It has been 689 days since Major League Baseball began their review of the A’s stadium situation and options. There has been no report made public, and no clear indication of whether the A’s will make their new home near Jack London Square, or 40 miles South of the Coliseum in San Jose. Since their wait began, the only thing that has become clear is that the A’s can not wait any longer for an answer.
The Oakland A’s have long maintained that they need a new stadium in order to remain successful as a franchise both on the field and financially. The increased revenue that a new stadium would bring to the A’s could be used to retain some of their homegrown talent rather than losing them to free agency when they become stars.
The A’s argue that with a new stadium they no longer will lose players as they did when Jason Giambi, Miguel Tejada, Johnny Damon, Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito all left town as either free agents or via trade because the A’s would not have been able to meet their contractual demands. Constant turn over of players has hurt the A’s ability to draw and retain fans.
Increased revenue from a new stadium could also help the A’s attract top free agent talent to help supplement their own homegrown stars of the future. Lately the A’s have repeatedly found their overtures to top free agents declined.
The A’s missed out on their top two free agent targets this season in large part because he did not want to play in the rundown Oakland Coliseum. Adrian Beltre turned down a six-year, $76 million contract to sign with the Texas Rangers, and Lance Berkman turned down the A’s two-year offer to sign a one-year deal with St. Louis.
Beltre’s agent, Scott Boras, was recently quoted in an interview that the stadium is the main deterrent in signing free agents. Boras said “You talk to players. It’s not the city. It’s not the team. It’s the ballpark.”
“When teams recruit against the Oakland A’s, they say, ‘Why do you want to play in an empty park?’ It’s not about the organization. It’s not about ownership. It’s about locale.”
Those last three words of Boras’ quote are the key to this argument however. Oakland or San Jose?
Oakland has recently stepped up their pursuit of keeping the A’s in Oakland. Oakland has identified a stadium location near Jack London Square, and ordered an environmental impact report to speed up the process of getting shovels in the ground if the MLB Blue-Ribbon Panel determines the A’s are to stay in Oakland.
Athletics owner Lew Wolfe has been less than receptive to this proposal from the city of Oakland. Wolfe maintains that the A’s have exhausted all options within the city of Oakland and determined that there is not a suitable site to serve the A’s long term interests.
The city of San Jose has been purchasing the parcels of land necessary to build a stadium for the A’s, and also attempted to place a measure on last year’s ballot to secure voter approval. The measure was removed at the request of Major League Baseball.
Both Oakland and San Jose could lose out in their bids for a new baseball stadium if no decision is made before Governor Jerry Brown freezes all local redevelopment however.
It is the role of MLB to determine if there will be a vote by the owners to remove the territorial rights to Santa Clara County from the San Francisco Giants to allow the A’s to move South. The Giants were granted territorial rights in the early 1990’s when the Giants were considering a move to San Jose, ironically enough because the A’s surrendered the rights to the Giants. The Giants of course now have their new stadium in San Francisco’s China Basin.
The Giants franchise would be effected by the A’s relocating to San Jose, there is little doubt that this is true. The Giants Single-A minor league affiliate currently calls San Jose home, and as a result of this there is already a Giants fan base in San Jose. An A’s move would challenge this fan base and also force the Giants to relocate their minor league team. (The A’s would front the bill for relocation however.)
Baseball’s owners would need to approve the move, and the Giants will undoubtedly fight the move until the end, but the Giants would find themselves well compensated in the event the move is approved. The precedent has been set by the move of the Montreal Expos to Washington DC and into the territorial rights of the Baltimore Orioles. Major League Baseball guaranteed the Orioles $130 million per year in revenue and a minimum sales price of $360 million.
Major League Baseball has taken too long to weight the benefits and downfalls of both Oakland and San Jose. The time is now to make a decision.
While East Bay fans of the A’s will argue that the team belongs in Oakland, a deeper look tells the story of why the A’s covet San Jose.
San Jose boasts the largest population in the Bay Area, and as a whole is more prosperous than Oakland. The benefit in season-ticket sales and walk up sales being drawn from within the city would be an instant boost to a franchise that struggles to draw fans to their current home, even during winning seasons in the early 2000’s.
San Jose businesses are another major advantage over Oakland. A downtown ballpark in San Jose would be hot real estate for corporate advertising and sponsorships. The A’s can not secure this level of advertising revenue in the struggling Oakland business environment.
A move to San Jose could arguably make the A’s a “Big Market” team that would be able to compete financially with New York, Boston, Anaheim, San Francisco and Los Angeles for top free agents. The A’s, annual recipients of revenue-sharing, would much rather contribute to the revenue sharing fund, and be independently successful as a franchise than to continue receiving an annual revenue sharing check from the big market teams.
This would be a positive development for Major League Baseball as a whole, increasing the values instantly of the teams that would no longer need to pay a portion of their revenue to the A’s, and increasing the revenue share that the other teams still on the receiving end would receive.
Oakland has argued that the A’s need to stay in Oakland to prevent the negative impact that their departure would have on the city’s unemployment rate and in essence, their overall financial well-being. Oakland believes that a stadium near Jack London Square at Victory Court would revitalize the area and bring new businesses into Oakland. They may very well be correct in their rationale.
It is not, however, the A’s responsibility to look out for the best economic interests of the city of Oakland. The A’s primary responsibility is to operate in the best interest of the A’s, to build a winning team to compete for World Series Titles that also operates as a successful business. This is a goal that can only be accomplished in San Jose.
In the midst of their often frustrating quest for a new stadium, the A’s have managed to build a team that stands an excellent chance at competing in the AL West this season. They made acquisitions of Hideki Matsui, Brian Fuentes, Grant Balfour, Rich Harden and Brandon McCarthy through free agency, and traded for Josh Willingham and David DeJesus.
These additions, along with their strong core farm system will keep the A’s competitive in 2011 and beyond. It sure would be nice if the A’s had a new stadium in an area with a fan base and revenue sources to retain this talent and give the fans familiar faces to cheer and form attachments with.
The right decision, for the Athletics franchise, and for baseball as a whole, is to allow the A’s to make the move South to San Jose.
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