Whenever Oakland A moves to Vegas – anything else that feel better “When” is oppused “if“- it will be the same story as the Montreal Expos, the last team to move. By the time it happens, owners and commissioners will tell you it’s a tainted market where no team can thrive. But the truth is that it has been done that way by a few, including owners and trustees, who have salted their own Earth as it is.
Oh sure, still hope at Howard Terminal. There was a small hurdle that was cleared last week. There’s another vote on the way. But even that would be an A’ there’s no guarantee, and it looks like owner John Fisher has his eye on whatever Vegas is about to throw at him that he won’t have to pay for. Oakland can and should do just that. Vegas has produced a football stadium by going around the public. What is the second largest mansion?
Yesterday, another chapter in the book “How Many People Killed Oakland A’s?” written in San Francisco Chronicles, as John Shea documented how Joe Lacob, the current owner of the Golden State Warriors, was one phone call away from buying an A in 2005. Why didn’t he get the team? Bud Selig wanted the team to come with his college buddy Lew Wolff, along with Fisher. Never forget that most of the evil in the world today is sprouting in a friend’s house somewhere. And for all of you kids out there, never feel the need to pay your friends and join the same group.
Did Bud know then what the owners Wolff and later Fisher alone would be like? It was not something he could have ever considered. He knows Wolff, and he probably knows he won’t do much to make the other owners look bad, or swim upstream as Selig tries to follow all the rules that are crippling the game. play that benefits only the owners. The fortunes of the actual team and their fans with it are almost never weighed.
We don’t know the letter A – currently in last place in West AL, huge 28 games back – will look like when Lacob runs them, though it’s hard to tell how much worse things could have been. They don’t have to be Warriors, their sporting dynasty. Baseball and its economics are different. And Lacob didn’t have to pause much in moving the Dubs out of their spiritual home in Oakland. Moving house A to San Francisco is clearly not an option.
But first Steve Schott, then Wolff and now Fisher did whatever it took to wipe out one of the most ferocious fan bases in MLB. You can just watch the stars you’re attached to being transferred year after year as they want to make ends meet before you stop sticking, that’s where most of A’s fans go now. You can only view your team do a lot to compete before you know that there is a very hard glass ceiling placed on you and their ambitions. It was part of the system that both Selig and now Rob Manfred has built, where there is little incentive to create a winning and expensive team. But the fact that Selig had a hand in making the letter A into this would only rank anything remaining fans even more, and all for the sake of keeping a team in the club secret.
Somewhere, at some point, Selig loved baseball, and he probably still does. But it’s not enough to undo all the work he’s done to ensure fewer and fewer people do it. Apparently Fisher doesn’t, nor does he care about A’s fans, to the extent that he doesn’t really care if they show up or not. He doesn’t have to. It was a real estate transaction for him, as it is now for most other owners.
Baseball will sometimes wonder why it’s not more popular or unable to attract new fans. Call coming from inside, fam.
