The San Jose Mercury News has a long interview with former San Francisco Giants exec (and before that press secretary to the mayor of San Francisco; funny how that revolving door works) Corey Busch about whether the Oakland A’s will actually move out of the Bay Area, and frankly that part is less newsworthy, because how would Busch know, really? But it does venture into some history from Busch’s time with the Giants, and there’s where it starts to get interesting:
In 1992, Lurie and the rest of ownership came to an agreement to sell the team for $115 million to a group from the Tampa area. The Giants would move to Florida for the 1993 season, and Bay Area fans were slapped with a reality check.
“What we were trying to do was let people in the Bay Area know that people need to step up and buy the team,” Busch said. “And that’s exactly what happened.”
Safeway magnate Peter Magowan swooped in and bought the team, which eventually led to a waterfront ballpark “with Lurie’s fingerprints all over it.”
Even if the Tampa agreement sped up the offer from Magowan, Busch regrets the message it sent.
“It was a mistake to threaten to leave,” Busch says now. “That was something we learned. We didn’t see it at the time as making a threat. We thought we were just letting the market know, ‘Look, we can’t stay at Candlestick forever.’ And if something doesn’t happen, the team is going to leave.”
Was Lurie actually going to send the Giants to Tampa?
“No,” Busch said. “No one was willing to come forward to buy the Giants until it looked like they might leave. I never thought the Giants were going to leave the Bay Area.”
That’s not exactly saying that Lurie’s move threat was a hoax, along the lines of other leverage plays in the past; Busch could just be saying that he never thought the Giants would leave because he figured a local buyer would step up, and knew Lurie preferred that. Still, this is pretty remarkable: Though the Giants-to-Florida gambit was portrayed at the time as Lurie being blocked from moving to Tampa Bay by the other owners and instead settling for selling to a local owner who would build a stadium mostly with his own money, it turns out to have been more of a leverage move, where Lurie knew that MLB would prefer to keep the team in San Francisco, and knew that if he played footsie with Florida the league would help find him a local buyer to make it happen.
Of course, Busch could always be trying to make Lurie (and himself) look good in retrospect, just as Mario Lemieux could have been fibbing about his trips to Kansas City really being just to have lunch and shake loose arena money in Pittsburgh. I guess being an extortionist looks better than being a carpetbagger? I’ll have to check the Big Book of Capitalist Morals.
A’s stadium czar Dave Kaval, meanwhile, is still out on the hustings, doubling down on his now-infamous Vegas tweet by telling a radio show host on Friday that “we’re on parallel paths here,” seeking a waterfront ballpark in Oakland while “we’ve also been directed by the league to explore other markets, specifically Southern Nevada and Las Vegas.” Perhaps the league also bought Kaval those Vegas Golden Knights playoff tickets? Being able to claim to be doing the bidding of extortioners is definitely a preferred look; for both Lurie and Kaval, it sure has come in handy to have a Bigger Bad around to pull the strings, or pretend to, when you as owner can’t or don’t want to.
Back to Busch, he also thinks that the A’s should reconsider the Oakland Coliseum site, calling the idea that it won’t work “silly” and “nonsense” and saying it’s “inevitable” that the team will end up in a new stadium there. This is definitely a common take, since the Coliseum site wouldn’t require $855 million in infrastructure work to make it accessible by both roads and public transit, but Kaval & Co. keep rejecting it. Whether that’s their legitimate conviction or just yet another leverage move is impossible to say — but if there’s one important takeaway from Busch’s interview, it’s that sports team owners will lie to your face and happily admit later that it was all just standard business practice.
Its possible that this plays out like the Twins ballpark search in the late 90’s. The owner at the time was exclusively negotiating with the Triad region in NC, that fell apart. Then went to Charlotte, that fell through. Then came back to Minny cap in hand. If the vote fail in July, I do envision the A’s exclusively negotiating with Vegas. It seems like the Pols there want the A’s to move to the Cashman field area. The A’s want the strip. This is where I think Oakland could come back in the fold. I get a vibe from reading these articles that the Portland Diamond Group probably doesn’t want to deal with Fisher
While the coliseum site makes the most sense it is not as flashy and they can’t make as many claims of economic development. All new ballparks want to be downtown within walking distance of bars restaurants, apartments, hotels and the like. The As want what most others have in their downtown ballparks. Look at how the Phillies and fans now wish that their new place would have been built downtown, not in the middle of parking lots. This could be a big reason why they don’t see it as viable.
A’s could build their own flashy “Ball Park Village” on the Coliseum site and control the revenue.
Eh, I suspect they have more lucrative plans in mind for the coliseum site than building a ballpark.
“Lucrative” and crime-ridden East Oakland (homicides unfortunately through the roof!) just don’t match up.
Actually if you sort the crime map for “weapons” and “homicide,” there’s about the same amount in downtown near Howard Terminal as there is in East Oakland:
https://www.crimemapping.com/map/agency/265
Hence my feeling NdM that the A’s really want to get out of Dodge entirely.
Again: If Fisher wanted out of the East Bay, he’s certainly biding his time about it.
East Oakland is actually one of the hottest real estate markets in the Bay Area right now.
East Oakland? I’m sure you must mean East Alameda.
@LA Steve,
No it’s not. (not sure if you were being sarcastic with that comment)
It very much is, though maybe not as far east as the Coliseum:
https://www.sfchronicle.com/realestate/article/What-s-it-like-to-live-in-the-hottest-real-16155429.php
I look at Citi Field and wonder why Oakland can’t do the same thing. Similar to Oakland, they took an existing site, (parking lot), and built arguably one of the nicer ballparks. When the Mets are good, they sell tickets. Who would have thought fielding a good team would sell tickets. There is tons of parking and plenty of mass transit to and from the ballpark. From what I understand, Oakland has a transit setup already at the Coliseum site.
I am not familiar with the Coliseum site, but I believe just like Flushing Queens, there is room available for all that ballpark development owners like. In the Mets case, there was no need to put the stadium downtown as they claim is needed today for Oakland and Tampa. Build something with an open outfield in Oakland where you can get those beautiful views that were there before Mount Davis.
Phil
Your comparison of the Coliseum site and Willets Point/Flushing is fairly accurate.
Both have acres of parking lots for development (Oakland, more so), easy highway and transit access, and both are extremely close to airports.
As Mets fans from Long Island and points east have fairly easy access to Citi Field, the Coliseum site is far more convenient to most East Bay A’s fans than the proposed Terminal site.
We keep hearing about this supposed need to be downtown, for the “restaurants, bars, etc.” Then you read about Yankee Stadium and how little fan money gets outside the stadium. Is it the most fan-friendly neighborhood around…probably not, but if 81 games a year doesn’t turn demand in New York, why would it in Philadelphia or anywhere else.
The fact is that for a large stadium (40k plus) in the Philadelphia area, the S. Broad Street site is far more convenient for most fans going to a baseball game. Two highways, public transport…no other spot replaces that. Putting that stadium in downtown Philadelphia would just cause 81 days of hassle–which is exactly what the merchants there said when this idea came up before.
I live in San Francisco, and it sure seemed like the sale to Florida’s group was legit. There were a lot of stories about Lurie being mad MLB forced him to accept the SF offer, which was millions less than the Tampa offer.
Based on the lawsuits later, Naimoli and the Tampa group weren’t in on this charade Busch is describing. Basically, I don’t believe him. Retcons work better in comic books.