Category Archives: Coliseum

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.

07.30.12
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Tonight’s ticket

Over the weekend I bought an $11 Field Level ticket via Tickets.com. A new delivery option this year is the FanPass, which allows fans to either use the electronic kiosks for will call or scan their credit cards at the gate. I showed my credit card after passing through security and a few seconds later I was given this:

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Simple, convenient, easy. Good job, ticket services.

07.30.12
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Back-to-back double-dips

Thanks to a bit of serendipitous scheduling from the baseball gods, we in the Bay Area have the opportunity to see the Giants and A’s play day-night, cross-bay doubleheaders – not once, but twice – this week. I’ve raved about these experiences before and I won’t stop now. If you’re a baseball fan and you have a some time to get away from the office to take in a doubleheader, you should do it. Put it on your bucket list. It’s worth it.

The happy scheduling quirk comes from the fact that the A’s and Giants have overlapping 10-day homestands. Normally the overlap is three games. In this case it’s four, which leads to the back-to-back double-dips. The Giants have a four-game series with the Mets starting tonight before going on the road, whereas the A’s have a three-game set with the Rays followed by a four-game set with the Blue Jays. No off days to mess with this schedule, which is a rarity in itself.

The schedule:

  • Wednesday, August 1: Rays @ A’s, 12:35 p.m.; Mets @ Giants, 7:15 p.m.
  • Thursday, August 2: Mets @ Giants, 12:45 p.m.; Blue Jays @ A’s, 7:05 p.m.

The slightly tighter scheduling of the Thursday doubleheader may prove more hospitable for some, while Wednesday may be better in the sense that the Coliseum is a vastly better as a day venue than for night games. I’m definitely going to Wednesday’s set, not so sure about Thursday. Thanks to the magic of dynamic pricing, no seat for the Wednesday night Giants game can be had for less than $40 at tickets.com, although at least SRO is available.

See you at the yard(s).

07.29.12
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Hmmm…

I was digging around on the internets earlier tonight when I stumbled upon this:

Image titled “Pre Mount Davis Coliseum” from flickr user Photoscream

Take a long, hard look at the photo (click to enlarge). Then tell me what you think.

Update 9:50 AM – Okay, ready? The title “Pre Mount Davis Oakland Coliseum” is extremely misleading. There’s no date listed on the picture, but based on other pictures I have seen and archives, the pic goes back to the 1969-71 era. Here’s why.

1. The greater number of aisles on the lower half of the field level. Those were filled in around 1972.
2. The all-green-seats look was the original look to the Coliseum. The orange seats, as we remember them, were phased in over an almost decade-long period in the 80’s as the green seats deteriorated.
3. The exterior “hill” surrounding the Coli has no stairs! None next to the gate tunnels or anywhere else for that matter. There’s only a ramp and “trails” leading down from the plaza concourse, the latter of which may have been tough to negotiate if one were drunk following a game.
4. No DiamondVision!
5. Trees are very young.
6. The outfield fence is pulled in somewhat. The initial dimensions, according to Andrew Clem, were 330-378-410-378-330, not the 330-375-400-375-330 that we all knew so well. The former dimensions lasted only the ’68 season.
7. The few cars in the players’ lot in the upper left hand corner are pretty old.
8. The loge area had not yet been converted to suites.
9. The paths from the on-deck circle to the plate didn’t last long.
10. The dugout roofs are painted green and are otherwise unadorned.

In a few years, the Coliseum will be 50 years old. It’s lived a very full life – several lives, even. This version was the one that lured Charlie Finley, and you can see why he came. It was a pretty good spot back then – fresh, green, almost pastoral. The “Mausoleum” reputation it got wasn’t solely because of the stadium. It was because hardly anyone showed up.

If you want to see good closeup pictures of the Coli in its late 80’s glory, check out this flickr set by Jerry Reuss. That Jerry Reuss? Yes, that Jerry Reuss. Who knew the guy was such a stadium buff?

07.25.12
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Hacks don’t understand the competitive window

The Chronicle’s Scott Ostler is signing onto the claim that the A’s recent on-field success serves to foil Lew Wolff’s plans to move to San Jose. He’s not the first. The Trib’s Monte Poole and the Press Democrat’s Lowell Cohn have done the same since the All Star Break. The reasoning is that the way the A’s are playing, it proves with complete certainty that the A’s can, in fact, compete in Oakland.

Anyone who has read most Bay Area sports columnists over the years could see this dime store analysis coming. It’s more than ludicrous, it’s absolutely fallacious. Think about it. These writers are basing the viability of a franchise on 17 games. 17 games! Look, I’m the last person to rain on this parade and I’m loving every minute of this run, but to base any long-term decision-making on 17 games is the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. The sample size is incredibly small. Over the next 1-4 years, it may prove to be the start of a trend. Then again, it could be a blip. If the A’s fade in August-September the same way the Mets and Indians are now, what does it mean for success in Oakland? Nothing, because there’s no real causality there.

If we’re going to look at any trends, it’s the team’s 40-24 (.625) record with Yoenis Cespedes in the lineup. The team was pretty bad in May, largely due to Cespedes not being in the lineup for lengthy stretches. It didn’t help that Josh Donaldson and Daric Barton were black holes regularly manning the corners, while Josh Reddick was left to carry the lineup in the Cuban defector’s absence. Now with better contributions from numerous fringe and platoon players plus continued health (knock on wood) for Cespedes, the A’s are doing just enough offensively to win games.

None of this is very related to the A’s long term success. Cespedes is locked up through 2015 unless Billy Beane flips him for prospects. Yet Beane is keenly aware of the organization’s continued inability to develop quality hitters, so unless rivals offer Billy the moon for either Cespedes or Reddick, the heart of the order isn’t going anywhere. Beyond that, there are questions about Cespedes’s durability. The Cuban baseball season is only 90 games long, and Yoenis has had little nicks already and a tight hamstring halfway through his rookie campaign. If Cespedes runs into a lengthy injury spell like what befell Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau in Minnesota, the A’s will be screwed moving forward unless certain hitters on the farm (Grant Green, the just-injured Michael Choice, other recent draftees) make miraculous Sean Doolittle or Dan Straily-style transformations into solid contributors.

We’ve talked a bit about the competitive window every have-not team faces. Refuse to acknowledge it at your peril. San Diego, Arizona, and Colorado all had brief, 1 or 2-year runs in the past few years. When injuries hit or players didn’t perform up to potential, all three teams sold off key players in order to rebuild for the next competitive window. The same just happened to the Miami Marlins, who nearly doubled their 2011 payroll in hopes of bringing in bigger crowds and revenue. With the team fighting to keep itself out of the NL East cellar, the Marlins are looking to sell off vital pieces. Already Hanley Ramirez has been traded to the Dodgers, and Josh Johnson may be the next one out of town. The aforementioned Twins had a bright future prior to the 2011 season, then Mauer was lost for half the season and Morneau struggled to recover from concussion symptoms. Now they have no choice but to rebuild, starting with a trades of Morneau and Francisco Liriano that many are anticipating in the future. Competitive windows for many mid- and small-market teams all were slammed shut in a hurry.

For the have-not teams, the competitive window means there’s little room for error, practically no room to absorb expensive mistake contracts. The Dodgers had plenty of flexibility to absorb Ramirez’s contract. The Yankees somehow got Seattle to pay for part of Ichiro’s contract even though the Pinstripers sent back a middling starter and a guy who had already been traded or cut six times in his short career. The A’s have a league-low $55 million payroll, which gives them the flexibility to pick up a one-year rental. It doesn’t give them the flexibility to start trading for guys with long, bad contracts, like Ramirez and Jimmy Rollins. Brett Anderson is due for some raises in the coming years. Reddick is sure to become a Super Two thanks to his breakout season – which will give him a hefty raise. He could very well be locked up through his arbitration years this offseason. Cespedes will be paid nearly $30 million over the next three years. Beane and David Forst will have to decide which young pitchers to keep and which ones to use as trade pieces. Kurt Suzuki already has a bad contract and he’s worth pennies on the dollar. By 2014, the A’s could easily be committed to spend $40-50 million on just 4-5 guys. It’ll help that new national TV money is on the way, but it doesn’t mean that fiscal responsibility will go out the window.

Sustaining the competitive window will depend greatly on picking the right guys to commit to (remember the Chavez-Tejada debate from a decade ago?) and those cornerstone guys staying healthy. If not, all bets are off. It won’t prove that the A’s should leave Oakland posthaste. What it would prove is that the A’s again are a big-market team that is forced to operate like a small-market team because of revenues from playing in Oakland. The current CBA calls for the A’s to get off revenue sharing by 2016 as long as the team stays in the Bay Area, however the stadium solution occurs. That’s language from on high saying that having the A’s in the Coliseum is not what MLB has in mind, no matter how good this run is or how many pies are thrown. The Lodge doesn’t care about 17 games. They care about the long view.

07.23.12
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Not every idea is a good one

Over the weekend, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat’s sports columnist Lowell Cohn entertained a concept for privately-financed stadia at the Coliseum for both the A’s and Raiders. Put together by Sacramento developer Rick Tripp, the plan is neither new nor novel. In fact, we’ve heard it here several years ago, when the Lew Wolff trying to build a ballpark first north of the Coliseum and later in Fremont. The venue(s) would be paid for by a combination of surrounding area development entitlements and stadium revenues such as naming rights and concessions. During the housing bubble in 2005, it sounded like a decent plan since it wouldn’t have required a bond issue or  new taxes on Fremont’s or Oakland’s part. Of course, once that bubble burst, such a plan was no longer feasible.

Tripp revives that plan and adds a wrinkle in that “unconventional” sources such as real estate brokerage fees are also used. Tripp admits that he hasn’t lined up all of the necessary money, some of which could come from Middle East financiers. He has also pitched his plan unsuccessfully twice – first in San Diego for the Chargers, then in his hometown, Sacramento, for the Kings’ railyards arena. In both cases, his respective bids were rejected. No explanation is given as to why, but I have a few guesses as to why which I’ll get to in a minute.

Before that analysis, first let me turn your attention to a small article which also surfaced over the weekend. The Arizona Diamondbacks are pushing to have ownership of Chase Field changed from one public entity (Maricopa County) to another (City of Phoenix). The point? To allow the D-backs to exert more control over Chase Field’s revenue streams, which are currently somewhat split between the team and Maricopa County. The team pays $4 million per year in rent and maintenance costs, a decent amount compared to other leases throughout baseball. No new money is being raised by virtue of the D-backs’ proposal, and it might net the team a few more million per year. That’s enough to make the request worthwhile. It’s of utmost importance to team ownership that it gain control over as much of its local revenue stream as possible.

It’s in that light that if you read Tripp Development’s San Diego stadium proposal that you can see why it didn’t pass muster. The plan, which included a $900 million NFL stadium and a $400 million arena, would charge $15 million per year to the Chargers and $10 million per year to a relocated NBA team. Given the somewhat similar cost between a ballpark and an arena, let’s suppose that the A’s would lease a new ballpark from Tripp for $10-12 million a year. That’s three times as much as the D-backs, a team that is at best a mid-market franchise and is trying to scrape up every bit of revenue it can. Worse, the terms have the A’s (or Raiders) with precious little control of stadium revenue except for games. While it sounds nice that the A’s would get a “free stadium”, their inability to control revenue streams would leave them only marginally better than they are now, especially in years when attendance isn’t impressive. It’s a deal that, if presented to either Lew Wolff or Mark Davis, would be politely declined by both. It’s not something that would be approved by either the NFL or MLB. Similar lease terms helped allow the Seattle Supersonics to leave the Emerald City, and they’re making it easy for the Warriors to look across the Bay towards San Francisco – even though the price tage for a new arena will be huge.

Now, that isn’t to say that Tripp’s concept is bad. If you’re an Oakland-only partisan or someone who doesn’t scratch the surface like Cohn, it might sound great. And at least Tripp is being fairly transparent about the substance of the deal, whereas we have few clues about Oakland Mayor Jean Quan’s Coliseum City plan other than federal transit money or the exotic EB-5 visa program (neither of which will provide much money to build any stadia). The problem is that so much revenue has to go towards paying off the project that it severely limits the amount that can go to the tenant teams. That puts the teams at a handicap relative to their division and league competitors. Both owners and the leagues are going to agree to deals that give them the highest levels of revenue and control. A large mortgage for the A’s is somewhat mitigated by the fact that it can be deducted against revenue sharing. Any deal that doesn’t give the team revenue control is inferior, even if a high-revenue/control deal means creating greater risk (see: 49ers).

Moreover, while the plan doesn’t say redevelopment explicitly, it’s effectively a redevelopment plan when it talks about entitlements. That may be the most risky thing of all. Tripp and his investors probably have a target in terms of real estate sales and fees associated with those sales that will help pay back the debt ($90-100 million per year if separate football and baseball stadia are built). If they don’t hit those targets because of an Oakland real estate market that trails the rest of the Bay Area, what does it mean for the teams? Investors want to counterbalance risk with return and protection if possible. With limited government help, the risk may be excessive. Remember that former New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner faced several delays in trying to move the team to Brooklyn, which eventually forced him to sell the team and the development to Russian billionaire tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov. Bailout guys like Prokhorov don’t grow on trees.

Tripp’s plan is the first of many such proposals for Coliseum City, and he admits that he’ll know if it’s workable in 18 months, around the time several studies regarding Coliseum City are due. If nothing else, his proposal should stimulate discussion within Oakland about how Coliseum City can get accomplished – not just to keep the teams in place, but to allow them to thrive. For any team to stay in Oakland the financial terms need to make the teams more than merely competitive. As long as the teams face revenue limitations from any proposal, they’ll keep looking for better deals elsewhere. That said, if Tripp is able to successfully get commitments from one or both teams, he’ll deserve extreme kudos. Third time would be the charm, I guess.

07.17.12
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15,115

I snapped the picture below in the first inning. There was a decent walk-up crowd waiting in line for tickets at the booths and kiosks at the BART Plaza. I knew that the crowd would be less than 20,000, but I was hoping for a figure approaching 20k.

The final tally? 15,115.

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Look, we can’t expect a bandwagon to appear when it doesn’t exist. We can hope that more A’s fans will come out of the woodwork. For various reasons legitimate and silly, they don’t come. Or do they?

15,115, as pathetic as that looks, is 20-30% better than Monday or Tuesday night crowds that came in April or May. You can’t say that it’s the weather because tonight much of the game was spent below 60 degrees. Regardless, it’s nothing to crow about. At least it doesn’t look like a crowd of 5,000 with just as many no-shows. The size of the walk-up crowd was encouraging. A bandwagon’s gotta start somewhere.

07.15.12
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The A’s showed up. How about you?

Here the green-and-gold heroes sit, winners of 9 of the last 10, only 1/2 game from the last playoff spot in the American League. It’s all very impressive for any number of reasons: young pitching, young sluggers becoming professional hitters, nearly every move made by the A’s front office paying off so far. Despite this, there’s a little hesitance going into this week’s six-game homestand, with two games against the West-leading Rangers and four against the East-frontrunning Yankees.

The Yankees series is always good for near-sellouts every game, and the Rangers bandwagon has been filling the Coliseum pretty well lately. But who cares about the other team’s fans? We should be filling up the stadium. Tuesday night’s game is, as usual, a free parking night. The A’s deserve a heroes’ welcome. The pitching is excellent even with Brandon McCarthy out. Numerous guys are hitting homers like it’s batting practice. The team has budding stars who are all young and under control, and the team is flat out fun to watch with no big money egos to ruin a fan’s enjoyment. We should have 20,000 fans showing up on Tuesday. I fear we won’t come close.

There will be people who cite their dislike of Lew Wolff, John Fisher, Billy Beane, or whatever’s convenient to not go. They’ll claim they were the biggest A’s fans during the Moneyball years, the Haas era, during BillyBall, or all the way back to Charlie Finley. Stop with the excuses, put your differences with ownership aside, and go to the games. The tickets are inexpensive. There’s no better weather to watch baseball than at the Coliseum in July/August. The team is pretty damned entertaining. Most importantly, this scrappy group of A’s consistently of mostly young guys and a mix of veterans notices when we show up. En masse. They don’t play in a vacuum, and as much as they appreciate the small-but-loyal crowd that shows up currently, they appreciate it even more when the place is packed. With A’s fans. All of the experts and columnists had this team buried in March. Personally, my expectations were low. This team deserves for us to buy tickets, supporting them, cheering them on with full voices, all of our energy, every breath. Whether the A’s are buyers or sellers or both doesn’t matter. We have a core to build on for years, and they’re not going anywhere for a while. That’s what matters. So enjoy it.

The A’s showed up this year. How about you?

…

Off the soapbox. The maximum possible attendance for this week is a little over 210,000. It would be unrealistic to predict that they’ll hit that target. But they could pull healthy crowds for the entire week. If the A’s average 22,000 for Texas and 32,000 for the Yankees, the total attendance for the homestand will be 172,000. Should they hit that mark, the team’s attendance in Oakland (not counting the Japan games) will surpass 1 million fans in 48 home dates. That’s five games ahead of last year’s pace and seven better than 2010. Can we hit that figure? I think we can. I’ll be there for the first three games of the homestand, before going on a weekend camping trip. Let’s do this.

07.07.12
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The fence dilemma

Last night, Brandon Hicks hit what looked to be an opposite-field home run to the 362 mark in right, only to be robbed by the 15-foot high wall. Over the years, many a hitter has been robbed by the high walls in both power alleys. It was merely Hicks’s turn. Until most recently, the A’s have been a power-starved bunch, which when combined with the already pitcher-friendly dimensions of the Coliseum, has had many a fan and media member calling for changes to the field. CSN’s Casey Pratt, in particular, has had issues with the high wall. Last night he brought it up after Hicks’s double, and radio play-by-play guy Vince Cotroneo mentioned it in the postgame wrap. It didn’t matter that the issue was rendered moot once Jemile Weeks singled home Hicks, and Chris Carter’s blast in the 11th left no doubt about what a home run looks like.

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Regardless of the outcome, there still remains a sense that the Coliseum’s deck is stacked too much in the direction of pitchers. You won’t find last night’s starter Tommy Milone complaining, that’s for sure. Then again, do you remember any M’s hitters reaching the warning track off Milone?

Pratt has long advocated that the high fence between the 362 and 388 marks in left and right should be taken down to the 8-foot height down the lines and in center. The high wall containing the out-of-town scoreboards could be kept intact, which makes sense since those are the most hitter-friendly parts of the park. I suggest going a step further by getting rid of the contrived “Jagged Edge” outfield fence design altogether, going with a fairly straight fence that lowers the alleys to eight feet and brings in the 367′ dimensions at the stairs in 10-15 feet. The out-of-town scoreboards would stay more-or-less intact.

The field would still play pitcher-friendly to fair, mostly because of the atmospheric conditions. Historically, the Coli hasn’t played as poorly as Petco, Safeco, or even AT&T. It may be Billy Beane’s desire to keep the ballpark geared towards pitching, since that’s been much easier to develop over the last several years. Yet it might make sense to change the dimensions to create a transition to a new ballpark, especially if the new place ends up with much more hitter-driven dimensions like Cisco Field. It’s easy to think that in the A’s current consecutive-games-with-a-HR streak, that power isn’t that hard to come by. Just remember the last two years of A’s squads. Power does come at a premium.