Oakland A's headed to Las Vegas

Oh, yeah. From anywhere in the East Bay in the late 1970s, we could ride bikes to BART, take the train for a couple of bucks round-trip, spend less than $3 on A's tickets and avoid the hassle (and weather) of Candlestick, especially mid-week day games. If you didn't care who won, it was usually a glorious day.

Candlestick required a car, tolls, parking, plus ski jackets and hard warmers. And the baseball was just as sh*tty.

 

I always wanted to see the Superdome in a baseball configuration, but I don't think it's been used post-Katrina.

 

And now in my Facebook feed is a similar deal for the Braves, so maybe it's a rotating thing?

 

Per the SF Chronicle, the indie Pioneer League will add an expansion team that will play at Laney College. To be called the Oakland Ballers, or, if you please, the Oakland B's.

May be paywalled: A's skipping town, but Oakland welcomes minor-league B's to Laney (sfchronicle.com)

 

Should have named them the Oakland Arthur’s, short for Arthur Fonzarelli, so they could be the Oakland Ayyyyyyyes.

I’ll see myself out

 

what a sorry franchise - it is unbelievable how pathetic they are.

 

Do they have a transcript?

 

@micropolitan guy has way more of an extensive knowledge of all the iterations and machinations of the franchise, but the Athletics have been boom or bust ever since the beginning of the American League. This is more than the Curse of Roy, Earle, Connie Jr. and Charlie O.

The $100,000 Infield. Cochrane, Simmons, Foxx and Grove. The Swingin' A's. The Bash Brothers. And a whole lot of really bad baseball in between.

Fans in Philly, K.C. and Oakland have put up with some putrid front offices, only to get gouged when the teams sell all their best players. Lather, rinse, repeat for 120 years. Las Vegas is about to get more of the same.

 

Don't disagree, except for Connie Jr. He was the son with brains and had many ideas to re-invigorate the Philly A's and tried several times to either buy the franchise outright from his idiot older half-brothers (keeping his dad as the nominal president), or to bring in outside investors as minority partners who would have infused some much-needed cash into the operation.

Many in the A's organization, including players like Lew Brissie, wanted him to run the team but his set-in-his-ways father would not buy into his plans, and his idiot half-brothers hated him because he was so much smarter.

He finally bailed when his brothers bought his shares in 1950 or so after his latest bid to buy them out failed. He moved to Fort Meyers, where the A's had trained for many years, and went into private business. He was very successful and his son, Connie Mack III, eventually became a 2- or 3-term Senator from Florida, back in the days when complete idiots didn't run that state.

Had Connie Jr. taken control, I really believe the A's would still be in Philadelphia. His potential investors had more money than the Carpenters.

 

Gonna be a bad week for the A's, with some of the heavy hitters in Bay Area media there for the Super Bowl.

Like the incoming A’s, doomed Tropicana’s best days are just a memory (sfchronicle.com)

 

When the mayor of the new town doesn't support you......