As far as acts of defiance go, the 27,000-plus Oakland Athletics loyalists who turned out two Tuesdays ago in a “reverse boycott” of the baseball franchise’s possible move to Las Vegas was an impressive show of force—representing nearly 140 times the number of known Alamo defenders, with presumably far fewer casualties.
But whereas the Alamo’s defenders lost their battle, only for their cause (Texas independence) to ultimately prevail, A’s supporters might not be able to stop the seemingly inevitable. That’s assuming Major League Baseball eventually signs off on a Las Vegas move. If so, for the third time since 2019, Oakland will bid adieu to a major professional sports team—twice this decade losing out to Sin City (the NFL’s Raiders moved there in 2020).
How to explain why there may soon be no major professional franchises in a town once dismissed as having “no there there”?
One answer would be economics, as the A’s are the lone MLB team averaging fewer than 10,000 fans per home game. Making matters worse: the A’s ballpark, the fifth-oldest among the league’s 30 franchises, is hardly bucolic—unless one happens to find cat feces, cobwebs, and moths particularly charming.
Another possible explanation for Oakland’s current woes: greed apparently triumphing over pragmatism.
It wasn’t that long ago (the last decade of the 20th century) that the fate of the San Francisco Bay Area’s other MLB franchise hung in the balance—the San Francisco Giants likewise playing in a terrible stadium (for baseball, that is) and poised to relocate to Florida’s Gulf Coast. What kept the Giants in California: a willingness on the part of new ownership to be innovative (the Giants eventually moved to a small parcel of land in San Francisco’s China Basin and what became the first privately financed MLB park since the early-1960s’ Dodger Stadium). The team scraped together $100 million from naming rights and sponsorship, $170 million in the form of a bank loan, and $72 million from the sale of 16,000 “charter seats.”
But the other saving grace for Giants’ fans: a local government willing to “play ball.” San Francisco’s City Redevelopment Agency chipped in $15 million in tax-increment financing. The city also donated the site of the future ballpark free of charge (estimated value: $33 million). Toss in $25 million worth of municipal fire, police, and garbage services, not to mention a full property tax exception, and the Giants left their heart—and bats and gloves—in San Francisco.
Sadly, such spirit of cooperation never was on display in Oakland. The team’s ownership didn’t “settle” for a modest-sized ballpark on a sliver of downtown land, as did the Giants. Instead, it agitated for something far more grandiose—a $1 billion ballpark and a $12 billion real estate project at Howard Terminal, just north of Jack London Square near downtown Oakland. Had the A’s ownership stuck to the Giants’ script, maybe it would be a whole new ballgame, with no one leaving for Las Vegas.
But that’s assuming Oakland’s elected leaders are as engaged as San Francisco’s were back in the day. Here, Oakland has a problem that goes beyond deluded ownership or dilapidated facilities.
Take, for example, the recent actions of two Bay Area members of Congress, Democrats Mark DeSaulnier and Barbara Lee (the latter from Oakland and also running in next March’s US Senate primary). Rather than finding a creative solution to keeping the A’s in Oakland, the two have proposed a “Moneyball Act” (in honor of the book and movie glorifying the A’s analytic approach to past success on the diamond), which would require any professional baseball team that relocates more than 25 miles away to compensate its jilted community. Otherwise, Major League Baseball loses its antitrust exemption.
Another way to describe that concept: reparations, which seems to be in vogue in the Golden State these days.
And another way to describe the House members’ grandstanding: showing up late for the game.
Back in January, the federal Department of Transportation chose not to recommend Oakland for nearly $183 million in funding to help develop the Howard Terminal site. Did Lee and DeSaulnier throw any fastballs in the direction of Biden administration? Were the two pro-labor politicians anywhere to found last summer when truckers and longshore workers filed a lawsuit seeking to kill the Howard Terminal development plan altogether?
There’s one other possible explanation for why Oakland’s sports losses are Las Vegas’s gains: Nevada’s elected leaders simply may want it more.
Back in 2016, Silver State lawmakers agreed on a measure raising Clark County’s sales tax by one-tenth of 1 percent to fund additional police officers, plus a separate hotel room tax—part of a $750 million public investment in a new stadium for the transient Raiders (who previously had moved to Los Angeles, only to return to Oakland).
This year, the powers that be in Carson City moved speedily (by government norms) to snag the A’s, the state’s governor signing a bill pledging $380 million in taxpayer money toward a $1.5 million ballpark off the Vegas Strip only one month after the A’s had secured the development site. When was the last time Sacramento lawmakers moved that quickly either to lure a professional sports franchise team to California or to keep one from leaving?
In the end, the A’s could be dealt the cruelest curveball of all—that would be MLB owners voting against a move to Las Vegas. Something similar happened three decades ago, when nine of the then 13 National League owners voted (in a secret ballot) to block the sale of the San Francisco Giants to a Tampa Bay group. One reason owners might block a Las Vegas move: while the San Francisco Bay Area is the nation’s sixth largest media market, Las Vegas is a distant 40th.
And where would that leave Oakland, already a city with more problems that it would care to admit (a financial crisis; crime sprees that have business owners on edge; a fear that San Francisco’s “doom loop” has made its way across the Bay Bridge)?
Sadly, without an answer for what to do for a team it says it doesn’t want to lose. Ironically, the A’s franchise moved to Oakland from Kansas City (“a horse-s—” town”, according to the team’s owner), which in turn pried away the franchise from Philadelphia. The common denominator in all three cities? The A’s a straggler when it came to winning games and drawing fans.
In Oakland’s defense, Gertrude Stein was wrong: there’s plenty of “there there” in Oakland.
But for that town’s last remaining major sports franchise: there are no easy solutions.
