Oakland A's headed to Las Vegas

Bay Area tourism and its professional sports teams are related only by discretionary income. I know a lot of Raiders fans still get on planes to attend games in Las Vegas (and don't really understand it), but I doubt more than a small percentage of tourists put "Go to a Giants game" over cable cars/Fisherman's Wharf/Golden Gate Park/vineyards on their lists of places to visit when flying to San Francisco.

And "Sacramento Gold Diggers" has a nice ring to it. Yes, I know it was Coloma but close enough.

 

This is where having a commissioner would come in handy. Oh well, what can you do?

 

I think the Portland basketball arena was privately financed. I think if Portland had ever shown an interest in building a publically financed stadium for either football of baseball they would have a franchise by now.

 

In 1981 I went to a conference in San Francisco. The 49'ers had started 1-2 and were scheduled to meet the 1-2 Saints. The 49's were not selling out due to their woeful record the prior few years. Many people from the conference bought tickets and went to game. I said to myself that I had watched a lot of football games but did not know when I would have a chance to return to the Bay Area so I ran around in a rental car. The 49'ers beat the Saints and only lost once the rest of the year on their way to winning the Super Bowl. And I never got to see them them play.

 

Watched that game. Lenvil Elliott had a good one. Montana was on the cover of Time that season.

 

Oooh, the other owners are sorta mad. Wow! That will lead to absolutely nothing!! Maybe double secret probation.

 

That's rich.

The other organizations played as visitors in a stadium where they had to literally scrub the poo off their spikes in the dugout.

 

"Don't do this again!"

 

If any of the owners woke up to learn that they magically became the owner of the As overnight, every single one would have the same number one priority: get that team the hell out of Oakland.

 

More importantly for the owners, their visitor's share of the gate receipts probably didn't even cover their expenses. The players can deal with poo, they're just labor.

 

Great, and maybe some of them would manage to not be an oblivious, feckless dumbass. Fisher, OTOH ...

 

Is there any stadium available in North America that seats 30,000 or so for baseball? Montreal?

Because if the funding from Las Vegas blows up where could the A's go. Getting a stadium funded in Sacramento would be tough. The Kings stayed because Kevin Johnson pushed the funding through city council. the arena funding had to go through city council because a couple of prior referendums had failed. I don't know if the existing political leadership in Sacramento would do that.