Category Archives: Athletics

04.21.12
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What the NFL wants, it gets

You have to hand it to Roger Goodell. He has a playbook for getting stadium deals moving, and by God it works. Goodell lets the team owner come up with a proposal, and if it stalls he comes in with Goldman Sachs in tow and/or a threat to move, implied or otherwise. As a result, Santa Clara put up $900 million in public loans and cash for the 49ers stadium project, while the Vikings – after much debate – are getting a deal crafted in the Minnesota legislature that could provide up to $800 million in public assistance for stay home.

In the Vikings’ case, all it required was a little open-ended discussion about Los Angeles and a sighting of owner Zygi Wilf’s private jet in SoCal. LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has become the Oscar Goodman of football, an outsider but serious power player whose city’s existential threat to other cities forces them to the table. The Vikings deal is by no means complete, but it’s further along than any talks to date, so that has to be encouraging for both Vikes fans and Wilf.

On Thursday, the 49ers officially broke ground on their new home as of the 2014 season. The stadium will undoubtedly be impressive and significantly better than Candlestick Park in just about every way imaginable, except affordability. (I thought I was going to get some pictures of the event but that fell through, sorry.)  Now we can talk in earnest about the Bay Area hosting a future Super Bowl or World Cup matches. It’s pretty exciting, despite my misgivings about the finances.

And it’s with that news that I can sit back, somewhat detached from the plan and say that I’m jealous of the 49ers right now. I don’t want a major handout for the A’s or Goldman Sachs waiting in the wings. I don’t need a stadium that costs more than a billion dollars. I just want a new place where I can take friends, where it doesn’t feel like pulling teeth to ask them if they want to go. A place that celebrates baseball, not merely hosts it at best adequately. Despite what some readers think, I don’t care where it’s built. If that’s Oakland, great. If it’s San Jose, so be it. Even Sacramento I wouldn’t mind so much at this point. My stance has always remained steady all this time – as long as it’s privately financed and I can get to it locally, I’m all for it. On this blog and elsewhere we have these endless debates about what it will take, territorial rights, what resources specific cities can offer, and there will be plenty of time for that later. For now let’s simply look at the leagues.

Mostly, I’m jealous that the NFL can get its stuff together on stadia so much better than MLB. It doesn’t matter that on the whole NFL stadia cost twice as much. The projects should be far riskier because of the expense and the inherent lack of utilization. In the post-downturn, post-redevelopment California, the toughest market to build anything new, the NFL will have beaten MLB by at least two years, maybe more. In the time that Bud Selig has had his panel discussing what to do about the A’s, we could’ve had a fancy (or not) groundbreaking. We could be talking about the future. Instead, we’re treading water as usual. No one can tread water forever.

04.19.12
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A Streetcar Named Aspire

Today the commissioner said that the A’s need a new stadium… and that’s about it.

In Billy Beane’s weekly slot on The Drive, he mentioned that the team/ownership is at “the end of the process” and that regarding the recent news “there seems to be a lot of smoke, and where there’s smoke there’s fire”. Not exactly revealing, but at least it lines up with Selig trying to broker a deal between the A’s and Giants.

Added 8:50 PM – Joe Stiglich has more on the negotiations that may or may not be happening that no one officially wants to talk about. 

I did find out something revealing about the Coliseum City project. Turns out that as part of the planning for the project, the City is looking at putting in a streetcar or trolley. The streetcar is not part of the Oakland Airport Connector, which is currently under construction. It wouldn’t go downtown or to Jack London Square. Instead it would be a very short trolley, running around one mile in length between the Coliseum BART station and the Edgewater area on the other side of the Nimitz. I’ve racked my brain and haven’t heard of a streetcar or trolley built for what is primarily a sports complex.

I can only assume that the project’s principals and supporters want this streetcar to improve the project’s attractiveness as a potential corporate and commercial hub, since it would provide a direct link to BART and the other parts of the Coliseum City. What’s not clear is why they’d choose a streetcar. A people mover like the Airport Connector would make more sense. An extension to the Airport Connector from the BART terminus through the complex (creating a “U”) would make the most sense, except that station’s design (see pic below) prevents that kind of alignment.

The Airport Connector's alignment runs perpendicular to San Leandro Street and the BART alignment, making it difficult to extend and turn the system.

The crazy thing about this streetcar idea is that it creates a third, disjointed transit option in this relatively small area. Meanwhile, there are far better places to use resources on a streetcar project, such as Broadway (which is getting yet another separate study). Clearly, if the streetcar option gains traction it’ll add a quarter-billion to the project’s $2 billion price tag. Yet it might be considered a necessity if the City wants to lure a big corporate fish.

As Marin County rejected George Lucas’s long-gestating studio expansion project and then ran back to Lucas in desperation only to be rejected by the filmmaker, Oakland City Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan wrote an open letter to Lucas encouraging him to take a tour of the city. Coliseum City has to be at or near the top of places the City would offer to Lucas. Now, it’s hard to envision any locale in Oakland comparing to the pristine Skywalker Ranch or the wonderfully preserved and adapted Letterman Center at the Presidio. And Oakland’s already tried to push Coliseum City in its bid for the Lawrence Berkeley Lab expansion and lost. But if you’re gonna dream big, you might as well go fully preposterous. I know of at least one reader, native Oaklander, and Lucasfilm employee who would weep tears of joy if Oakland got Lucas’s blessing to build the new studio in Oakland.

I couldn't resist.

04.19.12
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KQED debate + Andy Dolich’s game

KQED’s Nina Thorsen finishes off her three-part series (1, 2) on the A’s future with a San Jose-vs.-Oakland debate. Featured prominently is our own Jeffrey and his dulcit tone.

As much as I would love for this to be wrapped by the end of the owners meetings next month, it doesn’t appear that it will. That leaves us A’s fans twisting in the wind yet again. Thanks ever so much, Bud.

—–

While I was in transit yesterday, the Merc published an op-ed by Andy Dolich. In the piece, Dolich predicts that the A’s will stay in Oakland long-term.

His last gig was as an executive for the 49ers, keeping the seat warm for Jed York. Interestingly, Dolich’s job was to advocate for the ‘Stick while the Yorks pushed hard on the Santa Clara stadium plan, which undoubtedly led to some conflict. After Dolich was dismissed, he continued to advocate for a SF stadium instead of Santa Clara. Ann Killion wrote two years ago that the firing of Dolich by the 49ers would come back to haunt them and hurt the Santa Clara plan. Amazing how a winning season and help from the NFL proves pundits wrong, eh?

Dolich gets a few facts wrong in his impassioned plea. The South Philly sports complex has four teams, not three. Staples Center on its own has three team tenants. That’s not significant. I’m in complete agreement that the Bay Area can support all of the pro teams that currently reside in the Bay Area.

Reading between the lines, it looks like Dolich is appealing to someone in the East Bay to become a frontman for the Coliseum City plan – if not now, when the plan has legs. That would be a great idea assuming that Coliseum City got off the ground. It’s always good to have someone who has credibility in the sports industry, a history of past successes, and local ties. In December 2010, Dolich floated the idea of a new multipurpose stadium in Oakland, one with the technology to be less of a “neither fish nor fowl” problem than the 60’s-era stadia. I deconstructed the concept and explained why it wouldn’t work. Dolich read my post and sent me an email, which led to a very pleasant exchange on stadia and arenas. I think I even promised to meet him for lunch to talk shop, which never happened, unfortunately.

The bottom line is that it’s nice to hear someone advocating for Oakland and the East Bay, even if his office is actually in the South Bay. Those putting together a Coliseum City plan wouldn’t hurt themselves by having Andy Dolich in a prominent position. To be clear, that’s probably at least a year down the road if it happens at all.

04.16.12
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The Reckoning in May?

Update 3:45 PM – Slusser just tweeted that the issue will not be on the agenda even though Wolff has requested it. And the beat goes on…

Susan Slusser reports that the A’s are putting territorial rights on the owners meetings agenda next month. Will we finally get a resolution? We just might.

Back in December I had heard that ownership had the option to put the matter on the February meeting agenda. For whatever reason that didn’t happen. My guess is that the acceleration of the Dodgers’ sale and bankruptcy resolution came somewhat unexpectedly, which forced the A’s back onto the backburner once more.

There is an inherent amount of risk to making this move, as a vote could go against Lew Wolff and John Fisher. The big unknown is whether this vote is being shepherded by Bud Selig, who generally tries to build consensus before doing anything. Considering how long this has taken, anything’s possible. If this goes according to Selig’s M.O., he probably has both the votes and at least some kind of framework in place for a deal to compensate the Giants, whatever that is. If not, Wolff could lose and be left with no other option than to work something out in Oakland.

Slusser cites the Tracy Ringolsby article that we mentioned here last week, along with the threat of a San Jose antitrust lawsuit should the vote go against the A’s and San Jose.

Either way, I’m glad we’re finally getting somewhere with this. It promises to be a very exciting and newsworthy next couple of weeks. I’ll be back from San Diego the day before the meetings start, so I’ll be able to give it the attention it deserves.

P.S. – If you’re wondering whether or not a vote will actually be taken, just remember that the executive council had a report presented by Selig’s 3-man panel during the winter meetings. If the owners didn’t have the information necessary to vote on the issue before, they most assuredly do now.

04.15.12
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Dedication of a NRAF

Today we have a guest post from Stomper00, who invited me to last Monday’s game. He told me of his upbringing as a NRAF (non-resident Athletics fan), and I found it so compelling that I asked to him to write something about it that I could put in a guest post. I think you’ll find it interesting too.

– Ed./ML

2012 is my 25th year as an Oakland A’s fan and the start of my first year as a resident of the Bay Area. I was born and raised in the LA area and for the last five years I lived in Orange County. I knew that I loved baseball once I started playing in little leagues but I never grew up as a fan of the Dodgers or Angels because they never really appealed to me for some reason. In 1985, shortly after I started playing baseball, I started to collect baseball cards like most kids. It was a cool way to learn the sport, and where the other teams were located. Plus it was a sneaky way to score a stick of gum. During the 1987 season, I accumulated quite a few cards so I started to organize them by team. There was pretty much an equal distribution of cards for each team except for one, the Oakland A’s. For whatever reason, I had a significantly greater amount of A’s cards than any other team.  At the same time, I also noticed that their team colors were not like everyone else, with their standard green and gold colors. So I decided that I was going to be an Oakland A’s fan because they were different. The timing was perfect too; the A’s started to dominate MLB shortly thereafter.

In 1988 I was kind of excited to see the Dodgers in the World Series against the Athletics. Game one was a game that I would never forget. We had a family gathering at my parent’s house and I was playing hide-and-seek outside with my cousins while my uncles were watching the game. I really wasn’t paying too much attention to the game but I would check in every so often to find out the score or to watch the Dodgers come up to bat. I came in just in time to see Kirk Gibson hit that infamous home run and I was jumping up and down in excitement because I was rooting for the home team. That’s when one of my uncles said “Hey, I thought you were and Athletics fan.” I replied “No, I’m an A’s fan.” He started laughing and said, “They are the same team!”…I went from pure joy to confusion, shock, anger, and sadness in a matter of minutes. I never realized that the A’s and Athletics were one and the same. All the baseball cards I collected at the time said “A’s” on the cards. I had a few “Athletics” cards but I just filed them away with the rest of my other non-A’s cards. At the time, there was no Internet or MLB packages on TV to watch out of market games, so my only exposure to A’s info was the league standings in the LA Times or whenever they came to town to play the Angels. Even today whenever I see that Gibson home run I can still feel that emotional rollercoaster inside me.

I’ve seen the A’s countless times in Anaheim since 1989, but I never got a chance to see a game at the Coliseum before Mount Davis was built, it’s something that I’ll always regret. I told myself that once I was old enough I would drive up to Oakland to watch a game to cheer for my team. My first A’s game in Oakland was Game 3 of the 2001 ALDS where Derek Jeter made that crazy play. It was a really cool experience; I woke up around 4:30am for no reason on game day thinking that I should be at the game so I got ready and drove up to Oakland with nothing planned out. Once I arrived, I got a hotel room near by and scalped a ticket to get in. I was in awe because I was finally in a place where there’s so many A’s fans and I could feel comfortable cheering for my team, to be in a place where so much history took place, and finally a place where I could stock up on A’s gear. Being from SoCal, it’s pretty hard to find anything A’s related.  It would have been a perfect day if only Jeremy tried to slide home. Since 2001 I’ve been to 45 home games, sometimes with friends but mostly solo. I’ve even drove up a few times for afternoon games and drove back home to SoCal immediately after the game was over and would listen to Chris Townsend at the start of my long drive home until I lost the signal. Unfortunately the signal usually lasted about 15-20 minutes for me. Now that I actually live here, I’ll be at the majority of the games during the season.

Most of the games I’ve been to were generally sell-outs because it was either a playoff game or there was some special event or giveaway at the game. I know that I’m an exception to the rule, but I never really understood why attendance was/is low at the Coliseum. You can say its ownership (Maybe, but I disagree for the most part), the Coliseum (One day we will all miss her), the team on the field (We’ve had some great ones) or anything really but does it really matter? This is our team and it’s our responsibility to support them through think and thin! When I hear that some people don’t want to drive 40 miles to see a game I roll my eyes…try 830 miles round trip! I hate seeing a division within the A’s fan base because of the stadium situation. Personally, I would love nothing more for the A’s to stay in Oakland but given the possible scenario of the team moving to San Jose or moving out of state, which would you rather have? It took me 22 years to find my way up here and the last thing I want is for my team to move out of the Bay Area! They say you never know what you have until you lose it, I know what I have now that live here and will cherish every moment until the stadium decision is made. I only wish that everyone else could see it like me.

Go A’s, Go Athletics!!!

Stomper00

04.14.12
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A’s break out their own legal heavyweights

The Merc’s Internal Affairs column has revealed that A’s ownership has brought a big gun to what could be future legal proceedings against the Giants – or at least the Giants’ astroturf group, Stand for San Jose. In this case it’s trial lawyer Allen Ruby, best known in the sports world as Barry Bonds’ attorney in the slugger’s perjury case. Ruby is a partner at Skadden Arps, one the largest law firms in the world.

Ruby successfully defended the NFL against the Raiders, as well as former San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales when he was brought up on corruption charges. MLB teams can’t sue each other or baseball due to a clause in the sport’s constitution. MLB tends to handle its business within the confines of its ownership ranks, a method furthered under Bud Selig. That doesn’t leave out the possibility of a team going outside to sue a city or team on non-baseball grounds, as the Giants have done. If anything, bringing on Ruby is like a country stockpiling nuclear weapons during the Cold War. No one intends to actually use them, but the possibility is there. Personally, I don’t think this ever sees a trial, so we won’t get to see Ruby in a courtroom representing the A’s.

Also onboard is Cecily T. Barclay, a partner with Perkins Coie whose specialty is land use and entitlements. Coie was named 2012 San Francisco Land Use & Zoning Law Lawyer of the Year by industry website Best Lawyers, and has worked on a number of large projects throughout the Bay Area, including the Lennar/Hunters Point project, the Cargill Saltworks/Redwood City plan, and Rivermark in Santa Clara.

As impressive as this legal firepower is, I hope it never has to get used, because if it does it only means more delays for the A’s.

04.14.12
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Changes at the Coliseum

Throughout the first homestand, I walked around the Coliseum to take stock of any changes in the stadium. After Wednesday’s game, I fired off an email to A’s VP of Stadium Operations David Rinetti to see if I missed anything. Here’s what I saw:

  • New ticket kiosks on BART Plaza and outside Gates C & D
  • Speakers above plaza level seats
  • New signage (navigation, ads)
  • Paint along concourses, especially the bleacher concourse
  • New food items such as the pork nachos

Rinetti added that in the future the West Side Club will feature a game-used merchandise booth, which sounds cool. As to the scoreboards that were potentially going to be replaced? “Not on the schedule,” according to Rinetti.

04.12.12
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All sides, now

KQED producer extraordinaire and friend-of-the-blog Nina Thorsen has been interviewing many people about the ballpark and potential relocation issue. Today she posted the second in a series, this one focusing on San Jose interests for and against Cisco Field. This follows up on last week’s Oakland-focused segment (which had a bit with our own Jeffrey). Next week will be a comparison of Oakland and San Jose from a bottom line standpoint. All of it is definitely worth a listen.

Something worth a read is a piece by Fox Sports’ Tracy Ringolsby from March 31. Somehow this article eluded me despite my best combing for news, and for that I apologize. Gojohn10 referred me to the article yesterday while we were at the game, and I was so astonished by the statement within that I couldn’t believe it. Sure enough, he brought up the article and I was very surprised. I posted the important blurb in the comments, but I’m putting it into this post so that front page readers will see it. Enjoy.

The challenges for Oakland A’s is not finding a buyer, but rather coming to agreement with the San Francisco Giants on the A’s desire to move their franchise to San Jose.

“Both sides are deeply positioned and I am in the middle of trying to fashion some type of an agreement,” Selig said. “It is very complicated.”

No other two-team market has territorial rights, but the Giants claim they control the San Jose area, and contend that was a critical part of their ability to finance AT&T Park. Giants officials also argue that Lewis Wolff and his partners were aware of that agreement at the time they purchased the franchise from the Haas Family, which is why they were able to buy the team for $180 million.

“It is different because in 1990 when Bob Lurie wanted to move the Giants to San Jose, Walter Haas, the wonderful owner of the Oakland club, who did things in the best interest of baseball, granted permission,” Selig said. “What got lost there is they didn’t feel it was permission in perpetuity. He gave Bob permission to go down there. Unfortunately or fortunately, it never got changed. We are dealing with a lot of history here.”

It’s part of the challenge of being commissioner.

“Nobody ever said it was going to be an easy job,” Selig said.

I’ve never heard or read Selig go into that much depth on the issue before. It’s a clear indicator that he is actually trying to broker a deal, which as I have written here repeatedly, would not be easy to do but could be done.

04.11.12
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Last night’s crowd

When the weather turns bad, it makes hard core night (Mondays) seem like a piece of cake.

From Chris Townsend's (@townsendradio) Twitter feed last night

The announced paid attendance was 10,670. Obviously the number of people that actually showed up was only a small fraction of that. Blame it on a number of things: rain, ownership, team, stadium, whatever. The real implications of something like this happening are that teams lose money and fanbases look bad. 8,000 no-shows equates to $100,000 in lost concessions revenue. The walk-ups that didn’t occur and the parking passes that weren’t sold also add up. And it makes us look like we’re a bunch of fair weather fans, literally. Are we? I’ll be there today.

One other thing – Tuesday’s are pretty much out for me, so yes, I was secretly rooting for a rainout so that I could see a double-dip today.

04.08.12
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Ostler talks Cespedes, impact

The Chronicle’s Scott Ostler writes about what success Yoenis Céspedes could have, and projects it beyond the field.

It could be an adventure for team ownership, too. What if Céspedes keeps hitting and stirs up interest, a la Linsanity, drawing big crowds to the Oakland ballpark?

That would throw a monkey wrench into ownership’s aggressive campaign to prove that there is no market for baseball in Oakland.

If that happens, A’s owners Lew Wolff and John Fisher will have their own private Cuban missile crisis, and they won’t be able to solve it by picking up the Hot Line and threatening Nikita Khrushchev. Sorry, honey.

Now that would be something. Fans coming out and supporting the team regardless of what they think of ownership? It’d be as if they came to watch baseball or something. I know this: today I sold a bunch of my Giant fan friends on Céspedes. Sometimes all you need is a draw. It’s been proven repeatedly that quality pitching isn’t a draw. Home runs? You know what they say…