(EDITOR’S NOTE: This is first in a three part series on how to resolve the Oakland A’s saga. Part I can be found here.)
Unless you’ve been under a rock the last few months, if you’re a sports fan you’re at least somewhat familiar with the saga that is the Oakland Athletics baseball franchise.
It reads somewhat like the plot of a movie–a specific movie, now that I think about it–that I’m sure you’ve seen before: Team owner does not appear to care about putting a winner on the field, trades away any players of note and demotes rising stars who could help the team win, and oh by the way, is actively trying to leave a fanbase that loves its team.
And those are just the highpoints.
I left out how the team plays in a 50-year-old concrete doughnut, the last of the multipurpose stadiums left standing in the United States, that is in dire need of implosion. Or how the owner has managed to get MLB to agree to moving the team to Las Vegas despite not having a stadium agreed upon. Or how the fanbase has launched a campaign solely fixated on trying to get the owner to sell the team. Or how the team moved to a minor league stadium to leave Oakland behind.
Yeah, it’s a mess.
And moving to Las Vegas isn’t going to solve any problems. Especially when there’s no guarantee of a stadium being built–and get this: John Fisher, owner of the A’s, is talking about spending 10% less games in the stadium.
No, moving to Vegas won’t solve a thing. But I do happen to have three solutions. Part One can be found here:
Option 2: Stay in Oakland and Build a New Stadium
I generally don’t think teams should move. Ripping a franchise from the community that loves it and has supported it for decades is a cold move, and while pro sports may be a business, it’s a business built on other people’s time, passion, and money–namely those who spend their hard-earned dollars on tickets, concessions and merchandise. There are circumstances that necessitate relocation, and in some cases it is from a lack of support. Not the case here.
The people of Oakland and the East Bay love this team. Generations of fans have poured into the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, looking past a stadium aging into obsolescence and lacking amenities and building memories around the A’s (more on that later). I mean, The Last Dive Bar is an excellent page and example of the passion of that fanbase. The fans are not the problem.
The same cannot be said about their home stadium.
The A’s play in the aforementioned Oakland-Alameda County Stadium. It is the last of the concrete doughnuts, the fad of stadiums built in the 1960s to allow football, baseball, and whatever else to be played in one place. Generally these stadiums were devoid of character, and after the 1992 debut of Camden Yards, MLB teams started building parks that were specific to baseball and took after the beautiful architecture of the early 20th Century.
Not so with the A’s. They’ve been in the Coliseum since arriving in 1968 (well, before moving to a minor league park next year). And the Coliseum is showing its age. Plumbing issues, possums, and aging architecture highlight the issues at Oakland-Alameda. In short, it’s an absolute dive.
It wasn’t always that way. In fact, the Coliseum had one of the best views in baseball at one time. Before the Raiders—which have bailed on Oakland not once, but twice—forced the city and county to build a 20,000 seat eyesore planted directly in centerfield known as “Mount Davis,” after the now-late Al Davis, then-owner of the Raiders. Thus, it took away the amazing views of the Oakland Hills and hurt capacity for the A’s.
The Raiders left town in 2019, and left behind Mount Davis, which is usually covered in a tarp for A’s games.
The Coliseum, while a venerable old girl, is no longer a viable option, especially since there are no other sports teams to inhabit it. It’s time for a new ballpark.
Several ideas have been floated, including one in the Howard Terminal area, but none satisfied both the A’s ownership and the city. Lewis Wolff, previous co-owner of the A’s, floated the idea of a mini-city around a ballpark almost a full decade-and-a-half before The Battery in Atlanta was a thing. The renderings of Cisco Field in Fremont back in 2006 looked amazing, and yet, even that plan stalled. Efforts to relocate the team and the Cisco Field plan to San Jose were blocked by the San Francisco Giants who claimed it infringed upon their territorial rights (because of course the Giants did).
Ownership, now solely led by John Fisher, has the opportunity to do the right thing here and buy land in Oakland or nearby and build a privately-funded ballpark. Fisher alone has a net worth of $3.1 billion, per a quick Google search. This is net worth, not liquid assets, I know. But it is more than enough to do what needs to be done for the A’s: build a new, privately-funded stadium.
It’s a move that engenders goodwill to an already-loyal fanbase. There are little-to-no A’s fans in Vegas; you’re competing with the literal city that never sleeps. You’re lucky if your biggest game becomes a blip on the Vegas radar. Especially when the Knights have won a Stanley Cup and the Raiders beat you there by five years. No way you outdraw the Formula One race, either.
No, the move is to stay where you are not only a cultural institution, you’re also the only pro sports show in town.
So take private funds, do your homework and buy either the Howard Terminal site or another one, and use that site to develop your vision for what the A’s should be. Develop the site into the plan Lewis Wolff had years before with a Battery-style town around the park.
If nothing can be found in Oakland, then adjust your search to Fremont or San Jose. The point is to stay in the East Bay and with your large fanbase. And if the Giants try to block said move again, MLB has to step in. The league has owned/operated a team before, there shouldn’t be any issue adjusting territorial rights to benefit all parties. For context, the Giants’ territorial rights were adjusted in the 90s when there was talk the Giants were set on moving because of issues with Candlestick Park–also a multipurpose stadium. The result? The Giants stayed in San Francisco, and eventually got a new baseball-only park a few years later. Even crazier? John Fisher was part of the investment group that helped keep the Giants in San Francisco.
Choosing to stay in the East Bay, with a focus on Oakland is the ideal move here. Yes, the A’s were previously in Philadelphia and Kansas City before, but they’ve been in Oakland 54 seasons, longer than they were in either Kansas City (twelve; 1955-1967) or Philly (53; 1901-1954). And Oakland is where this franchise became the A’s we all know today: the while cleats, the Bash Brothers, Moneyball. There is a decided “us against the world” vibe that comes from Oakland/that side of the Bay. Unlike the Raiders, the A’s have never left. As an outsider looking in, the A’s embrace the grittiness of staying put and taking on all comers of their fanbase. That kind of connection won’t happen in Vegas.
You’re going to have to build a ballpark anyway. You might as well root it in Oakland. And spend some money. Instead of building it and the fans come to the park, embrace the fans that already want to support the team and give them a place to come to.
Stay tuned for the final installment of this series later this month.
The Message Pitch 