Author Archives: Marine Layer

03.05.12
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Judge strikes down second 49ers stadium referendum

Last week, Santa Clara City Council Member Jamie McLeod hinted at a verdict in the case of City vs. referendum seekers, and it’s here: NO on the referendum. Appeals notwithstanding, there are no obstacles left for the 49ers and City to start building the $1.02 billion stadium on the Great America auxiliary lot.

Taken a week ago: Earth being moved for new sewer lines and utilities to sit under stadium. Note that safety lighting has not yet been removed.

Judge Peter Kirwan clearly sided with the City in his ruling:

In arguing their position, the city and 49ers cited past cases, saying voters only have one shot at deciding “legislative” policy issues, such as stadium construction. Any subsequent issues — like the loan — are only “administrative” acts needed to carry out the wishes of voters who approved the project in June 2010, they maintain.

If there’s a dangerous precedent, it’s that any municipality who chooses to build a stadium in the Bay Area can choose to be purposefully vague or obfuscating when writing up stadium deal terms, get a referendum passed, then fill in the blanks later. Time will tell if others use this as a template. It also remains to be seen if this actually ends up a good deal for Santa Clara years into the lease. Regardless, congratulations are in order to Santa Clara and the San Francisco 49ers, whose diligence (and a lot of help from the NFL) helped make this happen. I look forward to the open house, and will post the occasional picture as construction progresses.
03.05.12
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The last Bill Madden post

Listen to Bill Madden’s interview with The Drive. It’s far more substantial than the one with the KNBR morning zoo.

Bill Madden is not a pot-stirrer, or at least that’s not his reputation. On the Vecsey scale of sensationalism, he’s closer to George than to Peter.

Madden’s arguments are these:

  • From reading the Major League Constitution, the fact is that the Giants’ hold over the South Bay is ingrained. Per the document, any change would have to be via a 3/4 vote of the owners and could not occur via a Selig decree.
  • Changing T-rights would create a huge precedent, which Stuart Sternberg could use to move the Rays to New Jersey.
  • Bud Selig would like to broker an agreement but Madden doesn’t know how it could be done because Giant ownership feels it would be “committing suicide”.

Confronted by the A’s denial, Madden defiantly asked, “What did I get wrong?” Well, for starters, he got the history of the territorial rights arrangement wrong, though I figure he’d probably correct that if he had the chance. There is the question of how broad an action Selig can take. Madden says that Selig can’t. Lew Wolff’s position all this time has been that it is the commissioner’s decision to make. It’s not quite that simple, however.

Selig generally doesn’t operate by decree, so it’s something of a false argument. The only time in recent memory that he has “decreed” anything was the fateful decision to end the 2002 All Star Game in a tie. Everything other decision was the basis of him lobbying owners as a group to a specific decision or endgame. Yes, some kind of agreement has to be brokered, which Madden alluded to. No one’s breaking news there. How and for what $$$ have always been the sticking points, given the Giants’ and A’s positional gulf on the matter.

Madden even concedes this:

“… Or let Lew Wolff tell me how I’m wrong. I love Lew Wolff. He’s a great guy. My personally feeling is that I’d like to see the A’s in San Jose because I’d like to see them survive. San Jose is the second (sic) largest city in California and they ought to be able to have a baseball team. The fact of the matter is, for whatever reason, Wally Haas ceded those rights to Bob Lurie. And that was the reason Bob Lurie was able to sell the Giants for $100 million.”

San Jose is actually third largest, but I can see how a New York guy can get that wrong.

Eric Davis asks the proper question in the interview,

DAVIS: To your knowledge, have the A’s been denied San Jose or not?

MADDEN: No, I never said that. See, this is the problem. Everybody’s saying that Selig said has told the A’s that they aren’t going to San Jose. I DID NOT SAY THAT. The column does not say that… Is there anywhere in therewhere I said that Bud Selig’s gonna tell them they can’t go to San Jose? I’m saying that under these circumstances they’re not going to San Jose. But it’s not Selig that’s going to tell them that. These are the circumstances.

Bill Madden, you can thank your headline writer/editor/intern/monkey for having to go on the defensive on today. To his credit, he ends the interview with perhaps his most salient point:

I’m sure the commissioner’s not very happy with me on this story. Part of the reason being I’m sure he’s hoping he could broker a settlement between these two teams. Maybe he can. Right now I don’t see that happening.

After the Madden interview ended, Brandon Tierney and Eric Davis both came to the same conclusion: Madden’s connecting dots as opposed to reporting actual news. Is it nothing? Not at all. It’s properly giving attention to the elephant in the room, which is that the A’s and Giants are miles apart on what they think Santa Clara County is worth in terms of a settlement. It’s Selig’s job to broker that deal, and he reportedly won’t start brokering in earnest until the Giants’ astroturf group drops their lawsuit in San Jose. And let’s keep in mind that the way these settlements have gone in the past, there is a baseline: settling team pays half of $75 million “fee” to infringed team, league and other 28 owners pay the other half. Giants ownership know this and want no part of it. They’d just as soon pay the A’s to leave the Bay Area completely. Then again, there is the possibility that arbitration may be in order. Neither team is a stranger to the process. Shyam Das, get ready for Selig’s call on the batphone.

03.04.12
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Selig slaps down Madden report

The Chronicle’s Giants beat writer Hank Schulman has the scoop directly from the commish’s office:

And, it is not true that Commissioner Bud Selig and baseball owners have all but decided to uphold the Giants’ territorial rights to San Jose, which would preclude the A’s from going there.

There are two schools of thought in how the owners operate in regards to these kinds of votes. One is that like other political bodies, there has to be some amount of lobbying – direct or indirect – to garner votes. That’s what a lot of the traditional media and Oakland-or-bust advocates say is the big obstacle for Lew Wolff in getting territorial rights to the South Bay granted to the A’s.

Then there’s the other school, proffered by many in the national media and the local beat writers, that Commissioner Bud Selig pulls all of the strings politically, and that a vote is effectively a formality, a formal show of unity. I subscribe to this view because Selig’s body of work is testament to it – witness how Selig pushed through the playoffs expansion. It took longer than most expected, but he waded through it and came up with short-term (2012 only) and long-term solutions.

LIke it or not, that’s how Selig works. He did the same thing with the Astros sale and coming move to the American League. It’s not that he’s rallying votes or support. He’s making the deal, or “engaging in shuttle diplomacy” as Schulman suggests. The owners begged Selig to continue as commissioner until he’s 80 years old at $20+ million per year. They’re paying him to act as a mediator, facilitator, and a leader for their cause (and to some degree, baseball’s). He’s there because the owners don’t have to deal with political infighting while he’s the commish because he arbitrates practically every major issue on their behalf. That, folks, is how The Lodge works.

Note: Remember how Selig’s extension was voted 29-1, with John Moores dissenting? They retook the vote ten days later, and the final tally was 30-0.

03.04.12
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More broadcast notes: Spanish broadcasts, opening series

Out of Joe Stiglich’s report about Lew Wolff’s dismissal of Bill Madden’s column, there’s a tiny nugget at the very end that’s more relevant than anything else that happened on Saturday: Spanish broadcasts of A’s games are on their way back! “A large majority” of games will be carried among three stations: KIQI 1010 AM (San Francisco), KATD 990 AM (Sacramento), and KWRU 1330 AM (Fresno). KATD rebroadcasts KIQI, and all three are owned by Multicultural Broadcasting.

Update: As mentioned by Stiglich and in the comments, Amaury Pi-Gonzalez and Manolo Hernandez-Douen will call the games.

Susan Slusser has an update on the opening series in Japan: the games will be on tape delay on MLB Network. Nothing has shown up on the MLB national broadcast schedule so far. The two games are now listed on the A’s April schedule as MLB.TV broadcasts, though those could be subject to blackouts. Slusser also mentioned that the A’s were able to scrounge up a repossessed, brand new scoreboard to use at Phoenix Muni this year. Not bad.

03.03.12
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Bill Madden: Territorial rights will be upheld, no A’s to San Jose + Wolff response

Update 7:48 PM – BANG’s Joe Stiglich has a reaction from Lew Wolff:

“I spoke to Bud today on another matter, he didn’t bring it up,” Wolff said. “I think he would have told me if that’s the case. We talked about something else. I think he would have alerted me or the Giants if he had made a decision.”

Perhaps Bud doesn’t have the heart to break the bad news to his friend.

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The last time NY Daily News baseball writer Bill Madden wrote about the A’s in terms of the franchise’s future was in November, just before the uneventful owner’s meetings. This is what he wrote back then:

Are the Oakland A’s finally about to know the way to San Jose?

According to baseball insiders, the reason A’s co-owner Lew Wolff, the L.A.-based real-estate developer and close personal Selig ally, is not going to be a bidder in the Frank McCourt Dodger auction (as had been frequently speculated) is because the commissioner has given him tacit assurance that his effort to move the A’s to a new stadium in San Jose is eventually going to be approved.

Once Selig completes his major accomplishment of ridding the game and liberating the Dodgers of McCourt – which hopefully will be before Opening Day – he can turn his attention to the A’s, who have been waiting more than two years for his relocation study committee to deliver its report on San Jose and the San Francisco Giants’ territorial rights there.

I followed up with a post. Now Madden’s back and his theory is that the votes aren’t there for the move. It’s better if I just quote Madden directly instead of paraphrasing:

To strip the Giants of their territorial rights to San Jose would require a three-quarters vote of the clubs, and as one baseball lawyer observed: “Clubs would realize what a terrible ‘there but for the grace of God go us’ precedent that would create in which all of their territorial rights would then be in jeopardy.” As an example of that, one can’t imagine the Yankees, Mets or Phillies voting to take the Giants’ territorial rights to San Jose away when it could conceivably open the doors for a team seeking to re-locate to New Jersey.

And that’s it. No other inside sources, named or unnamed, not even the typical political gamesmanship that A’s and Giants ownership have been playing against each other. Nevermind that Madden gets the history of Bob Lurie’s efforts to move the Giants to the South Bay wrong. It can’t happen because the big market teams feel threatened. That’s that.

Of course, there are plenty of other reasons why a team in New Jersey can’t work. To wit:

  • North Jersey’s awful history of supporting the franchises associated with the state (the NY football teams don’t count).
  • The lack of a real geographic center upon which a franchise can be based anywhere in the state.
  • Generally poor, small urban centers where you might logically put a team (Newark, Trenton, Camden).
  • A lack of a grassroots effort to bring MLB to New Jersey. (Baseball in DC and NoVa helped quite a bit politically)
  • Governor Chris Christie’s starve-the-beast fiscal conservatism makes any kind of new, publicly-financed ballpark deal difficult.

To follow Madden’s logic (and the Giants, hmmm), it’s the rights to the South Bay that allowed financing for the China Basin ballpark to happen. But if that sunsets after 2017, what other obligation does baseball have to the Giants? And since I haven’t heard this question asked, I suppose I should pose it now:

If Bob Lurie had not gone after the South Bay, he wouldn’t have been granted the rights by Wally Haas. After Lurie struck out in SF for the last time and threatened to move to Tampa Bay, Magowan/Shorenstein swooped in to save the Giants. Would Magowan have asked for rights to the South Bay in 1993-96 in order to finance AT&T Park, knowing that he wasn’t actually going to build there but rather in downtown SF?

I seriously doubt that would’ve happened. The dot-com boom had not started. Google had not yet been a startup. Yahoo! was in its infancy. Apple was near death. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t yet out of elementary school. Only “old school” tech companies like HP, Intel, and Cisco were the talk of the Valley back then.

Now, if the other big market Eastern teams are the linchpin to the A’s move and they actually feel threatened, that’s one thing. That’s one argument that the anti-San Jose crowd has been promulgating for some time. That’s entirely possible. If that’s the case, all of this drama could’ve been dispensed with years ago. Let’s remember that moving the Rays to Jersey, Charlotte, Las Vegas, or San Antonio is completely different from what the A’s and Giants are doing, because:

  • The A’s and Giants already share television and radio territories, local and regional.
  • The A’s and Giants are not restricted from marketing in each other’s stadium territories.

The two situations are not comparable other than the fact that the A’s and Rays are in bad ballparks in suboptimal cities (Oakland, St. Petersburg). If Madden’s right, then the contraction talk has to begin since no other market is really in a position to make a ballpark happen for the next several years. Then again, as I’ve argued before, are the owners ready to shell out $1 billion to contract two teams, kill 10 minor league teams, invite a Congressional inquiry while MLB is growing 7% every year, and get into a major battle with the players union over potential lost salaries? That to me seems like a much more difficult battle than dealing with the issues of two teams whose total impact on the league is 5-6% annually.

If the A’s are forced to stay in Oakland and the Wolff/Fisher group sells, then it will be incumbent upon an East Bay “Magowan” to save the A’s. There will be no hometown discount franchise price. One of Bud Selig’s biggest goals is to get as much for a franchise as possible, and a discount would run counter to that. He’s also not going to allow the A’s to “make it work at the Coliseum” indefinitely, because that’s not an improvement in his eyes, and probably not for his eventual successor either.

Madden’s article is what happens when there’s nothing to report. We’re in a vacuum right now, at least until the start of the season or even May. We should let actual news push the agenda, instead of letting someone’s agenda create the news. Or, as Rob Neyer wrote,

Forcing the A’s to remain where they are is good for nobody except the Giants.

Bingo.

03.03.12
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MLB finalizes postseason expansion

After a longer than expected set of negotiations with the players union, MLB commissioner Bud Selig got his wish of additional teams in the playoffs. One wild card team will be added to each league, with the two wild cards in each league playing each other in a one game playoff in order to advance to the divisional round.

The issue for implementing the expansion in 2012 was that the 8-team postseason schedule was already baked, making the accommodation of even one game per league difficult. Two or three Saturdays ago, one of the MLB Network shows did a segment on the logistical trickiness. Going into this year, the 2012 postseason schedule looked like this:

Postseason series schedule windows

That puts the play-in game on either the 4th or 5th, with the knowledge that the 4th may be used for a division winner playoff. It sets up a situation where, this year, an AL East team could, if tied for the division lead after game 162, play game #163 on the 4th, lose, then travel across the country to play the Angels on the 5th for the wild card playoff, then fly back across the country to host the first two games of a divisional series on the 6th. And that’s assuming that there are no makeup games to accommodate.

To alleviate some of the strain for the wild card winners, just for this year the divisional series will be held in the abhorrent 2-3 format that we detested so much in the early aughts. It’ll go back to the 2-2-1 format next year. One nice change is the elimination of the “teams from the same division can’t play each other in the divisional round” rule.

This expansion may force MLB to consider going back to the regular season schedule that next year starts on April 1/2, 2013 and ends September 29 (April 1 would be the previously traditional Cincinnati home opener). That format would allow for September 30 for game 163 and/or makeup games, a buffer off day, the wild card playoff game on October 2, another travel day, and finally the divisional series starting on Friday, October 4, 2013. If MLB got greedy and decided to make the wild card playoff game a three-game series (which I’m not against), it could also be accommodated. The old CBA calls for the “championship season” (regular season) to last anywhere from 178 to 183 days, not accounting for foreign opening days like the one being held in Japan this year. This year the season last 182 days. A switch back to what I described would be 182 days long.

As great as the last day of the 2011 regular season was, it was probably a once-in-a-generation event and not something we should expect to see regularly. This format change should work as intended, making the divisional win more valuable and making the wild card teams work harder.

03.02.12
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Parsing the Kings Arena term sheet

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View from the northeast has realigned rail lines and platforms to the right, original train station on the other side of the arena. Does the arena look like Staples Center? If it does it's probably no coincidence.

Late last night, the long-awaited nonbinding term sheet and working report for the Sacramento ESC (Kings Arena) were released to the public. The term sheet itself is 18 pages long, so thankfully the City included a two-page summary. From reading the entire thing, I took away a few items.

Breakdown of contributions to be made by the various stakeholders

  • There’s still a lot to figure out. While the term sheet clearly spells out the initial contributions to be made by the Kings ($73.25 million) and AEG ($58.75 million), there’s no sense of what rent either party will pay to the City. That detail doesn’t have to be revealed until April 15.
  • A new item, which has surfaced in the last few weeks, is the requirement of a 1,000-space parking garage near or adjacent to the arena. It appears that AEG requested this in order to satisfy potential premium seat/suite buyers. The garage will cost $25 million to build and will be funded by a combination of City downtown improvement funding (MOPA) and money from developer ICON-Taylor. The catch is that AEG is committing to leasing all of the spaces for the duration of the arena lease.
  • Predevelopment costs will cost $13 million, with half of it paid by the City and 25% shares to the Kings and AEG.
  • AEG and the Kings will split possessory interest (property) taxes, though it appears that those funds will be used to service debt (PILOT).
  • The NBA All Star Game will be held at the arena within three years of opening.
  • The team name must be “Sacramento ____”.
  • The 5% ticket fee on Kings events would be part of the Kings’ ongoing contribution, a corresponding fee on non-Kings events would be part of AEG’s contribution.
  • The Kings would get “net parking revenues” for games, the City would get that revenue from non-game events.
  • An additional $1 facility fee would go towards a capital improvements fund.
  • Power Balance Pavilion would cease to operate once the new arena started operating.
  • Opening date target is September 2015.
  • The EIR is expected to be completed in 12-14 months, though that partly depends on whether the arena has its own project-level EIR or is folded into the Railyards EIR as a supplemental piece.

For me, the most surprising news is the greater planning stuff. As part of previous plans for the Railyards, the tracks were to be realigned away from the train station, so that they form a sort of triangle framed by the new tracks to the north, H Street to the south, and 7th Street to the east. The arena is meant to fit inside that triangle. As you can see from the aerial shot below, some of the infrastructure has already been built, such as the platforms and new bridges for 5th and 6th streets that will extend over the tracks.

The realignment means that if you want to access the tracks from the station, you’ll have to walk under the width of the arena to do so, some 800-900 feet. It’s strange and perhaps a bit taxing, but kind of cool when you think about it. Light rail will remain adjacent to the old station.

Now that we know the upfront contributions and what the City expects/hopes to get from selling its parking revenue, we know what’s really at stake: $255 million. That’s the amount that the City is pledged to provide if the project moves forward. If the City can get $230 million upfront ir projects is the present value of parking revenue, then everything lines up. Just in case it doesn’t, the City is considering floating normal revenue bonds for the project. Over 30 years at 7%, that comes to $18 million per year. The City, with help from Sacramento County, is moving money around to protect against the project hitting the General Fund. Parking revenue provides around $9 million per year to the General Fund. To its credit, the City has listed the various project revenue sources that will be used to offset that $9 million. That includes the aforementioned 5% ticket tax revenue, the City’s parking revenue from non-King events, and various other sources. Where the math gets fuzzy is that if the Kings are getting the parking proceeds while they’re playing, that’s a huge chunk that isn’t going to the City ($2.64 million). Plus there’s the other $9 million that will be needed to service the debt. Is all of that to be provided by the Kings and AEG?

I have some confidence that in the coming months, the stakeholders will be able to whittle away at the doubts and come up with solid, if not airtight, plan. The City is expected to vote on the term sheet next Tuesday, which gives them little time to review it. Fortunately, no serious commitment needs to be made for at least another 10 weeks, while the lease details are worked out. Unfortunately, that’s also how the 49ers plan was put together. To be continued…

03.01.12
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2012 TV schedule

Far be it for any fan of a team, whose loftiest goal in 2012 is to stay out of the AL West cellar, to complain about TV coverage. Yet here I am, and I will. Normally at this time of year I’d be coming off of SF Beer Week and looking forward to NCAA basketball conference tournaments and the Big Dance. As I wrote yesterday, it’s all baseball for me this year. Whether this becomes a tradition is unclear. For now I’m going with it.

CSN California will carry 144 out of 162 regular season games this year, plus one spring training contest (and one A’s-Giants tilt on CSN Bay Area). Fox Sports will have two games per their Saturday game-of-the-week. The A’s don’t show up on ESPN’s national schedule. TBS hasn’t even published their schedule yet. MLB Network and MLB.tv will show another five spring training games. The coverage gaps are in the places we as A’s fans have become accustomed: midweek getaway day games.

I’ve already renewed my MLB radio subscription, so I don’t expect to miss anything regardless of where I am, starting tomorrow. I don’t need to see every spring training, especially the split squad affairs. But I am concerned about the first two games of the regular season, which are technically home games to be played at the Tokyo Dome. The two games will have their first pitches at 3:10 and 2:10 AM Pacific Time on 3/28 and 3/29, respectively. Four years ago, when the A’s were playing San Jose State to Boston’s Nebraska, the games were broadcast on ESPN, so if you wanted to stay up the games were there. This year that may not be the case.

For weeks now the games have shown up on the schedule for Mariners’ RSN ROOT Sports, and not on CSN California’s schedule. To get some clarity, I reached out to friend-of-the-blog and ace CSN producer Casey Pratt. He confirmed that CSNCA would not be carrying the games, whereas ROOT Sports would, and that there was a chance that MLB Network may carry those games even though they’re not on the schedule. An arrangement could be made per MLB Network’s retransmission agreements with the various RSNs. If it can’t, it’ll be a strange way to start the season, with no TV. Even if MLB Network were to delay it for rebroadcast in the morning, that would be fine. I’m not certain if the blackout rule for the premium Extra Innings or MLB.tv packages would be applicable in this case, with the A’s being the “home” team.

Japan games aside, the TV schedule isn’t too bad. I’d prefer every game to be televised, but if the businessperson specials aren’t that’s more reason to get out to the Coliseum. I don’t mind that one bit. That first time I hear Ken Korach describing balls and strikes, I’ll know spring’s here. Bring it on.

02.29.12
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Ballpark fever in February

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 early, too early to be sated by spring training. College baseball is an excellent, affordable brand of ball, and I have to admit being more curious than usual thanks to my recent reading of The Art of Fielding, rookie novelist Chad Harbach’s work about baseball at a small, fictional Midwestern private university.

An unusual 70 feet from the plate to the backstop at Sunken Diamond. Nevermind that as Stanford P Mark Appel rarely had to make C Eric Smith do more than reach down to rein in a pitch.

What started with Appel toying around with the Texas Longhorns to the tune of 10 K’s turned into a mad dash all over Northern California to see baseball wherever I could find it. (This is what happens when you’re not married, have no kids, and you’re comfortable seeing your friends only twice a week.) Sunken Diamond is a pleasant, serene environment, with more than ample foul territory and trees beyond the outfield that effectively block out civilization. The Friday night game, with a published attendance of 2,624, was typical for Stanford baseball: a very family friendly environment with kids running up and down hills to grab foul balls.

On Saturday I drove up to Sacramento because I felt like being environmentally irresponsible. On the way to Cowtown I stopped in Stockton, where there was nothing happening at Banner Island Ballpark. Not wanting to stay in Stockton any longer than humanly necessary, I jumped back on I-5 and headed north. I stopped at Raley Field, hoping that someone was there or that a gate was open. Thankfully, as I arrived a college team (JC?) entered the gates and was getting ready to take the field. There was a sign advertising National Anthem singers, though I didn’t see any staff on hand to guide any audition process. I quickly went in and took a few snapshots, which I’ve never had a chance to do with Raley Field empty (I’m sure if I called the River Cats’ media relations they would’ve granted it but I tend to operate by the seat of my pants). The field was in fine form, just waiting for its masters to handle grounders and make great catches on it.

Ready to go in West Sacramento

Three (!) years ago I wrote an article about how difficult it would be to expand Raley Field to MLB size. Rain caused major changes in construction methods, including a change from enormous steel columns to poured-in-place concrete columns and light steel trusses supporting the press box and suite/club level. This is what that structure looks like:

All of this would have to be scrapped to make way for multiple decks and/or suite levels.

This is what a properly sized (overengineered) column at Busch Stadium looks like:

Now that's a knife column.

After the brief stop at Raley, I crossed the river and went to the train station, which as far as I know is the closest the public can get to the Railyards site where the planned arena will sit. I’ve written enough about that so I won’t bother with that subject in this post. Once I got my fill of downtown, I headed east to the CSU-Sacramento campus, where the Hornets were getting ready to play a day game against Seattle University. If Sunken Diamond is one of Northern California’s nicest college ballparks, Sac State is one of the most spartan. The grandstand is all aluminum, with mostly bleachers and a smattering of real seats in the first few rows. There is no press box and no actual restrooms. Tickets cost $5, but I could have easily gotten a good view for free from the parking garage in left field. The PA announcer sounded like an older Rick Tittle. Ambience was provided by a busy rail line across the street and a handful of coeds who cheered on every player on the Hornet squad. Regardless, I enjoyed the experience.

View from the 6th floor of the student/faculty garage just beyond the left field fence.

I got my fill of Hornet baseball after about six innings. The UC Davis baseball team was on the road over the weekend, so I skipped The other Farm and headed back to the Bay Area. My last stop was scheduled to be Albert Park in San Rafael, home of the San Rafael Pacifics of the independent North American Baseball League. That leg of the trip was ruined when I got a hankering to visit Russian River Brewing in Santa Rosa, a half-hour and another county away. By the time I got to Albert Park it was completely dark and a few transients were lingering about. That’s just as well, since only yesterday did a Marin County judge allow the Pacifics to start operating in full with ticket sales and improvements to Albert Park. The old fashioned covered grandstand will be expanded from 800 to 900 seats. Tickets will start at $10 for general admission, though you have to think there will be numerous merchant nights to provide free or heavily discounted ducats. There’s even a tryout on March 17, so if you have a few tools and you aren’t dunk by noon, you may want to drop by for a tryout.

The high nets at Schott Stadium are a necessity as the field is only steps from traffic.

Sunday was a day of rest and no baseball. With no games scheduled on Monday, I chose to take in a game at Schott Stadium at Santa Clara University on Tuesday afternoon. The park is tightly wedged into a corner  of El Camino Real and Campbell Avenue, surrounded on two sides by university apartment housing and a few industrial buildings. There are a good number of permanent seats, and while there are plenty of bleachers, you can tell that a few corners have been cut there. The bleachers are basically standard aluminum sections that aren’t connected to each other. Even though the park is only seven years old, the bleachers feel rickety. The dugouts are not set much below grade, so the roofs of the dugouts obstruct the views down the line. The PA system is distractingly loud. Other than those niggles, the experience is quite pleasant. Schott Stadium is across the street from the main campus and down the block from the Santa Clara Caltrain station. A small parking lot next to the stadium has a space reserved for namesake and former A’s owner Steve Schott.

The whole trip reminded my of one of my other ballpark trips in the Midwest or East Coast, except that I didn’t have to shell out for hotel rooms. I’ll try to do one of these with the various minor league parks later this year, and perhaps another trip involving more college ballparks.

02.29.12
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News for 2/29/12 (Leap Day)

A good amount of stuff to report today:

  • Oakland’s CEDA Committee approved an action to have the City Council vote on EIR funding for Coliseum City. The City Council will take up the action next Tuesday night. A’s Fan Radio did a stalwart job of covering today’s proceedings. A similar action was taken prior to the City Council voting on Victory Court in December 2010. If the City Council approves the expenditure, two things need to happen: A) The work has to actually happen, unlike Victory Court, and B) A plan must be clearly articulated to show how the teams and venues will be accommodated. That last bit is probably the most important to the leagues, who are the real gatekeepers. Update 12:10 PM: As Bryan Grunwald notes in the comments, the 980 Park concept will be included as an alternative.
  • The Santa Clara City Council approved the 40-year ground lease for the 49ers stadium. This was considered a formality because the Council approved the lease to the Stadium Authority, which is simply the City Council wearing different hats. The interesting note to come out of the session was dissenter Jamie McLeod’s mentioning the ongoing California Supreme Court case over a potential new referendum. The case could be decided in the next week.
  • A new grassroots group trying to keep all three teams in Oakland has been formed. The group is called Save Oakland Sports. Seems a bit late to do something like this, but it can’t hurt. Besides, Baseball Oakland has gone largely dormant since the Victory Court plan was scrapped.
  • Frank McCourt has been unwilling to sell the parking lots surrounding Dodger Stadium, and several bidding groups have dropped out as a result. One of the drop-outs was the group led by Rick Caruso and Joe Torre, considered one of the frontrunners. The parking lot attendant has truly come full circle.
  • The Kings arena deal looks complex. And yes, it does look like the Maloofs will be borrowing to put up their share. The term sheet is due for public release on Thursday.
  • The City of Miami approved funding for rubber wheel trolleys that will run between downtown and the Marlins Ballpark in Little Havana.
  • San Francisco’s America’s Cup will be missing one major venue going forward: Piers 30 & 32. The piers were supposed to be used as a large staging area for teams. Costs may have proved prohibitive. The race will continue as planned, but there will be huge distances between the venues.
  • MLB and the MLBPA are finalizing details of the revised playoff system that will include a fifth team in each league and a wildcard playoff game.

Radio ratings were released last week. The winter results show a sort of stabilization. As baseball season begins, KNBR-680’s ratings should rise. Will The Game’s? As the Warriors end their season early, KNBR-1050 should take a hit.

Arbitron ratings for the last three months

If you’re wondering, former A’s station KTRB finally showed up in the ratings book last month. The rating? 0.0 in the SF market.