If anyone tries to tell you private ownership is a great idea in Australian sport, ask them if they know about the Oakland A’s.
If they do know anything about the second-biggest baseball team in the San Francisco Bay area, it’s probably because of Moneyball.
You know, that inspirational story of the ragtag MLB team that didn’t have much money, but used their smarts to beat the big guys, and went on a famous 20-game winning streak.
But the A’s never won a championship in that Moneyball era. As then-general manager Billy Beane famously said, “my shit doesn’t work in the playoffs”.
And, well, now his team doesn’t work. Period. And that might be on purpose.
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In fact the A’s have turned from Moneyball to Major League, seemingly trying to drive attendance down on purpose as the team’s owners desperately angle for a new stadium – either in Oakland or Las Vegas.
“I know some people think it’s ‘Major League,’ but it’s not,” A’s president Dave Kaval told The Athletic last year.
“We wouldn’t be spending $2 million a month trying to get our waterfront ballpark approved if we weren’t serious about staying in Oakland.”
As always, this is a story about money. Big money. Because in baseball in particular, a new stadium can become a cash cow for the owners.
The A’s, owned by billionaire John Fisher – the son of the founders of retailer The Gap – currently play out of the decrepit concrete monstrosity known as the Oakland Coliseum, which they shared for years with the NFL’s Raiders.
The stadium was at one point at least acceptable, but a massive new 20,000-seat stand to please Raiders owner Al Davis in 1995 ruined the pleasant views of the Oakland Hills – the stand hasn’t been used in a decade, now covered in a large tarp.
With a lack of investment it has become incredibly run down with rusted floors, rats and various other creatures, and sewage problems including backups and leaks.
Attendance has at least been OK in recent years when the A’s were trying, and for a while in the 2010s, a strong young core of talent helped drive a series of exciting teams into the playoffs.
Yet the A’s did what they always do – lose in the post-season, and then trade away their best players for prospects before they got expensive.
Despite playing in the San Francisco area, the A’s act like a small market team; their 2023 payroll is projected at around $75 million, similar to what it was a decade ago. Roughly half of MLB runs a payroll at least double that, and teams are guaranteed more than that each year simply via their TV deals, so it’s not like Oakland can’t afford to pay for better players.
But they don’t, and people aren’t showing up. Last season the A’s had a horrific average of 9,973 fans at home games – only two other teams were below 15,000, with three teams over 40,000. Over the course of a 162-game season, they drew just 787,902 fans through the turnstiles, compared to the 3,861,408 fans who went to LA Dodgers games.
Yet who could blame fans for giving up on this team when the owners clearly have?
Fisher and company have two goals at this point: having a new waterfront stadium in Oakland approved, which would allow the club to earn a bonanza in real estate development from selling and/or renting the area around the venue itself, or moving to Las Vegas.
Having seen their former cotenants the Raiders move to the desert gambling oasis, the A’s are hopeful relocation could spark interest in the team from visitors – although expecting baseball fans to make trips for one of their 81-odd home games seems less likely than visits for the eight or nine NFL home games the Raiders have each season.
Plus, the A’s would need to play in the middle of summer in the middle of the desert, so unless they’re airconditioning or enclosing the stadium it could be absolutely brutal to play and watch a game in.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, who never misses a chance to make a quick buck, declared this week the “focus” appears to be on moving the team to Las Vegas rather than remaining in Oakland.
“The city (of Oakland) has been really caught up in trying to work their way through these funding issues that I’m sure you’ve read about,” he told reporters.
“But I’ve talked to John Fisher on a regular basis both about what’s going on in Oakland and about what’s going on in Las Vegas.”
One of the primary issues regarding a new venue in Oakland is the requirement to build affordable housing alongside the baseball development.
“I think Mr. Fisher wants to make the best deal to secure the future of the A’s, whether it’s in Oakland or Las Vegas,” Manfred said.
“They need a new stadium, I think that’s kind of beyond debate. If he had to rank them one and two, you’d have to ask him that. I think he’s focused on making a deal that will secure the future of the club.”
Manfred is right about a new stadium being required – but this narrative that exists where the A’s have to move out of the Coliseum is false, as long-time baseball writer Joe Sheehan wrote in his newsletter this week.
“The Coliseum does need replacing, but the Coliseum site is a good one, with plenty of road and transit options and the space to build a new park while using the old one in the interim, like the Mets did in Queens,” he explained.
“The A’s and Fisher are focused on a site that would enable the kind of non-baseball development that makes owners richer and has no relevance to the ballclub.
“The A’s playing 162 games is merely what has to happen to keep the franchise going until Fisher gets the cash cow of his dreams.
“It’s a miserable situation. A sport with real leadership would do more than just point to Las Vegas with one hand while pointing a gun at the city of Oakland with the other. Alas, baseball hasn’t had that since Walter O’Malley (who moved the Dodgers from Brooklyn to LA) died.”
No; what’s happening here isn’t about what the team needs. It’s about what ownership wants.
Baseball loves the narrative that small market teams can’t afford certain things, like great players, because it allows the billionaires in charge to get away with cutting costs and making a profit.
The benefits of private ownership in sport are clear in New York, where Mets boss Steve Cohen is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on top free agents to try and win a World Series. He is super duper rich, and is spending the money to win games. It might unbalance the scales a little bit, but it’s what almost every owner could afford to do if they wanted to.
Even in San Diego, a so-called small market, the team’s owners are ticking off major investments in players to try and win a championship – and the fans are rewarding them with great attendance and support. It’s a win-win cycle.
Oakland, and other clubs like Pittsburgh and Cleveland, are at the opposite end of the spectrum. They are being permitted to give up, to cash the cheques and hey if they happen to win some games, that’s a nice benefit.
And in the case of the A’s, it is seeing the actual team sacrificed at the altar of potential profits from a new stadium, wherever it may be.
