Category Archives: Baseball

08.22.12
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PSA: No baseball on the Sabbath

That weird scheduling quirk we talked about at the beginning of the year is coming up this weekend, so consider this a heads up. Thanks to some political party’s convention, the A’s-Rays series was pushed up a day, from Thursday to Saturday. Sunday is a most unusual scheduled off day.

Normally, teams going from the West Coast to the East Coast are allowed an off day to cover travel, whether they decide to leave immediately after a game (road teams) or use the off day for the transcontinental flight (often the A’s). The CBA explicitly calls for this, though every team has a number of exceptions it can use that have to be approved by the league. The A’s are one of the more hospitable WC franchises in that they prefer to have 12:15 starts on Wednesdays, the better to get a move on.

With the A’s having to fly out immediately after today’s game, there’s already a little bit of havoc. A’s beat writers Susan Slusser, Joe Stiglich, and Jane Lee had no choice but to take commercial flights before today’s game, having to deal with transfers to get to TPA. I suppose it just adds a little more flavor to a week of upheaval (Weeks’ demotion yesterday, Colon’s PED suspension today).

As for the event kicking our elephants out of Tropicana Field for another set of elephants, it’s not specifically part of the convention, which will take place at Tampa’s St. Petersburg Times Forum starting on Monday. Instead it’s a welcome party for delegates at the Trop. Whoop-dee-freaking-doo. The Rays are in the middle of a homestand, so no pain on their part.

Apologies in advance to those who observe the Sabbath on Saturday, or who don’t celebrate any Sabbath at all. Oh who am I kidding? Even Sabbath celebrates baseball!

08.21.12
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“Oakland Loves Its Sports Teams” Press Conference on 8/27

Post to the Save Oakland Sports Facebook page earlier tonight – The City of Oakland is putting on a press conference/rally in Frank Ogawa Plaza on Monday, August 27 at 11:00 AM. Here’s the description of the event:

Mayor Quan – joined by regional elected officials, business leaders and sports fans – will share details on the “Oakland Loves Its Sports Teams” Week.

The “Oakland Loves Its Sports Teams” Week will salute the Oakland A’s and Oakland Raiders for being irreplaceable civic treasures that add significantly to the economy, identity, pride and culture of Oakland, Alameda County and the entire East Bay region.

Gotta show the teams some love, especially when both have leases that run out after their respective 2013 seasons. The blurb is right about one thing: the teams are irreplaceable.

Note – It appears that I have been taken off the S.O.S. email chain. Perhaps they chose to close ranks.

08.20.12
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I want to go to there

…

I could stay here forever. Or at least until the sprinklers come on.

So there I was lying on the Coliseum grass, just beyond the infield rim where Jemile Weeks normally mans 2B. The fog had invaded, covering up any stars. I saw closeup how well Clay Wood and his staff covered up all of the evidence of a football game just five days prior. Temperatures had dipped below 60 and the breezes were starting to kick up. At least a thousand fellow A’s fans were assembled on the field, most with blankets, some clutching cups of coffee. It was 10 o’clock, and we were waiting for Moneyball.

The movie itself was introduced by Scott Hatteberg, and just as we did in the pregame ceremony several hours earlier, we cheered players as they were announced or as they appeared on the smallish portable screen. Sound bounced off the still concrete bowl, creating an eerie, unintended echo effect. The stadium lights darkened, and for a moment everything was still, everything was perfect.

I’ve probably seen Moneyball seven or eight times now (three in theaters plus I own a Blu-ray combo pack), so the movie itself wasn’t the attraction. I didn’t go to the red carpet premiere at the Paramount, so this was as much about community as anything else. Yet I distanced myself from people and stayed way back, in an open spot as close to the cordoned off infield as possible. Every so often I would stand up and look back at the old seating bowl, where the safety lights were on and the media had cleared out of the press boxes. For better or worse, this is my second home, I said to myself.

The infield and warning track were off limits to the faithful. From what I could see in fans’ faces, no one cared.

As the movie ended, I gathered all of my things and, mindful of how long I had been there and how emotional the day was, felt absolutely exhausted. Many friends who I had seen in the Coliseum had left long ago. In light and in darkness Mount Davis stood, impressive in scale and magnitude. For once I didn’t hate the edifice. It was just sitting there, alone and somewhat forlorn, no lights on. As I started to walk toward the stairs I thought to myself, I wish one of those suites was my apartment so that I could head up there and go to sleep instead of driving home.

If I had the money and someone built it, I’d live in an apartment or condo overlooking an A’s ballpark. Not one with a postage stamp sized view like in San Diego, detached from the action. A place that was as far as the upper Mt. Davis suites are now, with a balcony. I could wake up, observe the grass get cut and the mound manicured over a cup of Aeropressed coffee. Watch as tour groups came through and wave to them in my robe smoking jacket. Head downstairs, where there would probably be some retail component, for a sandwich or pastry. And watch the game from the balcony, or head down to one of the field box seats that were mandatory to buy with the apartment lease or condo purchase.

None of this is possible at the Coliseum, of course, for myriad reasons. The Raiders need those suites to be used as suites. Mt. Davis was never built with this kind of mixed use in mind. It’s something I can still dream about at a new ballpark. Given the cost of developing a park these days, it’s not a bad way to help with the financing. Follow me on this.

When NASCAR was at its peak before the crash, several tracks built condo complexes that overlooked the action. Most often, it was rich racing aficionados who bought up the units, forgoing an RV weekend in the paddock for an pied-à-terre above the track. To me that sounds crazy, considering that most tracks will get one or two races a year plus various minor events. It doesn’t compare with 81-82 games plus concerts and whatever else the team can attract to a stadium. Yet the closest thing to a residential component we’ve ever seen is the hotel at Rogers Centre (formerly SkyDome), now a Marriott Renaissance property. Lew Wolff once had an interest in it, so he should know quite well how it’s run.

20120820-200104.jpg

Bay Street in Emeryville, a mixed residential/commercial development

If someone were to experiment with this kind of feature, one can’t expect a big, 400-foot long apartment building with 200 units facing the ballpark. There’d probably be a “boutique” style building with no more than 40 units, 20 facing the ballpark, 6 stories tall, roof deck with a pool on top. How would they be sold? Upfront as condos with high HOA dues, or extremely expensive apartments? Maybe fans who aren’t one-percenters could enter a lottery for one or two units, or perhaps for a year-long lease. 25 years ago the apartments on Waveland and Sheffield outside Wrigley Field could be rented by an average family. Now they’re all corporate suites, better than the ones inside the park. In either condo or apartment form the units could provide a not-small financing piece, up to $30 million towards the ballpark’s total construction cost after factoring in overhead. That’s about as much as anyone could expect from a seat license sale, and it wouldn’t come with the uncertainty or negative vibe associated with PSLs.

Taken as part of the growing number of luxury options, these could be considered as either complementary or competitive with regular suites. The biggest difference would be the view and the access, since suites are not normally available 24/7 the way a housing unit has to be. One could even see a player or two take advantage of the convenience, though he’d have to make sure his curtains are drawn at the proper moments. That is, unless he likes the attention.

08.17.12
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The other kind of walkoff

The A’s made hay in July via a series of walkoff wins. It’s fitting that the team is capitalizing on a phenomenon coined by former Athletic Dennis Eckersley, almost karmic (I’d rather have won the ’88 WS). The A’s soccer brethren, the Earthquakes, have also gotten into the act, stringing together several winning and tying goals in the waning moments of numerous games this season. Let’s just say that the organization is no stranger to theatrics.

That comes in stark contrast to the neverending ballpark struggle, which has entered its 41st month according to our counter, but really has gone on for more than twice that long if you count back to when the Wolff/Fisher group took ownership. And if you believe Jayson Stark’s take coming out of the owners meetings this week, there’s no end in sight:

For about the 78th consecutive meeting of baseball’s problem-solving owners, there was no resolution this week of the A’s-Giants standoff. But if it wasn’t clear before now, it’s more obvious than ever that, in the words of one baseball official, that moving the A’s to San Jose is, most likely, “never going to happen.”

One sports attorney who has looked into this told Rumblings that the Giants have “a hell of a case” — centered around a document signed by the commissioner defining their territorial rights to include San Jose. And that’s critical, because any move by the A’s, or by the sport, to ignore or override those territorial rights could open a messy can of larvae for baseball.

How? Well, if the Giants’ territorial rights were suddenly deemed to no longer apply, it could set a precedent that might inspire some other team to attempt to move to New York or Southern California, by arguing the territorial rights of the Yankees, Mets, Dodgers and Angels were no longer valid, either.

So if the A’s aren’t bound for San Jose, what is likely to happen to them? Behind the scenes, baseball people are predicting they’ll eventually have to give up on this battle and settle for a new, Pittsburgh-size park in Oakland — and then do their best to beat up on the Giants in interleague play.

Stark didn’t articulate how this ballpark would be paid for. It’s a legitimate question. Oakland isn’t alone here. Field of Schemes’ Neil deMause pointed out in a recent Slate article that Seattle is facing the same dilemma.

Stanford economist Roger Noll pegs the operating profits of a typical arena at somewhere between $20 and $30 million a year. That could be enough—barely—to pay off $400 million or so in arena debt. But then Hansen and his as-yet-unnamed investors will still need to put down a huge amount of money to purchase an NBA franchise to play there. If every penny of revenue is going to pay off construction debts, that will leave nothing to offer his moneymen as return on their investment. “The gross revenues of an NBA team in Seattle could not possibly be sufficient,” says Noll, to cover the costs of both building an arena and buying a team.

Replace Seattle with Oakland and “NBA team” with “Athletics” and you have the first half of our local quandary. The crux of the argument to keep the A’s in Oakland is that some sugar daddy ownership group (Don Knauss & Co.) will swoop in, buy the A’s from Wolff/Fisher ($500 million) and pay for a new ballpark ($500-600 million). Using deMause’s corollary, which we’ve espoused here repeatedly, how does this new ownership make money, or even prevent themselves from being buried in debt? Even in San Jose a $500 million ballpark will require tons of upfront commitments to ensure that Wolff/Fisher aren’t leveraged to the hilt.

Moreover, this ongoing stalemate does no one any favors except the Giants, who must love the status quo – except for that pesky drug suspension thing. If the other big market teams are truly afraid of breaking precedent, then the naysayers are right, there is no way to San Jose. We’ve never heard anything directly from any owner to confirm this, so it’s just more grist for the mill. Funny thing is that there are protections in the Major League Constitution to keep the two-team markets safe. From Doug Pappas’ old article dissection the Major League Rules (emphasis mine):

Under Rule 1(c), either league can move into a territory belonging to a club in the other league, so long as (a) 3/4 of the affected league’s teams consent; (b) the two parks are at least five air miles apart unless the two clubs mutually agree otherwise; (c) the newcomer pays the existing club $100,000 plus half of any previous indemnification to invade the territory; and (d) the move leaves no more than two clubs in the territory. This provision dates to late 1960, when it was adopted to establish the terms for the expansion Los Angeles Angels to play in the territory claimed by the Dodgers in 1958.

That leaves Boston and Philadelphia as the only “vulnerable” markets, and any move to either city would face just as many political and logistical obstacles as the A’s face going to San Jose, if not more. Even with that technicality out of the way, the big market owners may be looking at T-rights as sacrosanct and untouchable, nevermind the actual language.

Bringing us back to Stark’s blurb, what can Wolff do? He seems content to play the nice guy role among the owners and not push the matter. If the Giants are lined up looking to sue, the A’s can do the same. San Jose is putting together its own legal resources should a decision come down not in their favor. But there is one maneuver, one trump card that Wolff can play that we’ve only skirted around, and it’s fairly simple.

Wolff could refuse to negotiate a Coliseum lease extension.

Fitting that this last bit of “inaction” could finally force action. It worked for the Minnesota Vikings. It most certainly won’t get the kind of results Zygi Wilf got (a publicly financed stadium), but it would at least force the powers that be to act. It would absolutely burn the last bridge Wolff had with Oakland and would be the worst PR move ever on top of many other missteps, but as we’ve seen in the Vikings’ case, it’s practically standard operating procedure for owners looking to get new stadia. Oakland pols have bragged that the A’s have nowhere to play besides the Coliseum. Do they really want to make that bluff?

Wolff’s refusal would create a nightmare for MLB. MLB could proceed one of two ways, either A) rule once and for all on the T-rights matter and let the franchise move forward, or B) try to assume control of the A’s by alleging that Wolff was not acting as a proper caretaker of the franchise in the market. The A’s can’t be contracted through the rest of the current CBA. Two teams would have to be contracted as a matter of practice and the Rays are locked into their lease, making contraction impossible in the near term. If MLB rules for the Giants, then at least Wolff would be able to decide if he wants to build in Fremont or give up completely and sell the team. And if MLB rules for the A’s, then Wolff will have gotten what he wanted, although he had to be a dick to Selig and the Lodge to make it happen, and Selig would have to deal with the Giants’ legal onslaught.

Selig could try to buy Wolff’s silence by subsidizing an East Bay stadium (also unprecedented) or having the other owners buy out the Wolff/Fisher group, which won’t be cheap. Wolff/Fisher are in a strong position in that they don’t have to sell, at any price if they don’t like.

Now, if MLB were to try to wrest control of the A’s from Wolff, the league would land in litigation hell. Wolff could easily point to Selig’s committee’s 41 months with no plan or decision, and it would drag out for a long time. Unlike the McCourt-Dodgers fiasco, the Wolff/Fisher group are more than solvent (underneath it all A’s ownership is the 4th richest in baseball). T-rights would finally be dragged out into the open, in court. Meanwhile, MLB would have to step in and negotiate lease terms with Oakland/Alameda County for some unknown period. They can’t go around Wolff to negotiate a lease while he’s still the franchise’s control person, since he still has to sign on the line which is dotted. MLB can’t get an injunction on Wolff not doing something. Can they force him to negotiate a lease? We’ll see. Beyond the Bay Area, there will be at least one mayor who’ll look at the ending lease and make a play for the A’s, even if the resources aren’t there. Effectively the A’s would turn into the Expos, a team in limbo for an indeterminate period.

All of that’s possible from Wolff making a simple declaration. He doesn’t have to make it now. He could wait until the end of the 2013 season if he likes. The chaos would put a great toll on the franchise and the fanbase, and you’d have to wonder if, in the end, it’s worth it. Walking away from the lease could be the first domino. At least someone would be playing. We’ve been talking about post-2013 for a while now. The closer we get to that point without a resolution, the more likely someone’s going to make a move out of desperation. Often large bureaucratic organizations don’t make moves until things reach crisis mode. If Selig wanted to end his tenure without drama, this definitely wouldn’t be a way to do it.

08.16.12
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Nothing to see here, move on

The owners meetings came and went with barely a peep. The only major news was the slam-dunk approval of the Padres sale. A single, solitary update on the state of the A’s came via MLB.com’s Barry M. Bloom:

 

That’s it, as expected. Good thing the game starts in a few minutes.

08.10.12
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News for 8/10/12

We’re overdue for a news roundup. Now seems like a good time for one.

From BANG’s Joe Stiglich:

Last week’s visit to Oakland and San Jose by Bud Selig’s three-man panel foreshadowed this.

Update 1:04 PM – Stiglich has a writeup with quotes from Wolff, such as:

“It’s up to the commissioner’s office,” Wolff said. “… This is a process that unfortunately is taking longer than I hoped, but it’s a fair process.” 

Other news:

  • Janet Marie Smith, who oversaw the construction of Camden Yards and the renovation of Fenway Park, is moving out west to Los Angeles to take a similar role with the Dodgers. If her previous work is any indication, she will keep it classy all the way. [Dodgers press release]
  • NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman has set a deadline of September 15 to wrap up labor negotiations before the league imposes a lockout. The NHL and NHLPA are always playing catchup with the other leagues in terms of CBAs. They imposed a 57% player share in the last agreement as other leagues were dropping towards the 50% mark. Now the NHL wants to drop it to 46%. It’s going to be a long winter. [AP]
  • A developer is proposing a ballpark for the Tampa Bay Rays in the Gateway area of St. Petersburg, just over the bridge from Tampa. St. Pete’s stance has been to not allow the Rays to get out of their lease at Tropicana Field unless a new stadium were conceived in St. Pete, not Tampa. No financial details were available. [Tampa Tribune/Michael Sasso]
  • The 49ers and the City of Santa Clara settled a lawsuit with a County oversight board. $30 million in redevelopment money was at stake. In order to keep local school budgets balanced, the 49ers won’t get the $30 million for several years. Seems fair. [SJ Mercury News/Mike Rosenberg]
  • Get used to metal detectors at NFL games starting this season. [Oakland Raiders]
  • Speaking of the Raiders, they are using the league’s new 85% measure to determine sellouts this season. The way it works, a team has to sell out 85% of its non-premium seats by the usual deadline (normally Thursday for a Sunday game) in order for a game not to be subject to a blackout. The catch is that any tickets sold between the 85% and 100% marks are subject to higher revenue sharing. Teams like the Raiders and Bucs chose to use the new standard, the Bills and Jags went with the old standard, which required all non-premium seats to be sold by the deadline.
  • The City of Industry approved a deal to buy 600 acres within city limits for up to $26.7 million. The land is where the somewhat-forgotten Ed Roski/Majestic Realty stadium would be located. The parties still have to scramble to find a proper replacement for now-evaporated redevelopment funding. [Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/Ben Baeder]
  • MLB’s postseason schedule has been released (knock on wood). [Biz of Baseball/Maury Brown]

More if it comes.

08.06.12
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No stone left unturned

Two articles from Sunday (Chronicle: Matier and Ross, Mercury News: Bruce Newman/Sharon Noguchi) point to a special trip made to the Bay Area last week by Commissioner Bud Selig’s three-person committee. The committee, which has been studying the A’s stadium issue for more than 40 months, met with San Jose officials on Tuesday, followed by Oakland officials on Wednesday.

The M&R report indicates that Oakland’s bid is moving towards a potential deal at Howard Terminal, anchored by a $40 million sale of land there to help kick things off. Present were Clorox CEO Don Knauss and Signature Properties’ Mike Ghielmetti.

The $40 million part has me confused. To whom would Howard Terminal be sold? To the A’s or some ownership group? To other developers like Ghielmetti? For years, the minimal entry for any Oakland site had to be to take care of the land and any infrastructure at the very least. But if that responsibility has to be shouldered by whomever builds a ballpark, the price to build the venue will only get higher. Remember that at Howard Terminal, some amount of reconstruction of the site’s foundation will be required to make it safe and suitable for a ballpark and perhaps other surrounding commercial development. If the ballpark costs $500 million just in construction cost, and the land acquisition and site preparation costs $140 million, the final price tag is $640 million!

It would’ve been interesting to find out how much time Knauss & Co. spent presenting themselves as ballpark backers first before jumping to a different role as would-be owners. Assuming that they pay the full freight on a ballpark and a minimum $500 million for the A’s, they’d have to come up with $1.14 billion for the whole package. That’s a tall sum just to keep the A’s in Oakland, no matter how it’s sliced. A downtown site such as Howard Terminal was expected to be more expensive than the Coliseum because of the added complexity in pulling off the deal, but is that difference (at least $100 million) worth it? It’s hard to pass judgment on Howard Terminal until we know more specifics. Nevertheless, at this point the committee is probably of many of these details, and that will be important for MLB’s continued evaluation.

Last Tuesday’s meeting with San Jose seemed to be a more ho-hum affair, with the exception of the presence of Brad Ruskin, a very prominent lawyer who has at one time represented all of the major pro sports leagues other than Major League Baseball (he has also represented some MLB clubs). One of his specialties is antitrust law, and he is a trial lawyer, so his presence may be to show that he could represent MLB in an antitrust case if push comes to shove. Opposing Ruskin would presumably be Allen Ruby, who the A’s brought on board earlier in the year.

For his part, Lew Wolff continues to be defiant in the face of questions about selling the team. His angle is that, unlike much outdated criticism about his previous efforts to put together a ballpark deal in Oakland and Fremont, his plan is simply to build a ballpark. Ancillary development using surrounding land is becoming more increasingly difficult to pull off, yet that’s the formula being espoused by all of the Oakland bids: Howard Terminal, Coliseum City, and Victory Court. The committee has to be taking all of this into account.

Another factor is State Controller John Chiang’s review of the land transfers between San Jose’s defunct Redevelopment Agency and the son-of-redevelopment San Jose Diridon Development Agency. If the transfers are upheld, Santa Clara County has indicated that it won’t make any further challenges to the land deal so the ballpark could conceivably move forward. If the transfers are ruled improper, the land would go to the the redevelopment successor agency, which would subsequently auction off the land. The land would be sold to the highest bidder, who may be someone other than Wolff. Keep in mind that San Jose would still hold the final trump card as it was would have any final determination over what could be done with the land. As much as AT&T claims that its land is of paramount importance to its service delivery model, they’d have sold the land years ago if it could’ve been rezoned to medium-density residential as was considered a decade ago. In any case, Wolff seemed confident that he’d be able to get the land however Chiang’s office ruled. That ruling is due in the next couple of weeks.

The cynic in me looks at this trip with a simple explanation. Summer owners’ meetings are scheduled for next week, and while there will be more pressing matters on the agenda (Padres sale, national TV deals, Nats-O’s-MASN deal) it’s expected that there will be some sort of update on the A’s-Giants ongoing saga. What better way to look like you’re doing something than to have a couple of meetings right before the owners’ sessions? It seems unlikely that Selig will be able to render a decision or bring up a vote based on whatever new information was gathered based on the trip since it’s so fresh, so it’s just one more opportunity to kick the can down the road – at least until November. In the meantime, whatever’s happening to the A’s on the field can take precedence, and that’s not a bad thing at all.

08.03.12
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Pick and choose your spots

The problem with having a 10-game homespan, like the one the A’s are on now, is that the casual fan has too many choices of games to attend. A fan might go to tonight’s game for the fireworks, with Dan Straily’s debut thrown in as a bonus. The same fan might go to one of two Wednesday day games to get $2 tickets in the warm sunshine. Or maybe a weekend game’s better because weekdays create scheduling conflicts, or because of the kid-oriented promotions on Saturday and Sunday.

It’s that range of choice that probably accounts somewhat for the somewhat disappointing turnout so far this homestand.

  • Monday: 12,564
  • Tuesday: 15,836
  • Wednesday: 18,161
  • Thursday: 10,823

Tonight’s attendance could surpass 30,000 because of fireworks night. Quantities of 2 or more tickets are tough to find except in some of the less desirable locations of each seating tier. There have been three Fireworks Fridays this season, and as you would expect, the attendance for all three has been much better than average.

  • Game 21 vs. Yankees: 33,559
  • Game 28 vs. Padres: 24,528
  • Game 38 vs. Red Sox (July 3): 35,067

Just from looking at crowds over the years, fireworks can bring out an extra 10,000 fans. It also helps that two of the games were scheduled against the beasts of the east, who can be counted upon to bring thousands of fans along with them. Funny that the A’s and Rays, teams with historically some of the worst turnout over the last decade, are the two teams most dependent on other team’s fans to bolster attendance. The Giants provide three guaranteed sellouts, with easily half the house dressed in orange and black. The Yankees are good for 10-12k per date, whereas the Red Sox are worth 7-8k. Add that up and it’s around 123,000 visiting fan attendees from just those three teams. That translates to 7% of overall home attendance during recent years.. The Giants get periodic invasions of Dodger fans, but those seats would sell regardless of the opponent.

Now Monte Poole’s Thursday column raises the “quandary” of fans who hate ownership so much as to not attend games against their better instinct of showing up to support the resurgent A’s. Everyone who goes or doesn’t go has every right to express their preference. But to eternally prosecute ownership, the front office, anyone involved with the team for every little decision (or non-decision) is seriously becoming tiresome. First it was that Lew Wolff, John Fisher, and Billy Beane have conspired to keep the fans away by intentionally fielding awful teams or by trading away talent. Now that the team has been hot, it’s either that ownership is seething that the wins work against their nefarious plan or the team’s success thoroughly discounts any arguments about the Oakland fanbase, or even more absurdly, the stadium. Look at the first four games of attendance and tell me that it’s working. Beane’s moves are being microexamined as well, with the lack of a deadline trade “proving” that the team is surrendering. Then there was this today, following the Kurt Suzuki trade:

Apparently the detractors are looking for any excuse to pile on. Can’t give credit, oh no. Poole himself can only rise to giving the backhanded compliment “making an effort”.

Right. It doesn’t matter that the team stacks one promotion on top of another to bring in fans. That it has a weekend dedicated to Moneyball and the Streak coming up. That inserting dynamic pricing deals on tickets for the last two homestands have done a bang-up job of bringing in fans (check the field and plaza levels for the on-sale sections for proof). I even got into a debate on Twitter with a fan who drove up to the Coli on Wednesday and was angry that the A’s ran out of $2 tickets – that were sold out days if not weeks in advance. Really? You can’t plan for that?

That points to the biggest problem that the A’s and the A’s fanbase face, and they face it together. Both ownership and the fans have taken the A’s – the team, the brand, the fact that it’s one of thirty MLB franchises – for granted. Even during the Moneyball era (1999-2006), the A’s had all of these same promotions and attendance was about 500k per year (6,000 per game) better. And no, the much larger Coli back then was nowhere close to selling out, except for those games where the visiting team’s fans took up the slack. The A’s can count on the 8-10k of season ticket holders to provide some revenue while at the same time showing Bud Selig that the hardcore fanbase is too small to be sustainable. For those on the fringe like me or casual fans, there’s always a plentiful supply of tickets so that during a six or ten-game homestand, we might be able to go once or twice and feel good about ourselves.

That’s not good enough. While ownership shrugs its shoulders, Oakland partisans and East Bay supporters thump their chests about how they’ll support the team “when it’s good, and ownership respects Oakland, the fanbase, and stadium” – and also keeps ticket prices low. You can’t have all of that and be taken seriously. This is Major League Baseball. It is the upper echelon of this great sport. Constantly, the whiners and whingers seems to be conveniently unaware of that fact. The average payroll is $100 million, a number the A’s would be hard-pressed to support at the current prices unless they hit 3 million fans. That’s how far behind we are compared to the rest of the league. And we, collectively, don’t care. It’s better to get a few shots in at the enemy.

I don’t know how the season’s gonna end. Maybe the A’s will make the postseason, maybe they won’t. Progress will be measured in part by the rise in season ticket sales. If subscriptions don’t grow it’ll tell me two things: that A’s ownership isn’t trying hard enough (hard to believe from the calls I’ve gotten from ticket services), and that the holdouts are hoisting themselves on their own petard. It would prove to me that both sides are fine with the status quo: low, non-major league prices, low season ticket rolls, and “disenfranchised” fans complaining yet again about being alienated. At some point, it comes down to how much you and I value this team as it’s currently formulated, the A’s legacy, and optimism about the future. It also matters how much we care about having a MLB franchise here. If that’s not enough, then well, the petard is waiting in the form of an empty Coliseum and no future ballpark. Though I’m sure there’ll be plenty of recriminations for that too.

08.02.12
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Request to open gates earlier

A few weeks ago I contacted A’s veep of Stadium Ops David Rinetti to confirm if anything had changed during the season regarding gate opening times during the season. No, he replied, the schedule is the same as it ever was: gates open 2 hours before first pitch on weekends, 90 minutes on weekdays. I followed up asking if a change could be made this year to the weekday schedule as some folks might want to catch Yoenis Cespedes, Chris Carter, and Josh Reddick mash during batting practice.

Rinetti said that with two months left in the season, the franchise doesn’t plan to make any changes. Any change to the gate schedule would be reviewed during the offseason. He also mentioned that when the weekday times were changed to 90 minutes a while back, not many fans entered the Coliseum during that first half hour.

Now, I’d like to see the gates open 2 hours prior to every game, across the board. Yesterday I saw a queue of several hundred at the C and D gates at 11 a.m. I want to see parents bringing their kids to the front row to shag balls. I know that A’s fans will come early to games. Problem is that too many of times the early birds come for bobbleheads or other “high value” collectibles. That’s fine, even as so many of these so-called fans are jumping right back onto the BART bridge minutes after grabbing the item to stick it on eBay. We’ve got an entertaining team with budding stars. If we have the time, we should head out there every so often to check out BP, which for the A’s typically starts 2:05 before the first pitch.

Many of you readers are season ticket holders. If, like me, you would like to see gate opening times change to 2 hours across the board, inquire about it when it comes time to renew, at functions like the STH Appreciation Party, or other events. The players are here. Let’s show the team that we want this.

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P.S. – Credit goes to the Chronicle’s John Shea (via Susan Slusser), who suggested this idea early in the season.

07.31.12
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The future is temporary

Spurred by LoneStranger’s thought experiment on AN which carried over to here in expanded form, I had an email back-and-forth with him about what’s possible post-2013. I suggested a concept that he add to the post, and when I realized how long it would take to flesh out and how much longer it would make his post, I decided it deserved its own treatment. So here goes nothing.

First off, I have to say that I have no idea what will happen in the next 18 months. Oakland Mayor Jean Quan was at the game last night and hung out in the right field bleachers for the duration, which was quite impressive. Lew Wolff will be on the broadcast in the third inning this evening to talk – something, probably about the team for the most part. For the A’s to stay at the Coliseum after the 2013 season, those two have to start negotiations on some kind of lease extension. I’ve heard out of Oakland that the City is going to play hardball and try to get the A’s to commit long term. Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan and others have been comfortable in claiming that the A’s have nowhere to go. I’ve also heard that discussions between the City and Raiders have been accelerating, perhaps to the point of getting something announced prior to the Raiders’ lease ends (also in 2013). Any future at the Coliseum for either team depends largely on what happens with the still nascent Coliseum City project, and we probably won’t know anything about that until the end of the year at the earliest.

The old Coliseum will have to be demolished to make way for a hotel or perhaps parts of two new stadia.

Knowing that new stadia for the Raiders and A’s can’t possibly be ready before 2016, the most practical solution would be to figure out a way for them to co-exist for another three years. Oakland and Alameda County want to use that extension as leverage against either team, but that’s not a great play. The Raiders could easily become roommates at the 49ers stadium for at least three years, leaving the Coliseum in the lurch. If the Coliseum JPA chooses to shut out the A’s, the decision will provide more than enough justification for MLB to hasten a move to San Jose – even while MLB is keeping Oakland in the game by not deciding anything yet.

Now, if circumstances conspire to have the A’s leave 2013 due to construction of a new football stadium or other reasons, the A’s will have to play somewhere. There’s no stadium in San Jose as Municipal Stadium is too small and unacceptable amenities-wise. They may be able to play at AT&T Park for a while, though as we’ve seen this week scheduling the two teams to not overlap schedules can be tricky.

Barnstorming for a series here or there can work from a marketing standpoint. The players union, on the other hand, will probably have considerable objections to a barnstorming team, especially one that has to do it for three or four years. The union and its members would prefer permanence. It’s not the minors, it’s the majors, and the players deserve major league treatment. While there’s been no poll on this, I imagine that free agents could look at the situation and declare it a organizational demerit, just as the Coliseum now isn’t exactly a selling point.

Then there’s the matter of cultivating the fanbase. If the team is going to stay in Oakland or move to San Jose, every effort has to be made to cultivate that fanbase. Having a traveling team hampers that effort significantly, so I would expect that the A’s and their civic partners would do everything possible to make a temporary home seem as permanent as possible. The transitional three years are very delicate. With the San Jose Earthquakes, we’ve seen what happens when the organization delays building a new stadium – the fanbase gets restless. The stakes are much higher with MLB, and Bud Selig isn’t going to approve a temporary solution that doesn’t at least attempt to maximize revenue.

Knowing all of these factors, I suspect that the A’s would play those transitional years in a temporary stadium. It may not hold more than 20,000 seats. It would be built in the vein of numerous temporary facilities such as the soccer stadia at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa or some of the venues at the London Summer Games.

London’s Olympic Stadium holds 80,000 for the games, but was designed to be deconstructed to a 25,000-seat permanent capacity by virtue of a large, removable upper deck. Some of the materials used are either recycled or are recyclable. Many concession stands are not permanently installed, which reduces costs and simplifies the dismantling process.

London Olympic Stadium is designed to be scaled down and repurposed. Note the very large upper deck. Image from London 2012

The Basketball Arena, which has been affectionately nicknamed “The Mattress”, is an entirely temporary structure. At 12,000 seats, it can be considered the bigger cousin of the 3,200-seat tent arena the Warriors are building in Santa Cruz. After the Olympics and Paralympics, the arena will be removed, though there doesn’t seem to be a fully coherent re-use plan in place.

Temporary basketball arena. Image from London 2012.

I think the A’s could easily build a 20,000-seat temporary stadium at either HomeBase lot next to the Coliseum or on the Hunter Storm part of the Airport West development near Earthquakes Stadium site in San Jose. Either site would work because it would be available for cheap or free and there would be no worries about competing development, at least in the near term. Infrastructure already in place for the nearby stadia could be leveraged (concessions, facilities) with potential additions easy to scale back or value engineer. In both cases, already approved EIRs or uses would already be in place, with supplemental studies possible but easier to anticipate and manage than completely new studies. And if the A’s plan properly, they could re-use parts of the old stadium in the new one, though that has proven trickier to execute than conceived. Once the temporary facilities have completed their work, they could be dismantled and re-used, donated, or recycled, leaving behind a perfectly ready-to-build site.

Airport West site. Temporary ballpark could conceivably be built on orange land if a lease agreement were worked out.

Cost would be the huge mover. The Quakes have spent the last few years ratcheting down the cost of their new stadium, only to introduce new features when demand arose. That, and the construction methods they’ll be using, could be very useful if they wanted to deploy a temporary stadium anywhere. How much of the stadium would be seats, as opposed to bleachers? What kinds of premium facilities would be built, and where would they be located? How fancy would the clubhouses be? These are all valid and hard-to-answer questions, and there’s no doubt that MLB would have a lot of input into how any temporary stadium would be situated and conceived. Chances are that the project would cost at least $30 million, and could escalate quickly. Would it be worth it? That’s for A’s ownership to figure out.