Craig, how familiar are you with the inner-workings of Oakland? The city is horribly run from top to bottom, so I take any and all comments from spokespeople like this with a huge grain of salt. One would think a city attorney would be more concerned about his city’s alarming repeat-offender crime rate before tackling the potential loss of a franchise that as any regular attendee will confirm has been an afterthought of the city for at least a decade.

I like how the writer had to stretch it out a bit to take a shot at Bush. Maybe he had a word count to meet.

If MLB is in on the gig, and I don’t doubt that, why has it not, years ago, quashed the Giants’ territorial rights issue and let the A’s move to San Jose? There’s no law behind it; territories is MLB policy, and one borne of concerns that were relevant in the first half of the 20th century but not nearly so today.

Figure that Magowan, by using his own money to build PacBell (in unofficial defiance of unofficial policy, that of always, always using Other People’s Money to build ballparks), had already earned Selig’s enmity; taking away SJ would have been perfect, even elegant, vengenance, as well as a good move for the benefit of the A’s.

Puzzling….

Relative to the post above, the end game is to find a city that will give an outstanding stadium arrangement.  It only takes one.  10 years ago, did anyone really think Oklahoma City would have an NBA team.  What Lew Wolff is lacking is a “co-conspirator” city that is ready fill ownership’s pockets with public money. 

Las Vegas presents a some unique problems, but what about Memphis, Nashville, OKC, Tulsa, or Portland?  I suspect Charlotte would have been in the running were it not for the present banking woes.  I don’t think ownership looks broadly as to a better alternative.  If that were the case you would have never seen teams recently move to Nashville, New Orleans or OKC.  In no way were those cities better alternatives to the location in which the teams previously existed.  In fact, each of the examples supra moved from top-15 population centers to locations that are barely in the top-40 for metro population.  Instead, what existed was a municipality ready to give massive money (essentially) directly to ownership.

While Oakland may run poorly, even cities with some strange city/regional govt. issues can figure out a way to give away money, see e.g. New Orleans.

In regards to mlb and the a’s plotting 10 YEARS to get out of oakland, if you can’t find a new city/sucker to give you a better stadium agreement in 10 years, maybe you should just stay put.  i was living in denver when the a’s were supposed to be coming in 1980, that didn’t happen, and any other a’s move isn’t going to happen.  mlb and the a’s need oakland to work, and they need to make it work.

One thing about Oakland that’s important to understand, is that it is not a large city of it’s own, but is a very small city, at the center of an enormous region that includes San Francisco and San Jose, and has over 7 million people within an hour’s drive.  The city itself has a couple of real bad neighborhoods that contribute to the negative press, but overall it’s quite an attractive and wealthy place.  MLB should not be hasty to abandon this great central location in the nation’s 5th largest metropolitan area.

Unfortunately for the A’s, their current ballpark is situated in just about the worst part of town.  The main thing Oakland and the A’s should be focused on is getting a cozy little baseball-only park built in the downtown or uptown area. The downtown area is not only vastly superior to the current Coliseum location in terms of amenities and “curb appeal”, it’s also much more central to the region and would be somewhat easier for millions of people to get to…

I think the current city leadership is on board with the concept of helping procure and develop a downton ballpark, but the A’s soured on the city due to trouble with previous administrations, and so things are still tangled and dysfunctional.  If the San Jose efforts by the A’s ownership fail to pan out over the next year or so, I expect a reconciliation to occur and one of the excellent Jack London Square ballpark proposals to take off.