Circumstances have allowed me to move my planned trip to Nationals Park from August to June. Along with DC, I’ll be traveling north to take in games at Baltimore’s Camden Yards, Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park, Yankee Stadium, and Fenway Park. If time allows, I’ll be heading with some friends to Cooperstown as well. The trip [...]

Wow, was that frustrating. Consider this: the Tampa Bay Rays are trying to do much the same thing the A’s are doing except for the following: Over half of the stadium will be publicly financed The public part is largely dependent on valuations and revenue streams that are not even close to guaranteed There are [...]

Last night the San Jose City Council approved the first part of the Earthquakes’ stadium development plan. The stadium/hotel/office/retail project will be built on the old FMC property west of Mineta San Jose International Airport, along Coleman Avenue. Financing the stadium is still tied to the second part of the project, a residential development at [...]

Ann Killion’s latest column on the demise of Peter Magowan has a little info on his successor, William Neukom. Not surprisingly, Neukom maintained the status quo: Neukom was also adamant that nothing will change with the Giants’ position on territorial rights, so the notion that Magowan’s departure will hasten the A’s move to Santa Clara [...]

In November 2005, Gwen Knapp wrotewhat many called a tongue-in-cheek article about the A’s trading Barry Zito to the Giants for the territorial rights to San Jose. How ironic it must be now that the Giants, facing dwindling attendance and sizable debt loads (one of which is Zito), may very well entertain such a concept. [...]

Today I was looking through my 539 blog posts for something offered a proper treatment of the territorial rights issue. Alas, there was no real explanation. So I’ll try to put it in fairly simple terms. A team’s territory can also be considered its sales region. Most national companies that have local branches or a [...]

Matier and Ross have jumped on special meeting of the Giants’ ownership group scheduled for Friday, during which managing partner Peter Magowan is expected to exit stage left. The rumor, originally reported in a rather innocuous matter by former Merc and now Chicago Tribune scribe Mark Gonzales, has many wondering why. Surely the stress of [...]

Matier and Ross reported on Saturday some communications between 49ers CFO Larry MacNeil and Brisbane officials. Good idea for the team to hedge their bets considering the expense of the future stadium, even though the city and the team have done a good job weakening the opposition in Santa Clara (the November vote is non-binding, [...]

Come 2010 or shortly thereafter, the A’s may find themselves in a very good situation, and they won’t need to do anything to make it happen. All of the local (non-NFL) teams other than the Giants are due to have their current agreements with Comcast SportsNet Bay Area (formerly FSNBA) expire around the end of [...]

On June 3, two propositions will be on the ballot. They are Propositions 98 and 99, a pair of competing initiatives. Both claim the same main goal: to ban state and local governments from using eminent domain to acquire land for private uses. The differences are in “protections.” Prop 98 also seeks to phase out [...]