Congratulations are in order for Major League Baseball. It was finally able to do what John Fisher, Dave Kaval, Rob Manfred, and the San Francisco Giants have always wanted. Get the Oakland Athletics out of the Bay Area.
Yesterday morning there was an announcement made with Fisher and Kaval that there is an agreement to play at Sutter Health Park in Sacramento, California for the next three seasons and possibly a fourth. Also, the team will still go by the Athletics with no city associated with it.
According to Casey Pratt the Athletics will also not have to pay rent and got no expansion assurances. Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadive played a pivotal role as well, which shows what a hypocrite he is. The Kings were in danger of being moved out of the city before he bought the team.
Now Ranadive is being complicit in helping move a MLB team to a city outside the state. All in hopes that he can show that Sacramento deserves an expansion team which of course will never happen as the Giants have the territory rights.
When Kaval was interviewed about Sacramento though he indicated that the Giants played a role in helping get the agreement done.
Which is interesting since it is the Athletics that are responsible for helping keep the Giants in San Francisco after a threat to move to Tampa Bay, Florida. It also obviously shows the disdain that Kaval has for the city of Oakland. Willing to work with the organization that would have been moved if it were not for the A’s.
Still on social media there are the same tired old arguments. One is that Oakland did not do enough to keep the A’s in Oakland. The city came through with $1 billion to build at Howard Terminal, it was Fisher and Kaval walked away from that for $380 million from taxpayers in Nevada to build a ballpark in Las Vegas. Yet there is no guarantee that money will become available as Schools over Stadiums has filed a lawsuit against the state of Nevada to put a referendum on the ballot.
If this happens, it is more than likely Fisher and Kaval will not see that $380 million. One only has to look at what happened to the Kansas City Chiefs and Kansas City Royals in trying to get a sales tax to pay for renovations of Arrowhead and a new ballpark. It was soundly rejected by voters.
Then there is the disaster when it comes to the ballpark renderings in Vegas and the site that was chosen is obviously too small.
For me the best one that always comes up, is about the fans not attending games at The Coliseum. Yet when compared to the Giants, the A’s attendance prior to Oracle Park being built was significantly better.
Since the A’s arrived in 1968 Oakland had three times the amount of 2 million or more fans in attendance seasons than the Giants. Obviously those numbers changed once the new ballpark for San Francisco opened in 2000.
Interestingly since 2001 the A’s have had a higher percentage of 2 million or more fans in attendance seasons than they did from 1968-2000. Of course after 2024, it is not possible for Oakland to add to that percentage and there is one guarantee, the 2 million in attendance is not going to happen this season.
Now why did the A’s have trouble attendance wise in-between those years? A’s ownership groups have been less than stellar. Even worse though is that the A’s had a legitimate shot of being bought by an owner willing to spend, yet former commissioner Bud Selig allowed his frat brother Lew Wolff and his group to buy the team instead.
Wolff eventually sold his stake in the team to Fisher and the same path was continued. Field a surprisingly competitive team, win games, make the playoffs, lose in the Wild Card game a couple of seasons, trade away their best players for prospects, hope said prospects pan out or get traded for another prospect or two.
The pandemic made it easier for A’s fans not to attend games and to show their outrage over the last tear down. Which saw Matt Olson, Sean Murphy, Chris Bassitt, Sean Manaea, Jesus Luzardo traded and Marcus Semien and Liam Hendriks signing elsewhere.
At this point there are no words to make any of this better for A’s fans or legitimate fans of baseball who understand what is going on in Oakland. Manfred and Major League Baseball are to blame and have enabled Fisher and Kaval for far too long and eventually it will backfire.