Category Archives: Owners

11.22.11
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Big market, low budget

In February I wrote about a potential revenue sharing rollback in the new MLB collective bargaining agreement. While today’s joint announcement didn’t produce a percentage rollback (or contraction for that matter), there is a sort of rollback coming for revenue sharing. And the way it’s constructed, it’s targeted at one team in particular – the Oakland Athletics. Here’s the relevant text (courtesy of The Biz of Baseball):

IV.. REVENUE SHARING

a. The net transfer value of the Revenue Sharing Plan will be the same as the current plan. Net transfer amounts will continue to grow with revenue and changes in disparity.

b. The fifteen Clubs in the largest markets will be disqualified from receiving revenue sharing by 2016. The revenue sharing funds that would have been distributed to the disqualified Clubs will be refunded to the payor Clubs, except that payor Clubs that have exceeded the CBT threshold two or more consecutive times will forfeit some or all of their refund.

c. The Commissioner’s Discretionary Fund will increase from $10 to $15 million per year.

Again, no percentage rollback (A). It’s item B that has enormous implications for big market teams. The revised revenue sharing system effectively shuts the big market teams out of the program by the end of the CBA, gradually losing 25% of any revenue sharing receipt annually until 2016 when it’s eliminated entirely. The Bay Area is the #4 media market and is #6 in population, so neither Bay Area team would be eligible for revenue sharing in the future. Sounds like a deadline and a decision for the A’s, right?

Not so fast. SI is reporting that a provision in the new CBA allows the A’s continue on revenue sharing past 2016 if there is no resolution. So what does this all mean?

The A’s are in a unique and unenviable position among the 30 MLB franchises. They are both a big market team and a low budget team. In the long run, they can’t be both. No other big market team operates on revenue sharing, year after year. When Lew Wolff and I talked two years ago, I mentioned that the A’s were the only two team market where one franchise pays into revenue sharing while the other receives it. He replied that he hadn’t heard the Giants-A’s dynamic phrased in such a manner. I joked that he could take that up to the league office if he wanted at no charge.

MLB appears to be taking the steps to ensure that the A’s are positioned to become a full-fledged big market team. Getting a stadium deal in place is only the first step. Vastly improved media and sponsorship deals are just as important. That doesn’t mean the A’s will reach the Red Sox or even the Giants in terms of revenue, but if they can achieve the medium revenue levels of the Nationals or White Sox, they’d be considered self-sufficient. Both Wolff and Billy Beane are aware of this.

One explanation for the provision may be that the A’s might not be able to open a new ballpark in San Jose until after 2016, though there has been no indication that this is the case. If Wolff isn’t given the go-ahead to move to San Jose, there’s no telling what will happen down the road. It should set up the A’s for a sale at some point. The problem with this is that we know that an Oakland-based buyer with knowledge of the area’s low revenue generation would have to buy the team at a discount, whereas other buyers looking to move the team elsewhere would be willing to pay full price. Hopefully it never gets to that point. MLB is not going to approve Oakland’s continued stay on welfare. They’ll move the team out of the area instead.

11.21.11
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Is Moneyball a major reason for the delay?

As of this writing, the film adaptation of Moneyball has accrued $72.6 million in domestic box office revenues through nine weeks (plus $7+ million internationally). Though its run is winding down, Moneyball is still playing on over 400 screens in the United States and is on a highly staggered release schedule. Even now there are articles about Moneyball, Billy Beane and Michael Lewis, especially because the UK release is this week. The DVD release date is January 10.

The Steven Soderbergh-helmed Moneyball project was set to start filming in 2009, so if you tack on the normal one year of production and post-production work, the movie would’ve come out in Fall 2010. By now you probably know that the film’s studio, Sony Pictures, disliked Soderbergh’s documentary take on the story and shelved it just before principal photography was to begin. Fortunately, Brad Pitt pushed the project through and out of development hell. The film resurfaced with Bennett Miller at the helm, Pitt has a shot at an Oscar, and the rest is enjoyably revisionist history.

Prior to the film’s premiere, when Billy Beane was interviewed everywhere about the film adaptation of Moneyball, I noticed something different about the way he was answering questions. There was a palpable sense of relief in his tone. He most assuredly enjoyed being feted once again for being the great iconoclastic general manager, and it seemed he bristled less at the notion. It’s that sense of relief that got my attention, and now we may be starting to see why.

The A’s and Rays weren’t on the recent owners meetings agenda, as attention was focused on the CBA, the sale of the Astros to Jim Crane, and the plight of the Dodgers. Before the meetings started, word spread that the A’s situation wouldn’t be addressed until January, when the next owners meetings are scheduled. By mid-December, Moneyball should be off the domestic screens completely as moviegoers will be looking at blockbusters, Christmas movies, and the rush of Oscar nominees. Moneyball will be – for the public at least – out of sight, out of mind. Like the film’s stablemate, The Social Network, there could be a short Oscar-related re-release early in 2012, but there’s no guarantee of that.

That makes mid-January a pretty good time for an announcement to be made regarding a move to San Jose. It’s a brief respite after the hectic holidays and the big news of the hot stove period, and before spring training and the Oscars at the end of February. I’ve thought for some time that it was very important from a public relations standpoint not to time such a decision too early, as it could pull the rug out from Oakland and the movie. Even at this fairly late stage, the A’s plight is mostly ignored by mainstream press and most of America. The premiere and the initial run were the best exposure the City of Oakland has gotten in a long time, so an epilogue of the team shuttling off to San Jose would seem rather incongruous. Now the movie has made its money, so that cow has been sufficiently milked by the studio and MLB. The international markets who haven’t gotten the release yet are so far removed from the situation that they probably care little for the film’s environs.

Moreover, there’s a parallel story to this situation, and it relates to Billy Beane, the man. I’ve thought for some time now that even though Lew and Keith Wolff are working the ballpark deal, it’s Beane who is the linchpin to franchise being in San Jose, or rather, the Valley. The Wolffs and John Fisher are from old school, old money backgrounds, whereas Beane is the hip, now-legendary iconoclast. As we who live and work here know, the Valley loves its iconoclasts. For the A’s to attract and retain a lot of fast-moving tech companies as customers, it’s important for the A’s to maintain an image. For all intents and purposes, that image right now is Beane. Beane’s image has an intangibility that, unlike any currently playing ballplayers, is not terribly dependent on pure performance. It could even be argued that Beane is somewhat immune to appraisals of performance, as long as the ownership group is in lockstep with him.

If Cisco Field doesn’t come to fruition, what incentive is there for Beane to stay? Peter Gammons put it out there. The team would be put up for sale and would seem to be on its way out of the Bay Area. For Beane, the challenge isn’t just getting an extra $20-50 million to put into payroll. The A’s are simply incapable of being run as most other teams are, with full control over their revenues and environments. You have to think Beane wants that opportunity every bit as much as the extra payroll. Then he can shuttle back-and-forth along Coleman Avenue between Cisco Field and the Earthquakes Stadium, indulging both of his sporting passions.

Many have and will continue to argue that Beane’s role is overstated and his performance overrated. Regardless, he remains in high standing by the baseball literati and the business community. For now that’s what counts the most. It’ll help sell Cisco Field to everyone from SVLG’s C-levels to the average voter in San Jose who will be renting the DVD from Netflix or a Redbox next spring. Without Billy Beane, not only is there no Cisco Field, there probably is no Athletics franchise in the long run. At least not anywhere around here.

11.19.11
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Rosenthal has scoop on San Jose (Updated with analysis)

Read Fox Sports baseball writer Ken Rosenthal’s new article on A’s-to-San Jose move developments, then check back here for analysis and discussion.

The big stuff from Rosenthal:

  • MLB wants a larger seating capacity than 32,000. FWIW, last year I explained how the A’s could get up to either 36,000 or 38,000 by simply adding four rows to one or both seating levels.
  • Selig supposedly warned Wolff that $180 million precluded a move to the South Bay. First, take a look at the chart of recent franchise sales I posted last May. Then consider two takeaways from this: 1) Wolff may have to pay compensation to enter Santa Clara County even if he disagrees with it, 2) An Oakland or East Bay-based A’s automatically has a depressed value, as was speculated when Steve Schott lacked interest in Uptown. How does MLB reconcile those two problems, which are clearly related?
  • The usual back-and-forth between Wolff and critics, and the Giants’ continued intransigence.
  • MLB could explore the Montreal option and buy the club and resell when they get a stadium deal and a buyer for the team. Of course, that only hastened the Expos’ departure from Montreal. Also, MLB has to know by now that $500 million for an Oakland ballpark with the economic and political climate in California is going to be more than a little difficult. It goes back to bullet point #2 above: if MLB and prospective owners know that Oakland and the East Bay are limited in terms of revenue generation, what is the financial incentive to build there? How does that help the franchise or MLB for that matter?
  • There’s a claim that the Giants would have to hit 3.2 million in attendance in order to “break even” with a projected $130 million payroll in 2012. That’s a curious point, and one I’d ascribe to a talking point from someone in the Giants, until I looked at the numbers. This past season, the Giants hit a $114 million payroll figure on $230 million in revenue (49.5%). Historically, the Giants have been at around 52-53% of revenue over the course of the last CBA, though in 2008 they hit 56%. That’s probably their upper limit, and $130 million in payroll would speak to that unless they got some new revenue stream out of nowhere. Or unless someone took some dead weight contracts off their hands.

All of the things I’ve been hearing leading up to the owners meetings is that some sort of resolution is due as soon as January. Rosenthal’s article certainly supports this, and actually gives a tiny amount of credence to the idea that Selig is being thorough. (Imagine that?) The path to resolution, as described by Rosenthal, is not the easiest to negotiate.

That’s a lot to take in for a lazy Saturday afternoon. I’ll be off to a birthday party soon, so my contributions to the comments thread may be limited the rest of the day. I’ll still check in every so often, so behave yourselves.

Added 4:20 PM – The Merc’s Scott Herhold picks apart the San Jose ballpark land deal, calls critics “short-sighted”.

11.18.11
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Checking the couch for loose change

Mary Ann Azevedo of the SV/SJ Business Journal has the news (print version) that the San Jose Redevelopment Agency is using proceeds from the summer sale of various downtown properties to pay off lingering and pressing debts, instead of using the money to pay for ballpark land.

The numbers paint an interesting picture:

  • Sale proceeds are around $19.9 million, which is less than the $25 million SJRA and the City expected to get when the properties went up for bidding early in the year.
  • The discount on the five acres of ballpark land is $19 million, based on the combined original purchase price for the various properties and not accounting for inflation.

It would seem that if the A’s paid the full $25 million for the land, it would help the City further service agency debt while also countering a criticism that that Lew Wolff is getting a plum deal. Even if the A’s paid $12 million more, which would be the appraised “ballpark purpose” market value, it would significantly dull the chief argument by ballpark opponents.

Of course, it’s easy to say the A’s should keep piling on the dollars since it’s their money. They’re only footing the bill for the rest of the land and relocation costs, infrastructure improvements (in all likelihood), and the cost of ballpark itself. By my math the cost of the entire project, including land, is somewhere in the neighborhood of $550 million. If the City continues to provide the $19 million discount on less than half the ballpark land, the A’s and Wolff are paying for 96.5% of the entire project along with 100% of stadium construction cost. There’s no other public-private funding mix in recent history that comes close to this. By comparison, AT&T Park’s public-private mix was roughly 80-20 ($357 privately financed construction, $90 million in publicly-financed land, infrastructure, and tax abatement). FYI, the best deal in all of North American pro sports over the last 30 years is probably the late Bill Davidson’s The Palace of Auburn Hills.

Even with the land sale, SJRA is not in the clear. The fate of the agency lies in the California Supreme Court, where the Justices are expected to decide how redevelopment will be formed moving forward.

Meanwhile, Oakland continues to pursue redevelopment despite impending doom. It’s spending nearly $8 million to spruce up the aging Convention Center. The Port of Oakland, in conjunction with the City, is applying for a $40 million grant to transform the Oakland Army Base into a “trade and logistics center.” I’m sure the pollution-plagued residents of West Oakland are in love with that idea.

11.07.11
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SJ City Council to consider land deal on Tuesday

Update 10:25 PM – Not surprisingly, the Merc’s editorial board has come out in favor of the land deal.

Procedurally, the approval of the land deal to complete the Diridon ballpark site should be a slam dunk, considering the SJDDA (which approved it in the first place) and the City Council are effectively one and the same. Still, since tomorrow’s City Council session will be a public affair, there should be a mix of voices pushing to persuade/dissuade the Council. In particular, I wonder if any/many of the Occupy San Jose protesters will attend, since they will be in close proximity. Far be it for me to expect fireworks at a San Jose City Council session, but I’ll be attending anyway. The session will be at 1:30 PM at Council Chambers.

City has also posted the agenda for the session and an all-important memo containing the details (PDF) of the deal. Some of the finer points:

  • The issue at hand is the approval of an option agreement (end of memo), in which terms are laid out for the A’s to purchase the land. That’s not the end of it, because a formal purchase agreement will have to be drawn up within 90 days of execution of the option agreement.
  • Quoting from the memo directly here: “The Redevelopment Agency paid approximately $25,160,000 for acquisition and relocation costs for the entire ballpark site.” That’s a bit misleading, because the land being sold does not include the parcels that are yet to be purchased to complete the ballpark site.
  • Colliers International estimated that the entire value of the site is $38,250,000 if for its “highest and best uses”. Appraised solely for a ballpark use, the land is worth only $19,100,000. Back when Diridon was first discussed in 2005, the market value of the entire Diridon site was probably close to $70 million. If they had purchased the PG&E substation and the land fronting Los Gatos Creek, the cost would’ve soared over $100 million easily.
  • Purchase price of the site for AIG (yes, that’s the “Athletics Investment Group” if you haven’t been watching local broadcast disclaimers) is $6.975,227, or 36.5% of the appraised value, and does not include the already public land within the site (Montgomery and Otterson Streets).
  • AIG’s option to purchase the site is for two years ($50,000), with the possibility of an additional year ($25,000).

This is the only item on the afternoon session agenda, which should allow for a lengthy discussion and comment period. Baseball San Jose put out a letter on its blog providing talking points on the deal.

11.03.11
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Buster Olney is not all sunshine and roses

During this afternoon’s installment of The Drive with Brandon Tierney and Eric Davis, ESPN’s Buster Olney showed up for a segment on baseball and hot stove action. Among the talk of free agents was a discussion between the three about the state of your Oakland Athletics. As with the Wolff interviews, I’ve taken the time to transcribe the 5+ minute discussion. This time I won’t provide any commentary. I’ll leave that to you in the comments. Keep in mind that this was Tierney and Davis asking Olney on his opinion about the franchise, so do not take it as gospel. Instead, consider it simply as the view of a prominent national baseball writer who is not known for mincing words. Also, remember that Olney’s musing last year got the ball rolling on the Wolff-to-Dodgers rumor. That’s how powerful his word is.

Without further ado:

Davis: Things are just dire. They’re a mess over in Oakland.

Olney: Terrible.

Davis: It’s horrible over there. What do you hear that they’re willing to do in baseball to help this club?

Olney: Well, the Athletics continue to be strung along with the hope that they’ll eventually end up with a ballpark in San Jose. Here’s the thing. They started that Blue Ribbon panel 2 1/2 years ago, that’s 1 1/2 years longer than it took the Warren Commission to issue its report on the Kennedy assassination.

Davis/Tierney: *chuckle*

Olney: The bottom line is that they haven’t gotten any kind of traction from MLB. Now the Dodger situation is getting settled. The labor agreement is getting settled. Maybe at some point soon the Athletics – who to me right now have less hope than any organization in baseball – they are rotting. Maybe if those things get settled out that’s when you’ll see MLB go to the Giants and say, “Look, we need to talk. We need to figure out a way where you get the Oakland territory and Oakland gets San Jose.”  That way they can have a future. Right now the Athletics have no future and that’s why Josh Willingham is leaving and their other free agents are leaving, and they’re really not going to step in and do anything about it because their future is so uncertain.

Tierney: I’ll tell you. It is sad and I think you lay it out well. Willingham, there’s no doubt that he’s gone. DeJesus, Matsui, Coco Crisp. I guess the question is besides Jemile Weeks and Pennington who do we even know on the team next season?

Olney: And the pitchers.

Tierney: Yeah.

Olney: The problem is now though is that let’s say that midway through next year baseball stepped in and said, “Guess what? You get a stadium in San Jose.” All these pitchers they developed, the Trevor Cahills, the Brett Andersons, Gio Gonzalez. By the time they actually break ground and make progress and starting building that park those guys are going to be trade bait.

Tierney: That’s true.

Olney: They’re gonna have to move them out of there because they’re not gonna keep them around, and they’re not gonna sign them to long term deals. It’s really a sad situation.

Tierney: …Lew Wolff, where does he rank in terms of wealth amongst owners? I’m just trying to connect the dots here.

Olney: He’s got wealth – and I’ve always believed this – for example, when people rip the fans in Tampa Bay for not going seeing the Rays. My feeling is those people who live there, they made that decision based on their information. And I don’t blame them. If they don’t think it’s convenient, they don’t think it’s attractive, they’re not obligated to watch their games. I think in the same realm I don’t think Lew Wolff is obligated to pour his money down a hole. The history of Oakland Athletics, whether anyone likes it or not, they cannot draw there. They didn’t draw there with Reggie Jackson. They didn’t draw there with the late Billy Martin’s teams. They didn’t draw there for the Dennis Eckersley teams, the Tony LaRussa teams. They don’t draw now. I think you’ve got a lot of history which tells you that site and that place is a loser if you’re the Oakland Athletics.

Tierney: Wow. *laughs* That is just desperation mode.

Other than personal attacks, anything in that discussion is fair game in the comments. Keep it clean.

Have a nice weekend, everyone?

11.02.11
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McCourt reaches agreement with MLB to sell Dodgers

Update 11/3 11:15 AM – House Rep. Janice Hahn (D-Redondo Beach) introduced a bill to allow for public ownership of the Dodgers. Public ownership is not allowed per MLB’s constitution, but it’s a nice gesture. Hahn actually used the issue as part of her platform and rode it to election day in June.

Update 4:35 PM – The Associated Press (SI link) got reactions from Wolff, Tom Werner, and Mark Attanasio about their potential interest in the Dodgers. Wolff’s take:

“I’m very interested in having the sale occur for everybody involved,” said Wolff, a successful L.A. real estate developer. “As far as my interest in purchasing the Dodgers, I don’t have any. I’m interested in getting a new venue for the A’s.”

But would Selig, Wolff’s fraternity brother at Wisconsin, ask Wolff to join a bidder?

“That would be absurd,” Wolff said. “The Dodgers are going to go to an auction, and the highest bidder hopefully will revitalize the franchise.”

Bloomberg also reported that Fox may be interested in acquiring the Dodgers once again, but the company quickly denied it.

Update 3:00 PM – The New York Daily News cites an unnamed MLB insider who says that “it is unlikely Selig would try to steer A’s co-owner Lew Wolff and Boston Red Sox CEO Tom Werner – both Selig allies – toward making a bid on the Dodgers.”

Update 1:50 PM – Now it’s getting interesting. Bill Shaikin is reporting that the a prospective bidding group includes former Dodger GM Fred Claire (O’Malley era), A’s/Warriors/49ers exec Andy Dolich, and Ben Hwang, who looks to be the head of the group.

Original post below

Well that was faster than anyone expected.

Word started leaking over the weekend that Frank McCourt and Bud Selig were in serious discussions to have McCourt sell the Dodgers. This was confirmed Tuesday night by the LA Times’ Bill Shaikin, and further confirmed by a press release:

“The Los Angeles Dodgers and Major League Baseball announced that they have agreed today to a court-supervised process to sell the team and its attendant media rights in a manner designed to realize maximum value for the Dodgers and their owner, Frank McCourt,” read a joint statement. “The Blackstone Group LP will manage the sale process.”

Going back to the summer, when the McCourt divorce proceedings really got ugly, the prevailing wisdom was that unless Frank McCourt ran out of cash, he’d fight to keep the Dodgers to the bitter end. That would mean enduring a bankruptcy trial, lengthy divorce proceedings, and a possible auction of the team. Now it looks like the team will no longer be under McCourt’s control by the end of the month, and a new owner could be found and approved. Neither McCourt nor MLB are saying what prompted this turn of events. Whatever precipitated this, there’s no doubt that the timeline for selling the Dodgers has been significantly accelerated.

That gives MLB roughly six months to approve the next owner, though the process will be largely guided by the federal bankruptcy court, which will preside over the team’s auction. The auction will probably include the team and Dodger Stadium + parking lots, since those will all need to be sold to cover the McCourt’s enormous debts, short term financing, and a $130 million payment promised last week by Frank McCourt to Jamie McCourt. Everything could be sold as a package or on a piecemeal basis – that’s up to the court to decide. CNBC’s Darren Rovell has the over/under for the all inclusive sale price at $875 million, though several analysts have mused that the team and related properties should fetch well north of $1 Billion.

Of course, that leaves the question of who will make the winning bid. Having a court oversee the process gums up the works if you’re looking for a Selig crony to come in to get a sweetheart deal. Last year, the duo of Mark Cuban and Jim Crane drove up the price of the Texas Rangers by $100 million through auction bidding. There have been murmurs of several groups champing at the bit to get their shot at the Dodgers, so that $1 Billion mark could be eclipsed early. One thing to keep in mind is that not only does the new owner have to assume a ton of debt, they’ll probably have to agree to make $100+ million in improvements to Dodger Stadium in order for the team to stay “viable”. With an enormous bidding war for the Dodgers’ TV rights due in a couple of years, that’s relative chump change. Will it be Mark Cuban, Ron Burkle, or some private equity hotshot?

Prior to the auction beginning, you can bet that speculation will include Lew Wolff asserting interest in the Dodgers, a charge that he denied in January. That rumor was merely an unsubstantiated musing by ESPN’s Buster Olney and not based on any legitimate inside information. Wolff is buds with Bud, so he has to expect his name to be in the news and there’s little he can do other than deny, deny, deny. Given the circumstances of the team being beholden to the auction process, it doesn’t benefit either Wolff or MLB to have Wolff involved in the proceedings. There will be more than enough bidders, and there should be multiple entrants whose backgrounds and bids are far more substantial and less risky than Jim Crane’s or Frank McCourt’s. In addition, the asking price of the Dodgers will be so high that MLB won’t be able to pull off a Montreal-style “contract-and-expand” deal, with the other 29 owners digging deep into their own pockets to buy the team.

When the winter meetings come around in two weeks, it’s clear that if the CBA is item 1A on the agenda, the Dodgers are 1B. Crane will finally be approved as the new owner of the Astros, perhaps just to get it out of the way. It’s unclear what that means for the A’s. Wolff’s getalong working style may mean the A’s issue is tabled until January. Then again, Wolff could barter his vote for “future considerations”. It’s impossible to say whether or not the A’s will even come up, let alone have Wolff’s territorial rights request addressed. Does Selig want to focus only on a few select urgent issues? Do the owners have enough information to act now on T-rights, or do formal presentations need to be made? We should know in two weeks.

10.30.11
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News for 10/30/11

A few newsbytes as the week begins:

  • Matier and Ross report that the 49ers are gunning for a 2014 opening of the Santa Clara stadium, even though the finances – especially the stadium builder licenses – aren’t ironed out yet.
  • One of the reasons the CEQA/EIR process exists in California is that municipalities and citizens can identify issues that need to be addressed and take care of them early. In Miami, the Marlins ballpark is being built with no significant new transit infrastructure in an area that desperately needs it. The Orange Bowl/Little Havana neighborhood is at least 2,000 spaces short of what should be supplied for a full house, and on-site parking totals well less than 5,000 spaces. The nearest Metrorail station is almost a mile away, and shuttles to take fans from that station and other parts of Miami are currently unfunded.
  • Speaking of transit, the California High Speed Rail project will face renewed scrutiny with the release of an updated (and final) business plan on Tuesday. The Merc’s Mike Rosenberg paints a pessimistic view, as federal funding has dried up and has made continuation of the project an extremely difficult decision. So far, $650 million has been spent on planning and engineering studies.
  • Side note: If HSR goes down in flames, the combined cost of that project and the shuttered Solyndra plant in Fremont would be $1.1 Billion. That would pay for the 49ers stadium and change, or an A’s ballpark in Oakland/San Jose and a Sacramento Kings arena. Before you scoff, know that the total annual revenue for just the NFL and MLB combined ($16 Billion) surpasses that of the movie industry – box office and DVD sales – on an annual basis ($15 Billion).
  • Not only are the Scranton-Wilkes Barre Yankees forced to spend the year barnstorming while their ballpark is renovated, they won’t be able to keep the Yankees team name in the future. The Yankees brand is to be exclusive to the club in the Bronx. The same will go for all of the other Yankees minor league affiliates. Way to keep it in the family, Steinbrenners.
  • Commissioner Bud Selig may have to determine the proper compensation for the Red Sox allowing Theo Epstein to escape to the Cubs, since the two teams can’t come up with mutually agreeable terms on their own.
  • Wondering if Selig will actually retire after his contract ends in 2012? The establishment of an office at his old alma mater in Madison might be the ticket. Selig apparently wants to write his memoirs and participate in the history department at Wisconsin, including the hiring of a professor to teach the history of sports.
  • In addition to Selig’s endowed chair, three members of The Lodge (baseball team owners) also set up a scholarship in the names of Selig and his wife, Suzanne, as part of the university’s Great People Scholarship program. The owners? Three who are incredibly indebted and linked to Selig: fraternity brother Lew Wolff, current Brewers owner Mark Attanasio (who bought the team from a trust headed by Selig’s daughter), and Red Sox co-owner Tom Werner (who was a major beneficiary of the three way Boston-Florida-Montreal ownership swap deal). What do you get for a man who has everything? A scholarship in his name, of course! Now that’s a going away present.
  • One thing to keep in mind regarding Occupy Oakland: the horrific injury suffered by Iraq War veteran and Wisconsin native Scott Olsen will almost assuredly result in a lawsuit against Oakland/OPD, one which is not likely to come out well for the City. Whenever that judgement is rendered, it’ll be more money that Oakland simply doesn’t have for projects such as an Oakland ballpark.
  • On the bright side, the Oakland Tribune and other local papers will keep their names after all.
  • Tony LaRussa goes out on top.

Good stuff to come later in the week.

10.27.11
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Dodgers may push A’s decision to backburner

The Chronicle’s Susan Slusser sheds more light on the San Jose land deals, adding this tasty bit at the end:

It is unlikely baseball owners would consider the A’s stadium at their meetings in Milwaukee next month because the Dodgers’ ownership situation is expected to dominate the agenda. Meetings scheduled for January might be more likely.

This probably wouldn’t have been an issue if it weren’t for the twin news items of Frank McCourt reaching a settlement with Jamie McCourt, then MLB reaching a settlement with Frank over a likely sale of the Dodgers. The Dodgers bankruptcy trial has been postponed, pending the outcome of both of those issues. The divorce settlement could be court-approved on November 14, right before the Winter Meetings. Assuming that it is approved, the Dodgers could easily push the A’s to the backburner, with the agenda already packed with the Astros-to-Crane sale and ongoing CBA talks.

10.26.11
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A’s to get huge discount on SJ ballpark land

As part of the complex land deal the City of San Jose is trying to complete in order to assemble the Diridon ballpark site, City is selling five acres of land it has already acquired to the A’s (and Lew Wolff) for $6.9 million, according to the Merc’s Tracy Seipel. Indexed for inflation, that price is only a quarter of the original purchase price and half the land’s market value. The land in question includes the former Stephens Meat plant (now a parking lot), the vacant former KNTV studios, and other properties along West San Fernando. The land sale will be voted on at the November 8 City Council meeting.

If the Quakes land deal is any guide, City will do the following assuming they get the green light from MLB:

  • Make final offers to holdout landowners including AT&T, threaten eminent domain if needed
  • Allow A’s to step in and buy properties at market value plus relocation costs
  • A’s deed all land back to City
  • City arranges for nominal ground lease for A’s to build ballpark (similar to China Basin)
diridon_parcel_map-03_2010

Ballpark site parcel map as of March 2010

The whole package would have to be voted on be the citizens of San Jose sometime within the next year. I expect City to push hard for a special election sometime in the early spring – perhaps during spring training or as the baseball season begins – instead of choosing for the 2012 June primary or November general election.

Mayor Chuck Reed continues to express confidence (bravado?) in the City’s ability to finish the land deals without resorting to eminent domain. To that end, an AT&T spokesman gives a sufficiently cagey answer when asked about selling the Montgomery work center.

Within the span of nine days, we’ll have three major developments in this neverending saga:

  • November 8: San Jose City Council votes on land deal
  • November 10: Oral arguments begin on redevelopment court case in San Francisco
  • November 15: Territorial rights may be taken up on the owners meetings agenda (not guaranteed)

I’ve cleared my schedule properly to cover all of this, in person for the local stuff.