Oakland A’s exec [SPOILER] revealed as new Big Bad

access_time personNeil deMause

Ever since Oakland A’s owner John Fisher brought over San Jose Earthquakes president Dave Kaval to run his stadium campaign in 2017, it’s been Kaval’s job to walk a careful tightrope between “We love Oakland, and want to stay here forever…” and “…unless we don’t get what we want, in which case later, chumps!” This takes a cool temperament and a steady social media finger, which means not tweeting stuff like this:

For those who can’t read Twitter rage code or who just aren’t hockey fans: That’s an image from Monday night’s Vegas Golden Knights first-round playoff game, with a packed house thanks to their arena having gone to about two-thirds capacity. The Golden Knights are not the Bay Area’s local team, needless to say, and Kaval has no connection with them other than to be in the midst of playing footsie with Vegas about a potential A’s relocation threat, so the reaction was swift and rageful:

https://twitter.com/TDunlop07/status/1397029661817835527

https://twitter.com/matthew_peirson/status/1397091056429113344

USA Today, meanwhile, called it “a tweet so calculated it serves to undermine the credibility of five years worth of 💯 emojis,” which I’m pretty sure violates AP Stylebook standards.

Why this tweet is terrible but outright threatening to “explore other markets” is just good hard-nosed business is above my #shaming pay grade, but suffice to say that Kaval appears to have put his foot in it here. The uproar even overshadowed Kaval’s pronouncement that he’s not actually planning any visits to other cities except for Las Vegas, though you can certainly read an implicit “yet” into that statement if you like. It’s presumably not the kind of reaction he wanted when he pulled out his phone at the hockey game … unless, maybe being Bad Cop is Kaval’s new role? These midseason plot twists always throw me — maybe somebody could check what it says in the original comic-book source material?

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21 comments on “Oakland A’s exec [SPOILER] revealed as new Big Bad”

  1. Let’s be honest Kaval does not care what Braden or anyone else ( except those who can get the A’s a new Stadium ( be it @ Howard Terminal, Las Vegas or anywhere else ( Coliseum excluded)).

    1. Very true but there’s an art to this grift, and this tweet seemed clunky and ill-thought. For a franchise that’s been playing the loooooong game as far as replacing their stadium (remember when Fisher and Wolff were the “new owners” who were going to get a new stadium done? That was 15 years ago.) now they’re zooming through all of the standard steps in record time. It’s weird. So yeah, the results will ultimately determine whether this was a successful strategy but at the moment it feels like Kaval is setting bridges on fire before he’s even crossed them.

      1. I have “No dog in this hunt” but I do think there is a lot of frustration on behalf of the A’s. The last time they had a new Stadium built for them is 1914 in Philadelphia. I do not think $800m plus of infrastructure money is realistic or fair, but I also do not think Coliseum or bust is realistic or fair either. If the City does not care enough to pay a reasonable amount towards Howard’s Terminal ( again nothing close to $800m), then let’s end the “Dog and Pony Show” and let tge A’s have a first class facility instead of Hand me downs.

        1. “The last time they had a new Stadium built for them is 1914 in Philadelphia.”

          Municipal Stadium in K.C. was demolished and rebuilt for the A’s in 1955, and the Oakland Coliseum was built new for the A’s and Raiders in 1966.

          1. Definitely built new for the Raiders with an eye towards a baseball team, but Charlie Finley didn’t commit to moving the A’s to Oakland until well after the Coliseum opened. (October 1967.)

        2. There’s absolutely nothing about the coliseum location that’s unrealistic or unfair. In fact, unless one of these other cities wants to cough up hundreds of millions of dollars (which is not an impossibility but is probably less likely right now than it’s been in years past) like Arlington or Cobb County did, I’d say the coliseum site is still by far the most likely location of a new A’s stadium if the Howard Terminal scheme doesn’t get approved.

          1. If the City of Oakland believes that the Coliseum is the best option, and sticks to it, then consider the A’s gone. Do not believe me? Ask the Raiders and Warriors. One big problem with properties like sports franchises is they are scarce. Someone will always overpay. Here is another example:look at MGM, they were appraised at $5.5b and got Amazon to pay over $3b more. Why? Not a lot of movie studios out there. Same
            Principle
            applies. If Oakland will not pony up, someone else will:

          2. When there were 3 teams with competing interests I. The site, and even when that went down to 2, that is a fundamentally different situation in terms of development viability.

        3. Didn’t Shibe park open in 1909?

          And didn’t Mack and his partners pay for it themselves? I know they bought the land themselves… and I know I read somewhere that they paid for the facility themselves (and also rented to the Phillies, iirc?).

          Anyway, it’s probably not the best example of a city gifting taxpayer dollars to the already wealthy.

  2. The only thing he genuinely revealed here is that he is too cheap to pay for anything other than behind the net seats… You just know he’s billing somebody else for the plane tickets too.

    Piker.

      1. Not defending Kaval one bit, but it does look like he’s situated in a mid-level luxury suite; based on the video.

        1. No worries. If I’m playing you, I’d expect a luxury box seat as well.

          The advert in the East Bay Times, “ Mom for sale,” that’s Dave. Still a grifter.

  3. What a clown. The Aviators, the A’s own AAA team, was playing a home game against the Salt Lake Bees that same night in a brand new stadium built with a lot of public funding and he couldn’t be bothered to go to that.

    1. He probably figured he’s already shaken out as much cash for that project as he can so no point.

      ABC. (You’ve seen Glengarry Glen Ross I’m sure….)

  4. “If the City of Oakland believes that the Coliseum is the best option, and sticks to it, then consider the A’s gone. Do not believe me? Ask the Raiders and Warriors. One big problem with properties like sports franchises is they are scarce. Someone will always overpay. Here is another example:look at MGM, they were appraised at $5.5b and got Amazon to pay over $3b more. Why? Not a lot of movie studios out there. Same
    Principle
    applies. If Oakland will not pony up, someone else will:”

    Who? Yes, if, *if* someone out there wants to kick in a half a billion or so then the A’s will go where the money is, but who right now has indicated they’re willing to do that? For years Clark County and the state of Nevada were open to it but right now they’ve committed $750 million to the Raiders and have a hockey team, they aren’t spending public money on this. Maybe the actual city of LV will to get a team in city limits but I doubt it and besides, reports are that the A’s “want” something on the strip which would make the county and state the only governmental sources (there’s an old saying: want in one hand, s**t in the other and see what fills up first). There’s also a chance Henderson would have money since they offered it to the D-backs a few years ago, but again they just spent money on the Knights training and minor league facility, and there’s a question at this point of how much would be worth it to oversaturate the market. As far as other cities, if Portland, Nashville, Vancouver, whoever were willing to spend $500 million+ on a baseball stadium, they’d probably have teams by now. San Antonio was willing to give the Marlins money but that was 15 years ago at this point and they haven’t been mentioned even as part of the A’s quickly arranged extortion tour.

    1. Looks like the mayor of Vegas is going for Cashman field site. I wonder if the A’s would be just seeking development right and tax district there to pay for it. Because it looks like it will be part of a larger development.

  5. I see a lot of haters hating. I see no regret from Kaval. I see no backlash from anyone who is not already politically aligned with the stadium haters. How is this a “terrible” tweet, exactly? Looks more like mission accomplished, to me.

    1. Why would Kaval regret any of this? This is literally the job he was hired to do: get a stadium built with as much public money as possible in any way possible.

    2. Mission accomplished? Help me to understand. What was the mission? What was accomplished? Is tweeting an accomplishment? Is grifting a luxury box seat at a NHL Las Vegas Golden Knights playoff game an accomplishment? So many questions (Note to self: Posted comment on FoS. PO’ed as many people as possible. Mission accomplished).

  6. See our good friend Ray Ratto on that VERY SUBJECT at an equally fine sports based site!

    https://defector.com/the-oakland-athletics-take-trolling-back-twenty-years/

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