The Oakland A’s stadium talks continue to be becalmed in the doldrums, as everyone waits for Alameda County to decide whether to vote on chipping in tax money for the Howard Terminal project, and Oakland scrounges around for more money to pay the rest of the $855 million that A’s owner John Fisher wants for “infrastructure.” But Fisher and team president Dave Kaval still want to keep people talking about the A’s stadium plans, and sports reporters need something to write about other than the team falling behind in the A.L. wild card race, so we get articles like this:
Report: Athletics waiting until after World Series to make decision on Las Vegas
Follow the link, and you get another link to a brief article at Casino.org — though not too brief to pause to give the Vegas betting line on the World Series — which cites (but doesn’t quote) Kaval as saying that “the list of candidate cities will be narrowed down following the Fall Classic.” If that comes as a surprise to you who recall that MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in July that he hasn’t yet “turned the A’s loose” to explore cities other than Las Vegas, you clearly don’t understand sports-owner quantum physics, where a city can be a candidate and a non-candidate at the same time.
Maybe Casino.org’s crack sports reporters were confused by Kaval’s statement last week that the team would narrow its list of proposed Las Vegas sites to “three or four” sometime “around the end of the baseball season”? Kaval said Fisher is considering building a “mixed-use development” around a Vegas stadium if one is built away from the Strip; Ballpark Digest reported this as “funding its own” mixed-use development, but Kaval doesn’t seem to have promised he wouldn’t seek public money for that. In fact, he said, in the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s paraphrase, that A’s execs are “focused on getting the site list down to the final few and then will turn their attention to addressing partnership possibilities,” which is a little bit like deciding what neighborhood you want to live in and only then looking at housing prices, but if your goal is to first order the meal and then drop the check in the middle of the table and see who’ll reach for it, it makes a kind of evil sense.
And you know, as much as I love to drag news outlets for carrying water for sports team owners, I do have a smidge of sympathy for all the reporters who are reading every tea leaf dropped by Kaval and writing it up as a story, even if there’s nothing new to report. People want to read about whether the A’s are moving, or getting a new stadium! There are news holes to be filled! Researching what Alameda County officials are thinking or whether the state is really going to chip in infrastructure money takes work, and time, and there’s lots of other stuff to do today, let’s just write about whatever Kaval said most recently, or whatever some other site misquoted Kaval as saying! I’ve probably already spent more time researching and writing up this post than some of these reporters had to write their stories, and I sure haven’t had any time to dig into the questions I just raised above. Journalism is tough!
Thank you for clicking, and tune in again next week for more A’s stadium non-news, you know you want it. Also please enjoy this.
Neil,
I thought the A’s were going to move after the July meeting. Why?
1. There was radio silence on HT for almost 2 years
2. Vegas is the only market that seems like they would entertain subsidy
3. Goodman said they were talking for 2 years]
4. Manfred seems keen on this market for whatever reason.
The truth Kaval has dug a hole so deep from a negotiating perspective I don’t think he will get out. If I am on the Alameda board I push the envelope on concessions. If I am in Vegas I tell them there is no parellel path you need to cut it off with the “ex”
The threat really does have to be credible. For the love of God, someone please correct me if I am wrong, but I would never approach a negotiation they way Kaval and Fisher have
“The threat really does have to be credible.”
Need I remind you of the time the Yankees got a new stadium in part by hinting they would move to Charlotte?
Or in 2001 when the New Orleans Saints threatened to move to Mississippi if they did not get renovations to the Superdome?
NdM,
Don’t think you can compare NYC to Oakland. $$$>0
a20,
If you think the Vegas threat is credible, that’s your call. My point was that a threat doesn’t have to be credible to be effective.
a20: I like it! It’s not so much the Vegas threat being credible, it’s rather if the City of Oakland can finally get their $h*t together; after 25 years and loosing two other franchises, I say NO. And BTW, The city just decided to sell its half of the Coliseum site to the African American Sport Group, not the A’s. We’ll see how well that goes over with Fisher/Kaval.
Yup! Can definitely see the need to bag on Oakland.
Maybe if the California’s 3rd largest city (and one of the wealthiest) would get its shit together, maybe MLB would be there now.
Instead it’s stuck with NHL, MLS (a 14th rate world Futbol league based upon their quality of play https://www.globalfootballrankings.com/ ), AHL, MiLB Low-A franchises.
Quakes left for Houston in 2005 because they played San Jose State’s crappy football (Spartan) stadium (don’t even want waste energy on how successful SJSU is in the Mountain West Conference).
San Jose Giants play in a crappy ballpark built in 1942, that had to take on the corporate name “Excite,” to draw fans in (pretty pathetic when the other Quakes, Rancho Cucamonga, outdraw Giants year in and year out. And they’re in the same market as the Angels and the Dodgers).
As for the Sharks, after 30 years, I don’t see a Stanley Cup in their display case.
San Jose, California is the very model for successful professional sports franchises. Just sayin.
“Don’t think you can compare NYC to Oakland. $$$>0”
1977 says hello.
The Charlotte Yankees? Now that is a true oxymoron.
I live in Henderson NV, & imo, MLB simply will not work here. First off, a dome would be mandatory, & baseball sucks indoors. Idk why the Raiders went with a dome- its already starting to cool off here.
I knew the NFL who work, simply bc fans would fly in for a nice debauched weekend capped off by going to the game.
Since the weather is cooling down out there, the one other positive I could see with Allegiant Stadium is that it might help strengthen the Raiders’ homefield advantage, since crowd noise is louder indoors. Opposing QBs could have even more trouble with snaps and get false start penalties.
Comedian fodder. “CharlotteYankees.”