Oakland A's headed to Las Vegas

The difference here is that Manfred has tipped the scales toward Vegas. This is something he wants.

MLB never wants to admit that the Florida teams were disasters, so they will never let one of then relocate unless it gets really bad with the Rays.

The Montreal/Tampa split proposal isn't the stupidest thing ever. Have them play in Tampa until May 15, play day games for the next few weeks after that and then you probably can avoid putting up a retractable roof.

 

I remember Samson dividing a sheet of paper into four boxes of win/draw, lose/draw, win/don't draw and lose/don't draw. He said the Marlins had been all four and that with a new ballpark, they needed to be win/draw or it wouldn't work. And if there's any club in MLB who knows how to tear down a team and put a non-garbage one back together again it's the Marlins.

 

Nah, that Montreal/Tampa idea was dumb. For one thing, why would fans want to root for a team when they’re not there all the time. For another, why would players want to play for a team that’s going to uproot them every two months or so.

And it would screw up the schedule because some visiting teams might get an advantage by having shorter trips.

 

I remember reading Roger Kahn’s book about the year that he owned the minor league team in Utica. He recalled talking to Bill Veeck, who told him something similar to what Samson said.

Veeck said the goal was to have a winning team that was also entertaining. Secondly was a winning team that wasn’t entertaining. Third was a losing team that was entertaining and fourth was a losing team that wasn’t entertaining. Veeck said he would never have the fourth option and thought that many people believed he was fine with the third option, when he wasn’t.

 

It might not have been the stupidest thing ever, but it was in the ballpark.

 

it's the kiss of death in sports - a boring team/team of boring or unlikable personalities that sucks.

 

The scout who told off Beane is Kenny Medlock, a high school baseball star from Venice (got hurt in the minors). He is in just about every baseball-related movie of that era. When I was talking with him one time, he asked if I saw the film editing flaw in ... might have been "Brewster's Millions." He said in the same scene, he singled to center and threw himself out at home.

The scouts in round table discussion near the beginning of the movie were all SoCal locals, not actors. The one doing the math is Art Harris, longtime coach at Venice High and West L.A. College and part-time Dodgers scout.

 

Nevada/Las Vegas have shown they want to be perceived as big league and will do what it takes by already financing a stadium and an arena for the NFL and the NHL owners. I expect the A's will make it a perfect 3-for-3. It will do more in six months than Oakland did in 10 years.

 

Trying to explain the forever rivalry between West Bay and East Bay is difficult if you haven't experienced it first-hand.

Will A's fans gradually trend toward the Giants? Maybe, because those fan bases were split more because of geography than demographics. The Giants always had a head start because they got there first and had those Mays/Marichal/McCovey teams. The affluent Contra Costa/Alameda fans can still afford games at Oracle but will they care?

However, there was always a stereotypical Raiders fan compared to his Niner counterpart. It didn't matter if they both worked in the same office building, drove the same luxury car model or lived on the same block. The Raiders were the blue-collar, beer-drinking, mud blood and guts AFL team with the Mad Bomber, the Stork, Al Davis and Commitment to Excellence. Put on makeup, leather and yell your lungs out for three hours, then tailgate until dark.

Niners fans were considered more likely to sip chardonnay while wearing sweater vests and Dockers at Kezar or Candlestick and clap politely when Brodie, Montana or Steve Young tossed a touchdown pass. Arrive late, leave early for the fern bars and the tapas. An Analytical, precise, controlled, a corporate monolith of a team run by data-driven guys like Bill Walsh and George Seifert that wins with brains rather than brawn.

I have no idea what's the situation now that the Niners are in San Jose. Is it more trendy Silicon Valley money, with rich techies buying tickets because it's the latest buzz?

I do find it amusing that DeBartolo turned out to be as much of a slimebag as Davis, if not worse. It's just Al adored being the heel all those years.

 

What will be weird for A's fans to adjust to - if they do cross the Bay, is rooting for an underachieving team with every advantage as opposed to an overachieving team from a franchise with few. Yes the Giants have won three Series in this century - but I expect the franchise to continue to struggle with its player development and ability to land leading FAs. A problem they had even during their Series runs, with the exception of a few pitchers.

 

I realize I'm a day late and a dollar short to this discussion, but, some thoughts.

I got a St. Louis Browns hat in the mail this week from Ebbets Field Flannels. Looks good, though it's white and I'm already worried about how I'm going to keep it clean. I find myself wondering if my Oakland A's hat is going to be a similar relic some day. It's particularly sad thinking about this for the A's, as I saw Mike Fiers' no-hitter at the Coliseum in 2019 with a couple thousand of my closest friends after the game started 90 minutes late because the lights in left field weren't working.

That said, I think the whole situation has been at an impasse for years if not decades. The Coliseum hasn't been a financially viable location for an MLB team in 25 years and hasn't been physically viable in at least 15. They wanted to build in Fremont and the Giants vetoed it. They wanted to build at Jack London Square and the port threw a fit as the lights from a ballpark would create a navigational hazard (plus I think there were environmental issues). The team didn't want to build in the Coliseum parking lot and I don't think I blame them for that either. Somewhat rightly, the city of Oakland is not in the financial condition to build it for them, as I'm sure they were demanding (even though Phone Company Ballpark was built without public funding, IIRC). I'm not sure what the team is supposed to do. I mean, Fisher is absolutely a bastard, and the way they've jacked up prices and not even attempted to keep up the Coliseum is sinister, I don't think there's an owner in MLB who wouldn't be going down the same road under the same circumstances.

Putting a summer team in Vegas seems off the charts stupid both climatologically and financially (curious to see how effectively Mark Davis can fight that). Nashville (where the A's used to have their AAA affiliate) seems like a better play, but that probably brings a lot more MLB red tape into play. Portland doesn't even have a temporary stadium. I can't remember if Sacramento has ever been floated. When the Fremont project was still on the board, I said I was hoping they'd rebrand to be the Californ-I-A's. I liked Oakland when I was visiting the Bay Area. My cousin had a small but nice home in the Dimond District, I knew how to get to and around BART, etc. It seems a shame to lose a place where so many West Coast games in the middle of the night originated from, but it doesn't seem like there's been a satisfactory resolution available to this situation in some time.

 

Yeah it is. You think it's hard getting municipalities to approve spending tax money on stadiums, how do you think it's going to go if you're talking about half a season?

Why the fuck would people in Montreal approve spending tax money on a stadium if any playoff games they ever play are going to be in Tampa?