Still No Solution For A’s Stadium Situation

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

In the Los Angeles Times, Bill Shaikin writes it could happen soon:

The city isn’t so sure that a much larger corporation isn’t behind the group, which is supposed to be something of a grassroots effort. A larger corporation such as the San Francisco Giants:

The response from the Stand for San Jose group has been to argue for free-speech and privacy rights. Are the Giants behind it? We might never know, but if the City of San Jose gets its way, we’ll have a pretty good idea.

Bud Selig catches a lot of guff from baseball nerds, whether it’s because of the extra Wild Cards, the 1994 strike, or “This Time It Counts!” The man has also spawned a cottage industry of metaphorically rich photography.

But no one disputes that baseball is rolling in money right now. Major League Baseball Advanced Media is a behemoth. Attendance is up. Regional television deals are being signed for staggering sums. Selig would listen to your thoughts on instant replay, but he’s busy diving into a vault filled with doubloons.

The A’s had reportedly been granted permission to move last December, but then they weren’t, and that made the Giants all mad, and then Bud Selig said a lot of words on the issue that meant, essentially, nothing.

So, several months after a report that the A’s would be allowed to go to San Jose and three years after Bud said this was an urgent matter, we’re still at square one. Maybe even behind square one, given Bud’s dawdling.

Asked whether the A’s would consider other relocation possibilities, Selig responded: “You’d have to ask Lew Wolff. That’s really his decision to make.”

Twenty-three teams have opened ballparks since 1989, and the A’s and Tampa Bay are the only two teams still seeking new stadiums. Wolff would be allowed to consider other sites within the A’s territory -- such as downtown Oakland -- but approval from MLB would be needed for a move outside the territory.

“It depends where they’d be. They could be all over the world, for that matter,” Selig said. “They need approval. We have to go through an approval process. It just depends on where they’re moving to.“Well now. That’s something that has been mentioned on occasion -- the idea of the A’s relocating outside the Bay Area -- but never publicly by Selig in this manner. “All over the world”, Bud? Really? Where could the A’s actually relocate? Here are some ideas, some realistic... some, not so much:

The California capital is the home of the A’s Triple-A affiliate and is less than 90 miles from the team’s current stadium. It’s the 20th largest television market and the second-largest (after Orlando) without a MLB team. Problem: no suitable stadium and clearly, no public money available to pay for one.

But Bud said this on the issue to some Associated Press editors on Thursday:

”We’ve had a lot of meetings, spent an enormous amount of time. I’ve just met with both clubs again and we’ll continue along this process.“That says... almost nothing. Got anything to add, Commissioner?

Despite this desire, Slusser later reported it might not happen:

That will not ensure that the matter will become part of the agenda, however, according to those with knowledge of the inner workings of the owners’ meetings. In fact, the A’s desire to move to San Jose is not expected to be addressed during the May 16-17 event at the league offices.Slusser’s article also says Commissioner Bud Selig wants this issue “on the front burner”, though no one else is talking much about it:

It seems like forever since the Oakland A’s began their push to build a new stadium in San Jose, but in reality it’s only been about three years.

The Chronicle has learned that the A’s plan to put their stadium issue onto the agenda for next month’s owners meetings in New York.

A major-league source said the team is placing the stadium issue on the agenda in the hopes that a vote will be taken on the A’s desire to move to San Jose.

The Giants’ concerns about losing their share of the lucrative South Bay market are legitimate — and never mind that the Giants only acquired the territorial rights to the area when former A’s owner Walter Haas granted them to former Giants owner Bob Lurie at a time when the Giants were considering moving to St. Petersburg, Fla.

The Giants worked hard to develop the South Bay market, just as the Orioles once worked hard to develop the D.C. market. And, when John Fisher and Lewis Wolff bought the Athletics in 2005, Selig explicitly told them they should not plan on relocating the franchise, sources say.

I also spoke with an expert in the field, Tulane law professor Gabe Feldman, who said that such a suit would be a “real longshot.” Even if the Supreme Court allowed San Jose to challenge baseball’s antitrust exemption, Feldman said, the city would face a second hurdle — other legal precedent that allows sports leagues to place reasonable restrictions on relocation.There’s no reason for that. Bud Selig simply has to push all the parties to do the right thing, which is let the A’s relocate to San Jose.

The current ownership group of the Oakland A’s would prefer to move the team to San Jose, where they could cash in on all of the Pets.com money that’s still floating around down there. But not every A’s fan is excited about that, especially the ones who are close to the current location, as well as fans from all points north.

If there were a way to build a nice waterfront park out by Jack London Square, say, the Giants would shut up about territorial rights and the A’s would have a nice new revenue stream. According to noted Bay Area rascals Matier & Ross, there are two investment groups looking into this possibility:

First, from the A’s:

One might, upon reading that, draw the conclusion that Walter Haas agreed to grant Santa Clara County to the Giants because he was approximately a saint, his heart as pure as the driven snow.

The A’s released a statement earlier on Wednesday that reaffirmed their belief that they should be entitled to move to San Jose and build a new ballpark. The timing of the release had to do with Bill Madden’s article in the New York Daily News suggesting that the A’s weren’t likely to be awarded rights to San Jose.

The Giants weren’t amused with the statement, and they fired back with a statement of their own:

This report was denied by the commissioner’s office, but it apparently made the A’s so upset they issued a statement on the matter Wednesday. It includes the following:

Of the four two-team markets in MLB, only the Giants and A’s do not share the exact same geographic boundaries. MLB-recorded minutes clearly indicate that the Giants were granted Santa Clara, subject to relocating to the city of Santa Clara. The granting of Santa Clara to the Giants was by agreement with the A’s late owner Walter Haas, who approved the request without compensation. The Giants were unable to obtain a vote to move and the return of Santa Clara to its original status was not formally accomplished.The Giants, clearly, did not relocate to Santa Clara, and the A’s statement further mentions that the team wants to move farther away from the Giants’ current location:

Not so fast, says the commissioner’s office. Henry Schulman:

I’ve just been told by someone in the commissioner’s office that contrary to what a New York newspaper suggested yesterday, the A’s proposed move to San Jose is not on life support. And, it is not true that Commissioner Bud Selig and baseball owners have all but decided to uphold the Giants’ territorial rights to San Jose, which would preclude the A’s from going there.Schulman further writes that Madden’s column “does not reflect the current situation”, and further:

Does this qualify as a report?

There’s no source, not even an anonymous source. Not “a front-office executive with knowledge of the situation” or “a source within Major League Baseball” or even “someone highly familiar with Bud Selig’s hair”.

Well, here we are in February. Has anything happened?

::: crickets :::

We have a proposal to resolve the key dispute.

Territorial rights.

It didn’t happen. All logic pointed to the A’s moving to San Jose -- the largest city in the Bay Area, and where a lot of their fanbase could easily reach a new stadium.

Well, the Giants had their reasons, I suppose. It wound up hurting the A’s, as GM Billy Beane continually shed star players for prospects, something he did again last week in shipping Gio Gonzalez to the Nationals.

The A’s have been succeeding as second-class MLB citizens for some years. A move to San Jose may change the calculus in the Bay Area.

For more on the Athletics, visit Athletics Nation.

Bay Area Sports Guy makes a really interesting point about the Athletics’ potential move to San Jose … Despite everything you’ve heard, such a move might actually make the Giants more competitive in the long run. Read on:

Essentially, the Giants seem to be sort of coasting now because ownership thinks they can … which is great for profits, but maybe not so great in the standings. There’s definitely something to be said for healthy competition, and right now there just isn’t one.