Scott Ostler:
How can other team owners abide the A’s John Fisher, who just takes?
As we approach Decision Day Tuesday, when the Oakland City Council takes what might be one last swing at keeping the A’s in Oakland, a million questions float in the air.
The biggest, most obvious question is: Will the A’s and Oakland continue working together, or is it time for a divorce now over their irreconcilable differences?
However, I would like to direct one question to Major League Baseball and its 29 team owners, not counting A’s owner John Fisher:
Do you really want to keep this guy in your club? Or give his bank book a turboboost?
Followup question: How low do you want to go?
The main benefit Fisher seems to bring to the MLB party is that as a benevolent team owner, he makes the other 29 look good. Those 29 owners can’t force Fisher to sell the A’s. But they can vote to reject the A’s proposed move to Las Vegas, if and when that comes to a vote.
So I’ll ask another question: Is it time for MLB to stop enabling a guy who has sucked far more out of base
ball than he has pumped into it, financially and otherwise?
Anyone can have a bad 16 years, but come on.
If someone were to write a book on Fisher’s tenure as the A’s owner, it wouldn’t need a title. Just a cover photo of that little “meal” given to A’s minorleague players. Everyone would know what the book was about.
The other team owners should be a little bit embarrassed, although most of them are probably incapable. Sixteen years ago they voted Fisher into their club, knowing he was coming in as a businessman whose goal was to use the A’s as a money magnet for a huge development project.
What the owners handed to Oakland was 16 years of rockbottom payroll, excused by “if we only had a new ballpark,” backed by nonstop floundering and selfown blundering in search of that ballpark — or, more accurately, a development deal with room for a ballpark.
Fisher coasted on years of revenuesharing assistance as a smallmarket team from the rest of baseball, even though Oakland is as smallmarket as Safeway. That money, up to $35 million a year, was supposed to be plowed into teambuilding — player salaries, scouting, baseball operations — but apparently didn’t get added to that kind of A’s investments in themselves so much as replace them. Fisher’s lodge brothers agreed to pull the plug on that starting in 2017, turning off the cash spigot after 2019. The absence of further MLB handouts does appear to have given the A’s urgency to find new ones.
We can also credit Fisher, directly or indirectly, with having aided an antitrust suit against MLB, with San Jose fronting that action.
What about the fans? Well, the A’s did bring in a new scoreboard, the Treehouse and food trucks. That wasn’t enough to distract fans from noticing that their favorite players keep disappearing.
Postpandemicshutdown, the A’s boosted ticket prices and took away some perks from seasonticket holders, such as a discount on parking, which is now the same $30 for everyone. Also gone, benefits like locking in preseason prices and discounts on merch and concessions.
For a recent game, one fan bought two $61 tickets through the A’s website. With parking and other added fees, the two $61 tickets cost a total of $178.75.
This from a team owned by a man, America’s guest, who has made a fortune in teamvalue appreciation, and whose personal worth reportedly shot up $1 billion during the pandemic.
Now Fisher is facing off against Oakland’s officials and politicians. They seem willing to bend over backwards to work with Fisher and make a deal that would benefit him and the city. What do those officials and politicians have to show for their efforts so far? Sore backs.
Barring a complete 11thhour cavein by the city, Fisher and A’s President Dave Kaval vow to move the A’s out of town. If they do, the A’s will get a new ballpark in Las Vegas. Or somewhere. And then the other 29 owners can show that off, a shiny symbol of the prosperity and hipness of their sport.
But by doing so, the 29 owners will also be abandoning a city that is 24% Black for a city (Las Vegas) that is 10% Black, at a time when MLB says it is investing millions to promote baseball participation by African Americans.
Those 29 owners will be left to explain why they allow a team owner to abandon a city that is willing to get into a risky partnership by investing heavily in a new ballpark and development on valuable waterfront property, something not readily available in Las Vegas.
Those 29 owners would share a relocation fee Fisher might pay for the privilege of moving his team out of Oakland, but to do so they give up the possibility of cashing in a potentially much larger fee if an expansion team were to be placed in Las Vegas.
For MLB’s owners to block an A’s move out of Oakland, eight of 29 owners would have to develop a heart, conscience or backbone. Assuming they can be found, will someone direct those folks to the Yellow Brick Road?
Tuesday might be Oakland’s last stand as a majorleague sports venue. It also might be John Fisher’s last stand as a baseball owner. If he strikes out at Howard Terminal and is denied permission to move the team, he will be forced to either trudge along in an embarrassing situation, or sell his team (and pocket a huge profit).
Maybe then, with a new, baseballoriented owner, the A’s and Oakland might achieve a new ballpark. The city’s proving it’s the one willing to make a deal. Does MLB want to turn its back on that?