A general rule about going to conventions is, “don’t go only on the last day”. Exhibitors are usually wrapping up, often people are tired and just want to go home, and chances are that whatever energy that pulsated through the show has dissipated by that final day. Still, Thursday was the only day I could [...]

What’s the pic? It’s a ramp leading to an underground service tunnel for the abandoned stadium next to ARCO Arena/Power Balance Pavilion. Overgrown with grass and trees, the foundation is practically invisible except for unfinished rebar columns sticking up from the concrete foundation. The arena and its stillborn brother would never have come to fruition without [...]

A year ago, Giants CEO Larry Baer hinted that it would be good for the A’s to look somewhere outside the Bay Area for a new ballpark, if a deal for an East Bay park couldn’t be worked out. I wrote three years ago that an expansion to Raley Field would cost at least $250 [...]

Tomorrow marks the 7th anniversary of this here blog. Seven years! That’s an amazing amount of time to have nothing happen. Regardless, the blog has been a great learning experience for me, and based on the many positive emails I get, for the readers as well. Since we nothing concrete to go on, this week [...]

One thing that I don’t think can be argued is that over the last 15 years or so, at least since Peter Magowan took control of the Giants franchise, the Giants have had a better PR machine going than the A’s. When the A’s hired former Giants PR head Bob Rose, it was a tacit [...]

First off, a quick acknowledgement of the unanimous approval of the Kings ESC arena deal by Sacramento’s City Council. Somehow, that happened a full hour before the Oakland approved its resolutions and expenditures for the Coliseum City project. There’s still a long way to go. The $255 million that Sacramento is committing to the project [...]

Last week I felt like getting a glimpse of Mark Appel, the Stanford hurler and East Bay product who may eventually be the #1 pick in the June draft. So off I went on Friday to Stanford’s Sunken Diamond, one of the many immaculately kept athletic facilities at The Farm. My baseball cravings have come [...]

The last and only time a local (host) team won a Super Bowl was XIX (1985), when the 49ers beat the Miami Dolphins at Stanford Stadium. Although not technically a home game at Stanford Stadium, the game’s location within the heart of the Niner fanbase made it a de facto home game. As soon as 2017 [...]

The new CBA has a major change to its debt rule that will affect the A’s as they try to put a ballpark deal together. The Debt Service Rule will be maintained, but the default EBITDA multiplier has been lowered from ten to eight, and from fifteen to twelve for Clubs incurring stadium-related debt in [...]

Update 12/27 5:40 PM – A report at MLB.com has Lew Wolff saying there is no movement on the stadium front yet. Yet. Update 8:54 PM – Interviewed by Rick Tittle and John Dickinson on The Game (MP3), Bob Nightengale has the estimate at $50-100 million, which would fall in line with the other cases listed [...]