Another youth shipment arrives, ready for export
ability to pack.
Other exciting A’s news: A recent economic report projected that a new ballpark in Oakland would trickle $3.5 billion into the community over the first 10 years.
“A new Athletics baseball stadium would be very, very good for Oakland,” said the president of the company that produced the report. Ah, memories of Chico Escuela, the baseball player on Saturday Night Live who said, “Baseball been berry, berry good to me!”
Any month now, the A’s will announce the site of their new ballpark. After only 20 years or so studying Oakland’s potential sites, the A’s have narrowed their search to three.
The A’s, by combining their new-ballpark buzz with the rosy economic report and their youth movement, are building excitement for ... what?
Assuming the A’s do make a decision this year on a ballpark site, as they have promised, what does that mean? Bulldozers snort into action the next day? Or, more likely, we get vague plans to have the new home ready five years or more down the road?
Another big question: If the A’s build a new ballpark, will they stock it with a competitive team?
John Fisher, the team owner who is seen in public as often as the Loch Merritt Monster, has kept team payroll humorously low. The opening-day payroll this year was $81 million, fourth lowest of the 30 MLB teams, and one third of the Dodgers’ payroll. To reach the top half of baseball teams in payroll, a reasonable step toward competitiveness, Fisher would have to shell out about $140 million per season, and that’s not the way he shells.
Maybe Fisher’s plan is to build the ballpark and then double the payroll by using all the new attendance money. Well, the rosy economic report is based on a projected attendance of 2.55 million fans the first season and 2.4 million in years two through 10. The current A’s are on pace to draw 1.46 million. The problem with expecting an extra million fans to flock to a new park every year is that it doesn’t work that way, not after the first-season honeymoon. Of baseball’s seven worstdrawing teams this season, five have fairly new ballparks, including the Marlins (21,000 per game), whose ballpark is 5 years old. The Pirates have a universally adored ballpark, opened in 2001 and still minty-fresh, and the Bucs are No. 24 in attendance.
You have to win to draw fans, and you have to spend to win, and there is absolutely no indication that Fisher has the stomach to suddenly double the Athletics’ payroll.
So the two most logical options are that Fisher will finally sell the team, since he is losing his annual revenue-sharing windfall, or that he will dither and delay the new ballpark while watching his team increase in value daily because it is a pro sports franchise.
Don’t look for help from Billy Beane, who runs the team for Fisher and puts a handsome human face on the profit machine. Beane and his general manager, David Forst, continue building for the future, developing young stars and shipping ’em out.
The A’s imply that they are building a young team that will be ready to rock when the new ballpark opens, but that’s four or five years down the road, optimistically. Any stars developing now would be coming due for huge contracts about then.
As for that rosy economic report? Eh. On the website newballpark.org, devoted to tracking the progress of the A’s new home, site curator Rhamesis Muncada writes of the report, “These documents are sales pitches, always prematurely staged and distributed. They don’t hold up under scrutiny, but they also don’t get much scrutiny . ... To me these are pamphlets, no more, no less.”
Still, the A’s have to be thrilled with this pamphlet. It jacks up their leverage in dealing with the city over assorted newballpark costs and funding.
Meanwhile, Beane and his boys keep finding developing and exporting Yoenis Céspedeses, Josh Donaldsons and Sonny Grays.
But how ’bout them food trucks!