Oakland Athletics owner John Fisher once again proved how much of a coward he really is.
Late last night when many fans of the Athletics were asleep the organization made an announcement about their future plans for building a stadium. Here is what it said. “The A’s have signed a binding agreement to purchase land for a future ballpark in Las Vegas. We realize that this is a difficult day for our Oakland fans and community.
For more than 20 years, the A’s have focused on a new home for the Club, and have invested unprecedented time and resources for the past six years to build a ballpark in Oakland. Even with the support from fans, leaders of the city, county, and state level, and throughout the broader community, the process to build a new ballpark in Oakland has made little forward progress for some time. We made a strong and sincere effort to stay here.
We recognize that this is very hard to hear. We are disappointed that we have been unable to achieve our shared vision of a waterfront ballpark. As we shift our focus to Vegas, we will continue to share details about next steps.”
The mayor of Oakland Sheng Thao responded by saying “it has become clear, that were are not able to reach acceptable terms, and that the A’s have not been engaged in good partners in these efforts. At every opportunity the A’s have made increasing demands on Oakland, and at every opportunity we have risen to the challenge and overcome the hurdles placed before us. Instead of working with us, they have announced a land deal in another city. And I want to be very clear, this announcement happened mid-negotiatons, and it shows they had no interest in reaching a deal with Oakland at all. Oakland is not interested, in being used as leverage in the A’s negotations with Las Vegas and it is disrespectful to our residences and our fans to string this city along this way. We will not continue discussions under these circumstances and will instead work for a development deal that actually creates opportunties for Oaklanders and includes partners that are committed to the success of our city, our communities, or residences, and our businesses.”
For many A’s fans it was a matter of time before the announcement of Las Vegas was going to happen. Even with the announcement of Howard Terminal many showed little hope that it was going to ever happen and of course they were right. I was in the minority and hoped that it was going to happen. Anyone associated with baseball knows where the Athletics belong, which is in Oakland.
Las Vegas does not deserve any of the history of the Athletics organization. Reportedly team president Dave Kaval has said “the Las Vegas A’s has a nice ring to it.” No, it absolutely does not.
As for the simple solution, it is easy. Fisher needs to sell the team and then bid to become the owner of an expansion team in Las Vegas.
We all know that Fisher never wanted to keep the A’s in Oakland. That was a given, apparently there is more information that is going to come out in the coming days about what happened in the negotiations between the Athletics organization and city of Oakland. For most fans it is likely going to become vomit inducing or most likely even more angry.
Yet what really makes it worse is that Major League Baseball (MLB) does not care about the fans of Oakland. I have seen so much blame for what is happening due to fans not coming out to the Oakland Coliseum and every year this argument gets refuted.
A’s fans were unwilling to support an owner who continously cried poor, took hand outs from MLB when revenue sharing was in place, and when the franchise would develop, sign, or acquire fan favorites, it did not take long to find said player traded for prospects who never panned out.
See the Josh Donaldson trade to the Toronto Blue Jays for a perfect example. Still A’s fans got to hear the excitement about the likes of Franklin Barreto and then find to come out their ability to play defense was suspect. So, they were hardly ever given an opportunity.
This year though it is worse, the A’s team right now is hardly competitive with few bright spots in the lineup. Esteury Ruiz is one of them and recently called up Mason Miller is the other. Even with that being said a small group of loyal fans continued to attend games, and there was even talks about on June 13th of a reverse boycott which was to show that A’s fans have no problems with attending games in Oakland and sending a message to Fisher and MLb the only reason they chose to stay away is because of Fisher.
As for me the only hope that I have now is that there is someone or a group of investors willing to make an offer to Fisher to buy the A’s that he cannot refuse. The Athletics also deserve much of the blame for leaving cause they never seemed like they wanted to stay yet the city of Oakland is not innocent and it is quite despicable that the two sides could not come to an agreement.