Threat of A’s moving is major league bluff
It’s called chin music. That’s the tune MLB and commissioner Rob Manfred started playing Tuesday. They threw a high, hard one at the chin of Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and the Oakland City Council.
Get the message, Oakland? Vote to approve the Athletics’ plan and commit to kicking in $855 million in infrastructure for the team’s new ballpark and surrounding village, or kiss your lovable little baseball team goodbye.
ESPN’s Jeff Passan broke the news that MLB has suggested the A’s should start looking for a new hometown in case their latest stadium proposal gets rejected or delayed.
Actually, the news contained two bombshells: Along with giving the A’s the green light to shop for a new home, MLB stated, “The Oakland Coliseum site is not a viable option for the future vision of baseball.”
Until now, neither the A’s nor MLB had rejected the Coliseum as a viable site for a new ballpark. You might think MLB’s main concern would be a new ballpark for the A’s, rather than a heavy-handed rooting interest in the $12 billion proposed development, wouldn’t you? Maybe MLB stands for Major League Business.
“While the Oakland A’s have claimed to be ‘Rooted in Oakland,’ we now see that was only if the city would hand out hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to fund a massive real-estate development,” the East Oakland Stadium Alliance, which opposes the development plan, said in a statement Tuesday.
It’s called power politics, folks. Please allow me to poke a few holes here and there in the heated puffery of MLB’s directive.
• Note that the original statement is from MLB, not from the A’s, although surely the plan to pressure Oakland is a joint effort. The A’s have been very careful in trying not to appear unneighborly or belligerent, even as opposition to their project intensified. They let their big brother do the dirty work for them. Now the A’s can say, “Hey, we love Oakland, but MLB told us to start looking around, so what can we do?”
• “The Athletics need a new ballpark to remain competitive,” the MLB statement said.
Why does MLB care if the A’s are competitive? I had a recent conversation with Neil deMause of fieldofschemes.com, an expert on how sports venues get built — or not built. We discussed the Oakland ballpark situation.
Referring to the A’s playing in the badly outdated Coliseum and using that as an excuse to keep payroll super low, deMause said, “How does it hurt Major League Baseball? It keeps salaries down, because it’s one more team that’s not bidding up the free-agent salaries. It shows other teams that you can win, at least sometimes, with a low payroll, so that encourages other teams to follow (that) model: ‘We’re not throwing in the towel. We’re playing Moneyball.’ ”
The team owners “love it,” deMause said. “They’d obviously love the A’s to have a new stadium, because why not, but I don’t think they have any problem with the A’s not spending much.”
Many cities would love to have a major-league team, and many are ramping up plans to wine and dine the A’s. The list includes Las Vegas, Portland, Nashville, Vancouver, Charlotte and Montreal.
The threat of moving is a common tactic used by teams seeking public money to build — or help build — a stadium.
“The Rays used that threat,” deMause said. “If they were going to move somewhere, wouldn’t you think they would have by now? It’s been so many years. With the A’s, the problem is that, even though they aren’t bringing in as much revenue as they think they should, it’s still a more valuable franchise than if they were in Portland or Nashville or someplace like that.
“The Bay Area’s such a huge TV market, and local TV still matters so much for baseball . ... Right now, the A’s are in good enough shape. They’re not Cincinnati; they’re solidly sort of a midlevel market, if not a little bit above that. There’s nowhere that’s a better option. Like, if Nashville gave the A’s a stadium completely for free, I don’t know if that would be a better deal than staying at the Coliseum.”
What if Oakland were to tell the A’s, “We’ll give you $155 million, best we can do.”
“So if you’re (owner) John Fisher, do you throw a hissy fit and move to Las Vegas?” deMause asked. “Or do you say, ‘You know what? Mayor Schaff isn’t going to be there forever, and I’m going to keep owning the team, so do I give up on this or just wait for the next mayor?’ It’s hard to argue that moving to Las Vegas is a better option.”
You know who agrees with that? Or did? Rob Manfred, who in 2018 said, “I believe that there is not another market in the United States that has the upside potential that Oakland has, and I think we would regret leaving Oakland if we did that.”
Watch your chin, Oakland.