John Fisher did a rare trifecta of Q&A sessions with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, NBC Bay Area, and ESPN last week, which ultimately served a couple important purposes. The famously publicity-shy Fisher recently submitted the A’s relocation application, months earlier than I expected (January). By doing so, Fisher took care of an item on MLB’s punch list, which, whether or not you believe the relo process has any legitimacy or transparency, is how baseball rolls. The second and most awkward observation is that Fisher’s explanations are effectively the big kiss-off to Oakland. Fisher reaffirmed that much to Oakland fans’ chagrin, he’s not selling.

I’m not going to get into the recriminations from Fisher or from Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, as it’s all garden-variety he-said she-said pablum you hear during a divorce. Fact-checking is utterly useless because no one wants to have a real dialogue or be convinced of anything beyond what they’re feeling. We’re on the verge of a transition, which has numerous possibilities for the A’s and Oakland. At the moment Thao is close to offering a short-term extension for the interim period (2025-27) in which the A’s would give up their team name to Oakland and the pay a higher amount of rent compared to their current $1.25 million annual payment. That rent figure doesn’t include operating costs, which the A’s have always paid and usually run upwards of $15 million per year. The Raiders, throughout their frequent tussles with Oakland/Alameda County, never paid for operating costs, only a minimal rent payment until they started preparing to leave in 2016, playing out a series of escalating one-year lease options until their fateful 2019 season ended.

Now Oakland and MLB are arguing over what is ostensibly a short-term lease at the Coliseum while the A’s finish their plans in Vegas. Note that I didn’t say “Oakland and the A’s” as the A’s have effectively handed off the transition to MLB and Rob Manfred. When the A’s got the deal over the finish line in the Nevada legislature, they shifted their focus to the development of the ballpark, which they claim is 75% complete. That sounds like an excuse for not having the roof situation figured out yet and is backed up by Fisher’s mealy-mouthed comments about it. We’ll see soon enough. In the meantime, Rob Manfred has control of the fate of the A’s after 2024, and he’s just itching to remind any and all Oakland politicians of that.

Thao made the rounds of local media to drum up Oakland’s case. While the Las Vegas A’s are not quite a fait accompli yet, the tone of Thao’s comments indicate that she at least wants some sort of consolation prize for Oakland, either in the form of the promise of an expansion team or Oakland’s rights to the “Athletics” moniker and branding for said franchise, or both. I applaud that effort, but let’s be realistic about these goals. There are few things that will motivate MLB to include Oakland in future expansion efforts. While Oakland is a key city in one of the largest markets in the United States, it’s had a checkered history with its sports franchises, to put it mildly. Almost every team that called Oakland home left under a cloud of controversy. To wit:

1. Raiders moved twice in 1981 and 2019, endured multiple Oakland lawsuits, and when they moved back to Oakland in 1995, started a rift between the A’s and Oakland
2. Warriors also moved in 2019, lost lawsuit over non-payment of remaining arena lease, not before bolting for SF
3. A’s picked up option on Alameda County’s half-interest of Coliseum in 2015, faced legal action from Oakland as a result
4. Bay Area Panthers (IFL) were originally the Oakland Panthers yet never played a game in Oakland
5. Oakland/California Golden Seals (NHL) were perhaps the most cursed franchise in Bay Area pro sports history and folded not long after they moved to Cleveland
6. Oakland Oaks and Invaders were victims of poorly run leagues that took advantage of Oakland’s eagerness to prove itself (ABA and USFL respectively)

Despite that legacy of bad denouements, Oakland has a track record of success. The problem is that most of that success came 30-50 years ago, and the period since has been marked by poor judgment on the City’s and County’s part (Mount Davis) and terrible strategy (Coliseum City) that largely ignored prevailing trends in stadium building. Oakland remains a fairly large city in an even larger, still lucrative market. It has its draw mostly because of demographics. However, it lacks a comprehensive strategy to attract and retain teams, and perhaps more importantly, a mayor and leadership to make deals. 

While Thao’s sniping at John Fisher is earning her points in the Bay Area, it does nothing to convince anyone at MLB to sway the owners in Oakland’s direction. Without an actual agreement, binding or not, Oakland has little argument against MLB except for soft issue cries to improve diversity or preserve Oakland’s baseball history. There’s a lot of recriminations and little actual dialogue. I was thinking about that when I saw a tweet from the National Baseball Hall of Fame (below):

Born on this date in 1875 in Gettysburg, Pa., Eddie Plank won 326 games over 17 big league seasons. Here's the list of left-handers with more wins:

Warren Spahn
Steve Carlton

That's it. That's the list. pic.twitter.com/fjyiXONK2n

— National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum ⚾ (@baseballhall) August 31, 2023

When I went to 20-30 A’s games a season from roughly 1997-2014, a video tribute to Eddie Plank narrated by Roy Steele was played at least once annually at the Coliseum, either before a game or between innings. Plank, known as “Gettysburg Eddie” after his birthplace, was born there only two decades after the City of Oakland was incorporated, and pitched in the dead ball era. He was a key figure in the powerhouse rotations at the beginning of the 20th Century, though he was arguably overshadowed by fellow hurlers Chief Bender and Rube Waddell. There was no monument to Plank in the Coliseum, in keeping with the longstanding policy that only Baseball Hall of Fame inductees from the Oakland era would be  honored with retired numbers. Plank entered the Athletics Hall of Fame earlier this summer, another sign of management settling accounts.

I have no idea if Plank ever visited California, let alone Oakland, as he died more than 40 years before the A’s moved to the Bay Area. Yet his impressive legacy both predates Oakland by two stops and is intricately tied to A’s history, every bit as much as any legendary figure from the A’s Oakland tenure. Arguing that the team name “Athletics” should be left in Oakland not only threatens to wipe away historical figures like Plank, it fails to acknowledge the fact that the A’s are nomadic by nature. Oakland deserves a shot to have a MLB franchise with a trustworthy owner at the helm. It doesn’t deserve much more than that, and often fans don’t get the owner they want. That’s America.

Now to get that shot, Oakland has to show that it can be a true big market franchise as was written into recent CBAs. That means big revenues: big sponsorships, huge media deals (whatever that means in the future), and high ticket prices, plus ancillary revenue if it’s there to be exploited. Oakland and Mayor Thao won’t be able to dictate terms against MLB as their case has little to stand on. Some bring up the A’s leaving Kansas City for Oakland while conveniently forgetting that voters approved the Truman Sports Complex, which allowed for public financing of separate stadia for the A’s and Chiefs. Charlie Finley saw greener pastures by the Bay, so he took the team to a recently completed multipurpose stadium in Oakland. In response, Missouri Senator Stuart Symington threatened MLB’s antitrust exemption, which ultimately netted Kansas City the Royals as a rush expansion team to go along with the Seattle Pilots – who lasted only one season in Seattle before leaving for Milwaukee. Seattle had to wait several more years for a bite at expansion, as the KingDome didn’t start construction for a few years and didn’t open until 1976.

At the current late juncture, Oakland has to consider itself more of an expansion candidate than a proven pro sports quantity. While there is some history to leverage when the opportunity arises with an expansion franchise, that opportunity won’t come unless Oakland plays ball with MLB, the NFL, or other leagues. For years Oakland partisans likened themselves to Brooklyn in terms of diversity and as a counterpoint to SF’s Manhattan-like qualities. After the Dodgers left Brooklyn in 1958, it took 54 years and multiple ownership groups – two foreign – for the Brooklyn Nets to move back from the other side of the Hudson. The Mets will have to do for Brooklyn and Queens baseball, for better or worse. Assuming East Bay or Greater Bay Area interests get their ducks in a row for an expansion franchise, they’ll still have to make the case that Oakland is worth a worthwhile investment for the next three decades. Given the economic ceiling for both ticket sales and public funding sources, that’s a tough sell. Therefore, any pitch to any league has to include serious guarantees of economic stability. That means not leaning on revenue sharing for extended periods. What’s more, other emerging markets threaten to make Oakland irrelevant. Vegas already managed to do that almost singlehandedly.

If you want to consider the current rift between Oakland and the A’s as more than mere posturing, I can tell you that we’ve been down this road before. Consider what Mark Davis did with the Raiders while twisting the knife into Oakland, and don’t believe his revisionist history about being driven out by the A’s. He was planning a 50k-seat stadium Coliseum replacement that would have to be built at the same time as a new A’s ballpark in order to preserve his precious parking. Where’s the parking in Vegas? Anywhere they can find it (PDF). The same thing awaits the A’s.

• August 2014: Davis won’t seek lease extension for Raiders
• April 2015: Oakland approves Coliseum EIR & Specific Plan, Raiders lease, arena refinancing
• February 2016: Raiders ink 1-year lease with options, hire former 49ers CFO Larry MacNeil
• June 2016: The A’s are not an obstacle to the Raiders
• March 2017: Raiders exodus is about will not blame

In light of recent history, consider how recent mayors reacted. Libby Schaaf was not heavily involved in Coliseum City during its planning, and when she became mayor she had to deal with the fallout there while putting her weight behind a plan to keep the A’s, which was Howard Terminal. Schaaf’s successor Thao was not heavily involved in the Howard Terminal discussion because it was run by Schaaf’s staff, and now that it hit a brick wall Thao is painting herself as a defender of Oakland vs. the A’s when it was clear she was elected precisely because she wouldn’t waste much time on them. Pity the next mayor who has to figure out how to make AASEG and the soccer teams happy while trying not to appear like the mayor’s office isn’t selling Oakland out. Oakland may as well rename itself CYAland. 

Oakland can and should raise the rent on the A’s if they can. By the same token, MLB has the right to demand that Oakland spend that money on updating the facility which has already had one embarrassing episode earlier in the season. At the end of all this drama Oakland has to decide if it’s going to spend time on resources on major pro sports. If Oakland decides it can’t or doesn’t want to be a good host to the A’s, MLB knows how to focus its efforts on expansion: anywhere but Oakland.