When the Oakland A's move to Vegas, it will be like the last team to move, the Montreal Expos. The owner and commissioner will say that it was a poisoned market. The truth is that it was made by a few, including the owner and commissioner, who salted their own Earth.
There is still hope at Howard terminal. Last week, there was one small hurdle cleared. The vote is on the way. Even if the A's go their way, owner John Fisher will not have to pay for it. Oakland should only do so many things. A football stadium has been built in Vegas. There is a second large edifice.
A chapter in the book "How many people killed the Oakland A's?" was written in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday, as it was reported that Joe Lacob, current owner of the Golden State Warriors, was close to buying the A's in 2005. He didn't get the team. Bud Selig wanted Lew Wolff to join the team. Most of the world's evil started in a frat house. It's not necessary for young kids to pay for their friends to join them.
Bud might have known what kind of owners Wolff and Fisher would be. He probably didn't consider it. He knew Wolff, and he wouldn't do much to make the other owners look bad, or swim against the tide, when Selig tried to make the game worse for the owners. The fortunes of the team and their fans were not considered.
We don't know what the A's would look like with Lacob running them, but it's hard to imagine how bad things would be. They wouldn't be a dynasty of their sport. Baseball and its economics aren't the same. Lacob moved the Dubs out of Oakland quickly. It wouldn't have been an option to move the A's.
Wolff and Fisher have done everything they can to eliminate one of MLB's most passionate fans. The stars you get attached to are shipped off year and after year when they want to make a living wage, which is where most A's fans find themselves now. You can only watch your team compete in order to know if there is a hard glass ceiling on their ambitions. That is part of the system that Selig and now Rob Manfred have created, where there isn't much incentive to field a winning team. The fact that Selig had a hand in turning the A's into this will rankle fans even more because they want the team to stay in the secret club.
Maybe Selig still loves baseball at some point in the past. Not enough was done to cancel out all the things he did. Fisher doesn't care about A's fans and he doesn't care if they show up anymore The man doesn't have to. Most of the other owners are real estate deals to him.
Baseball will sometimes wonder why it isn't more popular. The call is coming from a family member.
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