Oakland A's headed to Las Vegas

Well, COVID made that possible.

 

Wasn't that right around the time they did their latest fire sale of a promising young team, in order to hopefully spend the next five or six years building a promising young team? And this was about the fourth time in the last 20 years they've tried to sell that promise?

 

I think? That sounds right but I’ll defer to the Florida peeps.

 

Interesting. Yeah, 2021 most parks had limited seating, at least during the first couple of months, to spread out during COVID.

 

Same here ... but came to the bolded conclusion above, oh, probably a decade ago.
The studio audience for the Kansas City-Miami playoff game was great TV ... and amputations later.

 

Yeah, but that was at least a full size stadium.

I grew up in a town with a middle-of-the-pack (at best) OVC school with an arena that sat over 10,000 people. Now you’ve got power conference schools tripping over themselves to open boutique basketball palaces that will never exceed four figures in attendance. Now you’ve teams signing multi-year leases for “temporary” homes and no real urgency to finish the permanent ones.

Team spirit is going to be like Christmas spirit in Elf. They’re engineering an artificial workaround to keep the sleigh running because the original stuff is drying up.

 

@TheSportsPredictor offered an option over on the MLB thread: The Royals and Chiefs can move to Oakland.
White and Royals have been on the outs for years now.

 

It sure seems like Oakland has simply decided to get out of the professional sports business. I know the A's ownership might have soured the relationship as well over the years, but it also feels like Oakland's city leaders don't give a shit one way or the other if they have a team or not.

 

Respectfully disagree. Taking in some unique factors inherent with that particular franchise, I consider it an aberration.

 

Jeter and Company got rid of Stanton and Christian Yelich in the outfield and Realmuto behind the plate as Jeter implemented his Operation Wolverine plan to slash expenses and generate a profit. He also slashed fan enthusiasm and attendance.

 

I forgot Marcel Ozuna, the third outfielder who Jeter deemed expendable. Report: Jeter's plan says Marlins to profit in '18

 

That's what I was talking about. That Marlins team seemed ready to contend the next few years and those maniacs blew it up.
It was just the latest version of the periodic fire sales that have marked the Marlins' franchise history. At least a couple other times they at least got one World Series out of it. It's not hard to see why people don't embrace a franchise that's not even going to give them false hope that they might be good.