The Hardball Times

BOB:  Athletics stadium limbo

by Brian Borawski
May 23, 2012

Athletics still hoping for San Jose home

Major League commissioner Bud Selig recently talked about the Oakland Athletics' stadium issue. He said it's up to owner Lew Wolff whether to consider different sites for a new ballpark but he also said that as of now, he's focused on a move to San Jose. He also said at the quarterly owners' meeting that there's still no timetable for a resolution on the San Jose issue. For now, it's up to the San Francisco Giants because they control the territory that includes San Jose.

At the moment, Wolff can look at any location within his territory without getting league approval. If he wants to move, then it gets a little stickier. San Jose is closer to San Francisco than Oakland, and the Giants were given that territory when the built their new ballpark, so it looks like it's going to take a lot for the Giants to let the Athletics move in.

MLB has record-breaking weekend

With interleague play across baseball last weekend, the turnstiles appeared to move more then at any other time on this side of the Memorial Day weekend. Whether you like interleague play or not, there were 1,652,935 tickets sold in the 45 games over the weekend and this breaks the record set in 2006, when 1,640,976 tickets were sold in the weekend before Memorial Day.

It also was the best-attended 45-game weekend since the final weekend of the 2008 season. Baseball attendance has been good so far and through Sunday, it was were at 18,637,924 tickets sold, which is 6.7 percent better then this time last year.

Mets get 2013 All-Star Game

The New York Mets and their ballpark, Citi Field, were awarded the 2013 All-Star Game. It's the second time the Mets will have hosted; the last was 1964 at Shea Stadium. This isn't a big surprise because most new ballparks have gotten the All-Star Game within a few years of construction.

Aroldis Chapman sued for $18 million

Danilo Curbelo Garcia recently sued in Miami federal court alleging that Cincinnati Reds fireballer Aroldis Chapman falsely accused him in a human trafficking case. He's suing for $18 million in damages. How the story goes is that to get in the Cuban government's favor, he threw Garcia under the bus. That favor allowed Chapman to rejoin his team, which eventually went to the Netherlands where Chapman defected from.

Garcia is a legal U.S. resident who lives in Miami, but he also hold Cuban citizenship. The lawsuit was filed just before Chapman was arrested for driving under suspended license in Ohio earlier this week.

Minor league merchandise sales did well in 2011

Minor League Baseball announced this week that licensed merchandise generated $52.2 million in sales in 2011. This was the third best year since 1991 and it's a 2.2 percent increase from 2010.

Of the top 25 top-selling teams, only four weren't in the top 25 in 2010. The new teams were the Greensboro Grasshoppers, the Louisville Bats, the Omaha Storm Chasers and the Salt Lake Bees.

Brian Borawski is a member of SABR's Business of Baseball Committee and writes about the Detroit Tigers at his own website, TigerBlog. He welcomes comments, questions and suggestions via e-mail.

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