for that year. Manfred called the potential loss of revenue sharing “a cosmic kind of alteration in their economic situation.” Both the A’s and league evidently believed Oakland did not have enough money available to build a new park.
TheAthletic.com
I don’t know about the money, but given the glacial pace at which Oakland has moved on this project, (three years for an environmental impact study on an industrial piece of land?) and given that there is still likely opposition to it, I would not have wanted to challenge that deadline.
Of course, getting up and leaving the negotiations often focuses the group left behind. The Giants were going to move to Tampa Bay until San Francisco capitulated. The city of Oakland already sweetened the deal. The A’s probably have a point in mind at which they say yes. We’ll see if Oakland can get there.
Also, the mayor needs to learn a little baseball history (emphasis added):
“In my mind, there’s a scenario where there’s no losers at all, there’s just winners all around, and it’s something we can look to and say we all worked together to actually achieve,” Thao told the Chronicle. “MLB has not moved a team in the last 50 years or so. It was important to me to fly to Seattle and show, look, we have a proposal, let’s take a deeper dive into this.”
ESPN.com
Except for moving the Expos about twenty years ago.
The approval for a new stadium for the Athletics in Las Vegas passed the Nevada legislature and is headed to the governor:
The deal still needs the governor’s signature, and MLB must approve the A’s move to Las Vegas, but both are anticipated.
The Assembly approved the final version of the bill with $380 million in taxpayer money on a 25-15 vote after making minor changes to the measure the Senate approved on a 13-8 vote Tuesday just hours before the Vegas Golden Knights won the Stanley Cup.
The Senate accepted the changes with no debate on a voice vote Wednesday night and sent it to the governor’s desk as an “emergency measure” adopted during the special legislative session that convened with Democratic majorities in both houses June 7. Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo had proposed the stadium spending plan.
ESPN.com
We will if Oakland makes a last ditch effort to save the team.
The Nevada Senate passed a bill to help fund a new stadium for the Athletics in Las Vegas. Of course, when you work with the government, they throw in a lot of kickbacks:
The amendments also make various changes to the community benefits package the A’s would agree to for the passage of the project.
Those include a $500,000 annual donation to community initiatives until the completion of the ballpark. The A’s would then donate $1.5 million annually, or 1% of ticket revenues, whichever is greater.
The benefits package also includes workforce diversity requirements for the construction of the ballpark, as well as among subcontractors, vendors and stadium employees.
The A’s would also be required to pay a “living wage” to employees of the stadium project, though the bill does not specify any amounts.
The amendments also establish community engagement requirements that mandate participation by A’s players in community and education programs, as well as provisions for the donations of tickets and a ballpark suite for charitable, community or economic development organizations and programs aimed at supporting youth baseball in underserved communities.
Further, the A’s would enter into partnerships with local colleges and universities to provide workforce development programs in the sports industry, as well as provide scholarship and internship programs.
LasVegasSun.com
The bill still needs to be approved by the Assembly, so it’s not a done deal.
Isn’t a tentative deal like semi-boneless chicken?
The Athletics announced the agreement of a stadium deal in Las Vegas:
Bally’s Corp. made the announcement Monday for a 30,000-seat stadium on the 35-acre site. The project is expected to cost about $1.5 billion, and the A’s are asking for nearly $400 million in public support from the Nevada Legislature, which could vote on a proposal this week.
Chron.com
I still believe there is a decent probability of this being a leverage for the Athletics to get what they want from Oakland, like what the Patriots did with Hartford, CT. We shall see what happens.
If the move happens, I wonder if they will finally change the franchise name. The third Washington franchise did not want to use Senators after two failures. Maybe it’s time to retire Athletics.
It looks like the Athletics will build the stadium in Nevada with their money, but a special sales tax status for the area will funnel sales tax money to development there:
The plan would be to pass a bill through the Legislature to create a funding mechanism, including a special taxation district covering the stadium site, which would allow for sales tax proceeds to be reinvested in the area, along with an allocation of transferable tax credits estimated to be worth around $500 million. Clark County would also have to sign off on a new taxing district.
Sources indicated that legislative leaders and the governor were briefed on the plans for the stadium and seemed generally supportive.
TheNevadaIndependent.com
Lawmakers claim they won’t raise taxes to pay for the stadium, but we shall see.
It appears the Oakland Athletics bought land in Las Vegas:
Major League Baseball’s (MLB) Oakland Athletics have signed a binding purchase agreement for land near the Las Vegas Strip, where the team plans to construct a Major League ballpark, according to reports from the Las Vegas Review-Journal and The Athletic, citing Athletics team president Dave Kaval.
“For a while, we were on parallel paths (with Oakland), but we have turned our attention to Las Vegas to get a deal here for the A’s and find a long-term home,” Kaval told the Review-Journal on Wednesday. “Oakland has been a great home for us for over 50 years, but we really need this 20-year saga completed and we feel there’s a path here in Southern Nevada to do that.”
MSN.com
It’s not surprising. The current stadium is a mess with sewer problems and animals living in broadcast booths. This move would make the Athletics the most peripatetic team of all time, as they would land in their fourth city.
Of course, this could all be a ploy to get what they want from Oakland. The New England Patriots were all set to move to Hartford, CT, until they got what they wanted from Foxborough, MA. Stay tuned.
Major League Baseball declined the plan of the Tampa Bay Rays to play in both Florida and Canada:
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred informed Sternberg on Tuesday that the group had rejected it, largely because the logistics were too complex and it was too risky to make long-term commitments to such a nuanced concept. MLB declined to publicly comment on its decision. Sternberg nonetheless believes partial seasons “are going to be the wave of the future in professional sports” and that MLB simply didn’t want to be the first league to take that step. Asked if he felt “betrayed” by his fellow owners, Sternberg said: “That’s a word. That’s a word.”
“This was something that we just completely pushed our chips in on here for the sister city,” said Sternberg, who has yet to seek permission from MLB to relocate. “It was a bold concept, but it was something that we thought would’ve been incredibly rewarding for baseball, for the players and for the fans in both areas. Again, those were our thoughts. Now going forward, we’re gonna regroup and see where things are, and we’ll consider a number of things, I’m sure, as time goes by.”
ESPN.com
With all the quirky rule changes baseball tries (like Robot umpires in AAA), one would think that the commissioner would be on board with this. I suspect the CBA negotiations might be part of this, as MLB probably is more concerned with a season in 2022 than returning a team to Montreal. While the name would be most appropriate in Montreal, I hope if the team moves some day they are called the XRays.
The Rays received permission to explore playing baseball in two cities, Tampa Bay and Montreal:
While the plan is in its nascent stages, the Rays have embraced the two-city solution as the most feasible to saving baseball in the Tampa Bay area after years of failed attempts to build a new stadium in the region, sources said.
Under the plan, the Rays would play early-season home games in the Tampa Bay area and the remainder of the year in Montreal, with both cities getting new stadiums, sources said. The number of home games each city would receive has not been determined, sources said.
Manfred referred to the idea of a two-city Rays team as a long-term project.ESPN.com
The ability to play games early in the season in Florida would preclude the need for a domed stadium, cutting the cost of a new building.
My first thought is that the team gets to play in two cities where no fans go to games. Playing outdoors in Florida when the weather is nice, then playing outdoors in Montreal when the weather is nice might work.
It also could be that people in Florida just don’t go to ball games. The Marlins thought a new stadium would make a difference, and it didn’t. The Rays might have thought that building a team that could compete with the Yankees and Red Sox would draw fans, but it didn’t. I suspect this is a way to move the team to Montreal.
Where this might work is that the cities would be in competition for the team. If Montreal out-draws Tampa Bay, then the team would likely shift more games north. If the Florida area drew more, the team might come back to Tampa Bay in September. This actually happened with the Homestead Grays of the Negro Leagues. They were based in or around Pittsburgh for most of the life of the team, but then started playing games in Washington, D.C. as well (a much easier commute than TB to Montreal). As Washington crowds supported them more, they moved more games to D.C.
It’s an out of the box idea, and I suspect it will be a long time before it’s realized. A more likely outcome would be a straight move to Montreal.
Cork Gaines believes the Montreal Exrays represent a bluff:
Major League Baseball has a playbook on how to con areas into financing new stadiums and so far the Rays are following it to the letter. But if this is a bluff it’s probably not going to work and the Rays will be no closer to moving into a new stadium here, or in Montreal.
Red Sox and Yankees fans would not mind a move of the Rays to Montreal, since it is only a drive away. Since it would likely be cheaper that trying to attend a Yankees or Red Sox home game, there would be lots of road trips to the Great White North, just as there are lots of road trips to Baltimore now.
There is some speculation that the Rays might move to Montreal. My guess is there are a couple of American cities that might be a better fit. Having been screwed once by MLB, I don’t know how Montreal would welcome a new team.
By the way, I still think the Washington team should have been called the Exposes. 🙂
The Athletics are not moving to San Jose. It’s fairly clear at this point that Bud Selig won’t force the Giants to give up their rights to San Jose. That leaves the A’s in Oakland, or moving to a new market. Maybe it’s time for San Antonio to make a bid similar to the offer they made the Marlins.
Via BBTF, Neil deMause wants the Athletics to move to New York:
Moreover, moving the A’s to New Jersey or Long Island or Brooklyn would solve another of baseball’s thorniest problems. The Yankees, by virtue of being in a media market vastly larger than anyone else’s, can bid up player salaries into the stratosphere with the assurance that it will get that money back with TV revenue. (The Mets should get the same benefit of the NYC media market, but have been held back by a factor that’s hard to legislate: incompetence.) It’s this reality that has created the Rube Goldberg devices of revenue sharing and luxury taxes. The Yankees don’t just have more money than anyone else: Because so many more fannies in the seats and eyeballs on flatscreens are at stake, players are worth more to the Yankees than anyone else.
Splitting the New York market among three teams instead of two would dilute that advantage and help make for a more level playing field league-wide.
The Mets and Yankees will not allow this, even though it’s a great idea. Why not move to Hartford, CT, instead? Connecticut is so starved for sports, they actually support women’s basketball. They would bring in fans from Fairfield County in southern CT and the Pioneer Valley in Massachusetts. They could run commuter rail trains to the ball park from Springfield and new Haven. Hartford was ready to build a park for the Patriots. This would be smaller and lower cost. Hartford was even a major league city briefly! Elephants are even native to CT, as P.T. Barnum housed his circus in the state.
Let’s go Hartford!
Update: A Hartford team would be 20 minutes from my house. :-). It would also become the favorite team of ESPN, which is just down the road in Bristol.
YonYonson sees the Athletics mascot wearing a San Jose jersey, and the prospects of a move hit him hard.
I love the civic pride that Oaklanders have. Yeah, it’s not San Francisco. It’s not San Jose. It’s not Los Angeles. They wouldn’t have it either way. They don’t want Oakland to be looked at as better or worse than other big cities in California. It’s the unique child of the Bay Area. Oakland is blue collar. San Jose is white collar. Moving from Oakland to San Jose feels a little like your favorite garage band getting that big record deal making them set for life, but knowing that they’ll be playing pop music and worrying about CD and iTunes sales from now on.
He also talks about going to a Dodgers/Giants game in San Francisco:
It wasn’t just a sellout, it felt like I was watching Game 7 of the World Series. Fans — these same fans we chide for drinking a $12 glass of Cabernet Sauvignon and playing with their iPhones during the game — were cheering with vigor, and not just for fights in the stands or because the scoreboard told them to.
It was beautiful.
It was heartbreaking. I haven’t experienced anything close to that in the Coliseum since 2006. I knew that I’d probably never see that in Oakland again.
Oakland will become the first team to play in four different cities.
It’s seems the city of Oakland can’t play money ball:
The state take-back of redevelopment money has forced the city to abandon plans for a waterfront ballpark — the linchpin of efforts to keep the A’s in Oakland.
“We are no longer advocating for Victory Court,” Gregory Hunter, head of the soon-to-be-dissolved Oakland Redevelopment Agency, said Monday during a meeting of the Alameda County supervisors.
The city can no longer afford Victory Court without redevelopment dollars, Hunter said.
That means the focus is solely on revamping the O.co Coliseum complex with retail, restaurants, hotels and new sports facilities for the Raiders and Warriors.
Unfortunately, the city may not have the money to do the environmental impact study on the Coliseum area, due to accounting shenanigans.
Hat tip, The Hardball Times.
Former Giants owner Peter Mcgowan notes that the Giants won’t give up San Jose to the Athletics, as loan agreements are tied to that area remaining under San Francisco control.
No other two-team market has territorial rights assigned. The A’s gave the Giants the rights to Santa Clara County in 1993, when the Giants had their own stadium vote on the ballot in San Jose. The Giants insist that when they financed AT&T Park, all agreements with lenders were based on the team’s current territorial rights, including corporate-rich Silicon Valley.
“Those long-term commitments wouldn’t be there without that,” Magowan said. “Investors would not have taken the risk if there was belief that our chief competitor could create a shiny new stadium right in the heart of our fan base.”
MLB or the Athletics could pay off the Giants. I suspect the Giants will hold out until the compensation is appropriate. Maybe that’s why Oakland is reducing payroll, to have enough to pay off San Francisco.
The Astros sale will come up at the next owners meeting:
Two people familiar with the negotiations say McLane, Crane and Major League Baseball have reached an understanding on how a possible shift of the franchise to the American League in 2013 would take place. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because MLB had made no announcements.
Last May, McLane and Crane announced a sale valued at $680 million, the second-highest purchase price in baseball history behind the $845 million purchase of the Chicago Cubs by the Ricketts family two years ago.
Progress toward approval slowed when MLB wanted Crane to accept a possible switch to the AL. The understanding on a switching the Astros out of the National League was part of a new negotiation that covered several points, one of the people said.
I suspect all those rumors about improper behavior by Crane were just that. MLB wants to shift the Astros the AL, and they held the sale hostage until they received that concession.
Craig says goodbye to the Florida Marlins:
Being a Florida Marlins fan has always been pretty weird. While others were cheering for their marque names that were long institutions on their clubs, we didn’t have that luxury. Being a Florida Marlins fan meant cheering for the name on the front of the jersey and not on the back. Because the name on back probably wasn’t going to be around very long. It took us a long time to learn that but we did, though sometimes to our dismay.
But when it all was said and done, we saw our guys win two World Series Championships.
The Pittsburgh Pirates lost Barry Bonds the same season Florida came into existence. Marlins fans fared much better.
You know, the team isn’t going away. The Angels changed their location designation three times and their physical location once. It’s a big deal that they’re getting a new stadium. It’s not a big deal that they are calling themselves Miami or changing their uniforms. Believe me, with that ugly M, fans of other teams will still know they are the Marlins.
The Marlins won a bet for me against John Dewan, author of the Fielding Bible. After the expansion draft, I was in Chicago visiting STATS, Inc. as I did a couple of times every winter. We were having lunch, and the subject of the expansion came up. I volunteered that the Marlins did a good job drafting, and I though they would not finish last in the NL East. John thought this was crazy, and demanded to know who I thought they could beat. I was thinking the Cubs and Mets, but the Mets came out of my mouth. John then went position by position through the Mets and Marlins lineup to show how wrong I was, then wanted to bet on the matter. I agreed to a bet a steak dinner.
The Mets were a dysfunctional team at the time, and while they looked better on paper, I thought the sum was much less that the parts. By the end of June it was pretty clear I was going to win my bet, but the Mets did gain some ground back by the end of the season. The steak at Morton’s was delicious.
The Sporting News reports the Astros sale is being held up by Bud Selig because he wants Jim Crane to agree to move the team to the American League:
Included in this series of dominos that must fall is Jim Crane, the potential owner of the Astros, who has opposed the idea of the team switching leagues.
I though Bud wanted Jim to buy the extended warranty and the undercoating. Also good to see the commissioner is not above blackmail.
An Expos (now Nationals) fan sends this article about a possible return of Major League Baseball to Montreal:
A small groundswell of support for baseball has been building in Montreal since last July, with the Hall of Fame induction of former Expo Andre Dawson, which attracted a busload of Montreal fans to Cooperstown, N.Y. Local hip-hop artist and fervent Expos fan Annakin Slayd’s 2010 Expos YouTube tribute, Remember, is approaching 100,000 views, and members of the 1994 Expos attracted a sellout crowd of more than 650 to the annual Montreal Sports Celebrity Breakfast in March.
According to the article, the Oakland Athletics would be the most likely team to move. Eastward moves are rare, but the Braves moved east to Atlanta after going west to Milwaukee, the Pilots moved east to Milwaukee after Bud Selig stole them from Seattle, and the St. Louis Browns moved east to Baltimore when every one else was moving west in the 1950s.
The Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society may disappear.
Like the last vestiges of a deep and memorable snow, those who played and rooted for Connie Mack’s A’s are gradually melting away. Soon, members of the historical society fear, the franchise which departed for Kansas City in 1954 after 53 years in Philadelphia and five world championships will be an increasingly obscure local memory, like Horn & Hardart’s, Woodside Park, or Frank’s Black Cherry Wishniak.
“And that would be a shame,” Ernie Montella, the society’s executive director, said Monday, “because the A’s were the most successful sports franchise ever in Philadelphia.”
Now, the grim demographic realities have financially stressed the society, which is down to about 700 mostly aging members. As a result, its 14,000-square-foot museum, library and gift shop on North York Road in Hatboro may soon close its doors.
Outside of the Brooklyn Dodgers, there doesn’t seem to be much nostalgia for other teams that moved from their original cities in the 1950s. Having lived in the Boston area for the last 30 years, you run into very few fans who miss the Braves. No one is clamoring to bring the Browns back to St. Louis, and NY Giants fans don’t seem to have the same pull as their Brooklyn counterparts.
Paul Francis Sullivan suggests the Athletics or Rays move to Montreal.
A baseball team would have a hard time finding a place where they can play a major league game that is just sitting there.
Or would they have a hard time?
What is the biggest American or Canadian city to NOT have a Major League team?
That would be Montreal!
And guess what they have?A BASEBALL STADIUM THAT IS JUST SITTING THERE!
OK, it’s not exactly Wrigley Field. It’s Stade Olympique… the Olympic Stadium from the 1976 Games.
Paul notes that moving from one ugly, empty stadium to another isn’t a step up, but if either team could catch on in the city, they may be more likely to get a new park.
I don’t think it will work. Most cities that lost a team wanted and got a new one fairly quickly. Washington, New York, Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Seattle all gained new teams in expansion years within a few seasons of the original team leaving (Washington, in fact, did not miss a season between the departure of the Senators for Minnesota and the new Senators moving in). Montreal doesn’t seem to want a team. They got shafted by MLB, and they don’t seem to be interested in forgiving baseball over that.
The Nationals Enquirer remembers Bob Short, the man who moved the franchise from Washington to Texas.
Maury Brown discusses why television rights doom any team moving to San Antonio in the near future. This is one thing people tend to miss about the Rays. They may not have the best attendance, but they do have a very good TV audience. I noticed this a few years ago when they kept missing the first pitch of an inning. They missed it because they were cramming in advertising, which means they were getting a lot of buys. You don’t miss first pitch for a network promo. If the Rays could land a Rangers like TV deal, attendance at games would matter less.
Update: The Rays received a higher rating for game five than the Rangers in their home markets, but the Rangers reached more homes due to a bigger market.
MLB is talking to Las Vegas about an American League franchise. My first guess is this is blackmail to get either Tampa Bay or Oakland a new stadium, just like talk of moving the Giants to Tampa Bay served to get that team out of Candlestick Park. Moving the A’s to Vegas would cause the least pain, since there would be no changes to the divisions. Moving the Rays west would force Texas into the AL Central, and Cleveland or Detroit into the AL East. I suspect the two latter teams would greatly resist that move.