Joe Stiglich has a follow-up from yesterday’s article, consisting of a sitdown with Lew Wolff. Wolff still puts out the 32,000 ballpark capacity (though I have heard otherwise). He refutes much of the criticism he has received:
“It isn’t like, if we had a winning team, we would have had double the attendance,” Wolff said. “If you trace it back for a long time, we’re in a market that’s difficult to tap. We’re close to the Giants, who have a beautiful ballpark. I don’t think the fact that we traded some guys “… When you look back at what we sent out, I think the balance sheet is in our favor, thanks to Billy and his guys.”
Whether you buy into that line of thinking depends on your “worldview.”
Gary Peterson wants an answer from the ever indecisive Bud Selig, and tries to break down the three possible outcomes.
newballpark.org 
Lew Wolff has no credibility whatsoever. Wolff's and Fisher's policies are what brought the A's attendance to what we see today.1) Alienating the fanbase with constant threats of relocating out of Oakland.2) Closing off the third deck and shrinking attendance against the Yankees, Red Sox, Giants, and fireworks nights.3) Trading away established fan favorites.4) Lying about working on building a ballpark in Oakland while at the same time pursuing territorial rights to the South Bay.Oakland fans are not a bunch of naive rubes. The fans realize that this ownership doesn't care about them, doesn't care about the city of Oakland and the tradition and legacy built over 40 years. This is an ownership which had its eye on relocating this team to the South Bay from day one. They lied to the fans. It's no wonder A's attendance is now last in the league. Wolff sabotaged the organization from within and now points to the paltry attendance as an excuse to leave Oakland. Walter Haas would be rolling over in his grave watching what these carpetbaggers have done to the fans, the city, and the organization.Also, Larry Stone has the nerve to go on KCBS this morning and state that there is "no support for keeping the A's in Oakland." There are 20,000 fans screaming to keep the A's in Oakland. How many people in San Jose are screaming to have the A's relocate to their city? How many? Two hundred? Five Hundred? What's in the water in the South Bay that breads such disingenuous comments from Lew Wolff and Larry Stone?
Navigator,Why do you keep ignoring the facts that 1) many of the 20k want the A's in either San Jose or Sacramento and 2) cold cash matters, not Facebook numbers. You need to quit while you're way behind Nav!
Hey there. Rather than take an unproductive, hateful tone; why not chime in with a suggestion for a simulation scenario? Happy Thanksgiving. And yes, I'm VERY PROUD of my simulation; you should at least show some intellectual interest in it.
because basically Zennie, you use your media attention to promote your business interests, which is against the basic rules of journalism.
"The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable." – John Kenneth GalbraithSeriously Zennie, I respect the amount of time you've put into your work. I may just run through a few simulations myself during the free period. I just don't think you need to be so shameless in plugging it.
In his comments to Stiglich, Wolff offers more evidence that he's not in it for baseball. His logic: we can't compete with the Giants so we traded away our best players. A winning team won't put fans in the seats? Weak.As a South Bay resident, I say be careful San Jose. You might get what you ask for.
"It isn't like, if we had a winning team, we would have had double the attendance," Wolff has no credibility here whatsoever, think back to the 2002 season with the 20 game win streak. The coliseum was near sold out often, Saturday day games were always packed. I can remember back to the '90 ALCS sitting in the bleachers as we swept Boston, ALWAYS a packed house. Attendance in 2008 was a significant decline from 2007 most likely due to the rebuilding project undertaken by Beane. 08 attendance was still better than most of the mid to late 90's seasons when the team also happened to suck. From 88-92 the A's had huge attendance numbers from 2.5 million to almost 3 for several years running, and they just happened to also be REALLY good those years.Wolff and co. don't want to be in Oakland and it is quite obvious. The only hope that Oakland fans have now is that indifferent San Jose fans reject the stadium in a vote…
Zennie, They don't want to here anything positive coming from Oakland. Lew Wolff has basically told the Giants that they can have Oakland and the surrounding communities. He doesn't care that 20,000 people will have signed a petition to keep the A's in Oakland.We need new ownership. This ownership is tainted. They're lighting every bridge in Oakland on fire. We can propose any site and it doesn't matter. He's a San Jose business man who bought the team as a Trojan Horse owner.All we can do now is tell the truth of how we got to this point, hope that the Giants retain their rights to the South Bay, and eventually get new ownership willing to invest in Oakland.I'm not going to allow Wolff to spout off misrepresentations of his dealings, or, non dealings with Oakland. He's attempting to scapegoat Oakland for his sabotage of the franchise. It's not going to work.
Hoo boy, are we really going to argue attendance again? Please see Jeff's post at AN for a rather sobering discussion of it.
"Closing off the third deck and shrinking attendance against the Yankees, Red Sox, Giants, and fireworks nights."So you admit that you want average attendance to be skewed by fans of other teams? It seems like you're angry that the statistics are too truthful. That's sad."Wolff has no credibility here whatsoever, think back to the 2002 season with the 20 game win streak. The coliseum was near sold out often, Saturday day games were always packed. I can remember back to the '90 ALCS sitting in the bleachers as we swept Boston, ALWAYS a packed house."So why aren't these numbers more stable? You still need a new ballpark to keep a steady stream in tougher times. The Giants have sucked for more of this decade but fair better at the gates. The problem is that Oakland closed off the prime ballpark location and twiddled to looks busy since then.
I guess other teams don't have fans from opposing teams coming to their ballpark. Attendance doesn't go up everywhere when the Yankees and Red Sox come to town.Also, why do people keep bringing up the Uptown site, which Schott,who was owner at the time, showed absolutely zero interest. Wolff is trying to take credit for someone else's lack of interest in a site.
So the BRC has been in San Jose this week meeting with city and redevelopment officials. Here's to hoping that they have what they need and the green light will be given to SJ–I am not sure I can handle the rants of Nav and the self-serving Zennie….and they claim Wolff has no credibility??
Please everyone; just ignore the BS coming out of Navigators rump! That's all we need is another useless going back and forth.
These recent articles clearly demonstrate how Wolff lacks credibility. His claims to have "an hour and 45 minutes" worth of notes to go over on the topic of finding a ballpark in Oakland is in direct conflict with his earlier statement about how he wouldn't spend 5 minutes looking at a city besides San Jose. The guy is purely a San Jose real-estate developer using baseball to further those ambitions.
I spent an 45 minutes with Wolff talking about those notes and we didn't even scratch the surface. That 1:45 time comes from how long it took for him to present that info to the MLB panel. Some of you believe Wolff's besmirched Oakland – frankly he's held back, not wanting to turn it into a mudslinging contest.
What mud has Wolff to sling? He's already on record as being 100% behind San Jose; he's reduced the capacity of the Coliseum to the lowest in major league baseball; he's reduced team payroll commensurate with his expenditures on pursuing the Fremont real-estate scam by jettisoing every star player the organization had signed to a good contract; and he's steered the team into the cellar. Attendance is down? Whoa, I'm stunned. Sling away Lew!
12:02 – You really don't get it. Right now Lew's absorbing all of the criticism – which he knew he would. There are certainly other culpable parties, but what good would it be to dig all of that up? It doesn't help build a ballpark, that's for sure.
Hmmm, lowest seating capacity in MLB and we still can't sellout a Yankee or Red Sox game. Where are those 20,000 signatures when you need them?
It isn't Oakland that is suffering here. It's A's fans. On field performance and attendance are down dramatically because of Wolff's policies. Attendance is the problem he is now trying to fix. What a lucky coincidence for him I suppose, that he has stumbled upon a major San Jose development opportunity that will fix his problem! How many of us get the opportinity in life to royally screw something up, then make a fortune fixing it?
FC, the A's did sellout 12 times in '06, the first year with a 35k capacity, and that cost the A's at least 100,000 tickets. Those tickets would have increased attendance that year, instead of decreasing. And Wolff promptly seized on the attendance decline (he created) in his announcement the team was moving to Fremont. So, since then you've got the team dumping it's best players, anchoring last-place, AND leaving town… Not exactly textbook sports marketing.
The non-sellouts I was talking about were this year. Not exactly sure what the exact attendance figures were for the Yankees and Sox games, but when you factor in that a good number of those in attendance were actually Yankee and Sox fans, the picture looks even more pathetic. Fail to see how opening the upper deck would have help.The A's were looking to move years before the upper deck was tarped, so the arguement that they did it just to drive attendance down holds no water. The tarps were put up because the upper deck was a losing proposition for the A's. They were spending more to keep it open than they were receiving in ticket sales. As far as the dumping of players, I'll agree that it probably hurt interest in the team when it created a disconnect between the fans and the players. This is something which Beane probably didn't see coming. However, the moves were necessary, given that the farm system was in bad shape. I don't think for a moment that it was a plot to intentionally drive attendance down.
It’s not surprise that Wolff is holding back. I’m sure the Oakland pols have alot more than “only cares about building a profitable franchise” needing to be pinned on them. When was the last time Oakland pols ever did anything that didn’t backfire on them? Especially in sports. The decision to lure the Raiders back has cursed this city. And then the awesome decision of building yuppie condos instead of a new A’s ballpark on Telegraph… yeah, that showed real foresight and big thinking.
The collective incompetence coming out of Oakland city officials is the #1 reason why the bridges in Oakland are burning. Good luck finding any ownership group out with 1/4 of a brain out there who would want to work arm in arm with Oakland pols. There is no White Knight. I dare any alternative ownership group with a real plan (not a facebook group) to keep the A’s in Oakland to come forth. If moving the A’s to SJ is such a bad idea and keeping them in Oakland is such a no-brainer, wouldn’t you think Wolff would quickly cut loose and sell the team, cashing in like you all say he wants to?
Of course, Wolff is not going to dig up all these points and others even more sordid that we have yet to hear about. Wolff will take the higher road. If it means 20,000 kids on facebook joining the “Lew Wolff is teh suck” group, so be it.
Al, show me one comment from an A’s official regarding interest in the Uptown site in Oakland. You can’t because they didn’t make any. Also, those 20,720 and counting on the Let’s Go Oakland Facebbok site, are not just “kids.” Those are Oakland A’s fans from all over the Bay Area and the region. Wolff and Fisher can ignore the mass support for a ballpark in Oakland all they want but it will end up bitting them in the ass. There is no populous organic support from South Bay fans for the A’s. You have some moneyed interests hooking up with self-serving politicians with an inferiority complex conspiting to steal a team from Oakland and its fans.
Random Question:
If the letsgooakland.com facebook group is largley symbolic and meaningless, how come it bothers so many people here?
I don’t think the facebook group is what bothers people. It is the bullshit like anon above stating that 20,720 passionate fans who support the A’s staying in Oakland. Read the comments on the facebook page. Some people talk about it as an attempt to hold off the Fremont plan, sorry that is OLD NEWS and passionate fans already know that. Some people mention the team should be moving to Sacramento and San Jose (that is some serious support!).
Spin it however you want. I’d like to see something feasible proposed in Oakland rather than a bunch of people talking up a misleading total membership number on a facebook page.
Greinbeen–it bothers me because it means nothing–what means something is identifying a site, buying the land, completing the EIR and gaining political and community support—trying to hold the A’s hostage in a community where none of this has been done is getting annoying!! As an A’s fan I want a new ballpark in the next 3 years—not more “symbolic” bullshit!
“You have some moneyed interests hooking up with self-serving politicians with an inferiority complex conspiting to steal a team from Oakland and its fans.”
First of all, if the A’s move to San Jose (further away from me, might I add) nobody will have “stolen” anything from me. I am an A’s fan too, so stop speaking for me.
Second, even if this amounts to “stealing” a team from Oakland, I guess it’s on Oakland to have prevented this. You don’t see moneyed interests and self-serving politicians stealing the Cubs or the Twins (just to name a couple), do you?
And also, the Uptown site was from the Schott days. The Uptown site evaporated as soon as they started pressing for a new ballpark (or rather, decided to sell the team instead). Even if it wasn’t all too feasible, it was still the highest rated option and instead of leaving the door open, Oakland slammed it shut. You figure at least a site like that would have made Wolff’s SJ-only position more difficult to defend, so instead of helping keep the A’s in Oakland, this is another example of Oakland city officials unintentionally helping them leave.