Chatty, upbeat A’s president has persuasive ballpark plan
To understand why A’s President Dave Kaval is the ideal person to deliver a new Oakland ballpark, you must know the largely sad-sack history of Cleveland sports.
From the Browns’ crushing defeats to John Elway’s Broncos in 1980s AFC Championship Games (The Fumble and The Drive), to the Cavaliers’ horrible loss to Michael Jordan’s Bulls in the NBA playoffs (The Shot), to the Indians twice losing in Game 7 of the World Series, Cleveland fans know heartbreak — and resilience.
This is a city, after all, that lost its NFL franchise for three seasons in the 1990s following other relocation rumblings.
“We lived in Cleveland when there were fears the Indians would leave and we thought, ‘If the Indians and Browns and Cavs leave, what do you have? You’d be Toledo!’ That civic identity would be gone,” said Kaval’s younger brother, Peter. “We were forged out of that.”
It is this background that has made Kaval, 41, a
hardy optimist who empathizes with the downtrodden. The A’s recently chose a site near Laney College for their new ballpark, and Kaval will need to draw on those reserves to help the A’s overcome not only bureaucratic hurdles and already budding civic resistance, but a legacy of short-term actions by the team that have seen its best and brightest routinely traded.
To Kaval and Billy Beane, the A’s vice president of baseball operations, the Indians drew up the blueprint for how to inaugurate a ballpark. They opened Jacobs Field in 1994 to replace Cleveland Municipal Stadium, which they had shared with the Browns. And after that strike-shortened season, the Indians won five straight division titles and made two World Series appearances.
“I saw what that team did for Cleveland — 455 consecutive sellouts, the excitement of Jacobs Field when it opened. It was really special,” Kaval said. “Billy and I talk all the time: That’s what we’re trying to do.
“Now that we have a date — 2023 — that the stadium will be open, it’s really important to give Billy and (general manager David Forst) that timeline and they can work backward. You don’t want to open the stadium and (the top players) are gone.”
That means Oakland, known for trading away its young talent, is verbally committing to signing its core group of players — rising slugger Matt Olson, defensive whiz Matt Chapman and others — to long-term deals.
Beane and manager Bob Melvin, however, are under contract only through 2019. Will there be extensions for them at some point?
“I think the key thing is we want to make sure the entire organization and management team here is focused on our collective success in opening this ballpark,” Kaval said. “We need to have a little bit of a longterm view right now. We have the young guns and we’re investing in them and we’re going to continue to do that.”
In the coming month, Kaval said, the team will announce the architectural team, one dealing with urban and landscape planning and the other with the ballpark.
“It has to fit in with the ethos, has to be authentically Oakland and fit in with the neighborhood,” he said, noting that there will be views of Lake Merritt from much of the stadium.
There are already community and environmental groups expressing opposition to the A’s project, which Kaval anticipated. He provided a significant amount of time in the stadium timeline to meet with residents to discuss concerns and to find solutions.
Mayor Libby Schaaf and Councilman Abel Guillén were lukewarm in their initial response to the site; some Eastlake and Chinatown residents expressed concerns about gentrification; and the Golden Gate Audubon Society opposes a ballpark at the site because of the potential impact on the environment.
But those who know him say that, with his outsize interpersonal skills, it is here that Kaval really shines.
“Dave is so outgoing, he really wants to get to know everyone,” said Maria Kaval, his wife. “Before you get married in the Catholic church, there are classes, and at one point, there was a personality test about how introverted or extroverted you are. Dave was off the charts. The guy said he’d never seen a score like it.”
The couple, who have two daughters, met the first day of their freshman year at Stanford, when Kaval helped the then-Maria Fredricsson’s father carry a refrigerator to her room at Otero dorm.
“He was wearing an orange Route 66 shirt, and I found out later he and his dad had driven all the way from Cleveland,” said Maria Kaval, who is a vice president at Oracle. “He’s very adventurous. I remember thinking that was very cool. And he was nice to everyone, not just the cool kids.
“I’m almost in awe of it. He’s not a glass-half-full guy — Dave is ‘The glass is full.’ Even when things are not that great, Dave is like, ‘That’s so awesome!’ He sees everything from such a positive angle.”
Brad Null, Kaval’s Stanford classmate, wrote a book with Kaval about their 1998 postgraduation tour of every major-league ballpark, “The Summer That Saved Baseball.” In it, Null writes of his increasing annoyance with Kaval’s nonstop chattiness. “Dave could carry on a conversation with a shoe for a good half hour,” he wrote.
Null, a data scientist at startup Reputation.com in Redwood City, remains close friends with Kaval. “He’s always ready to meet the next person. I’ve met some garrulous people but Dave is above and beyond, and it’s not just for business. He is genuinely interested; he wants to talk to everyone.”
Kaval earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Stanford, then went on to get a master’s of business administration there and now teaches at the business school.
“Stanford is a huge part of my identity and who I am,” Kaval said. “Tiger Woods was in my class and I was driving him to class when he had a bum knee, then a few years later you’re watching him on TV winning the Masters; it makes you realize that anything is possible. When I was in business school, Steve Jobs gave this really inspiring talk, being really vulnerable about his failures and about what worked and what didn’t work. That was really valuable.
“I think the view there is that you can accomplish anything, and you have the ability and almost have an obligation to push as hard as you can with the skills you have. This stadium project is a good example of that.”
It was at business school that Kaval came up with his concept of the Golden Baseball League, an independent league based in San Ramon that operated from 2005 to 2010 and kick-started Kaval’s career as a sports executive. He went to Stanford deputy athletic director Ray Purpur for some guidance.
“My first impression was, ‘This kid is a great big ball of energy,’ ” Purpur said. “I remember talking to him about the baseball league, but he also had ideas about Stanford facilities that were amazing . ... He really articulates what taking care of customers is all about, making sure every detail is right. He loves fans — he wants to make sure they’re not spending too much time in lines for concessions or tickets. It sounds like mundane stuff, but it’s important.”
Kaval was hired as the president of Major League Soccer’s San Jose Earthquakes in 2010 and opened Avaya Stadium in 2015. Quakes coach Chris Leitch, who considers Kaval a mentor, said that the team’s award-winning stadium would not have been built, at least not in its present form, without Kaval.
“He made sure all the pieces were in place, and he pulled every string to make it happen,” Leitch said. “He’s very passionate about what he’s doing, and he’s also a huge fan. I think that makes a difference. That’s what makes Dave so relatable and so special. He knows what the Bay Area fans are all about.
“If you need any problem solved, Dave is the man for it.”