The Oakland Athletics are another significant step closer to moving to Las Vegas after Major League Baseball owners voted unanimously on Nov. 16 to approve the team’s relocation request.
Plenty of uncertainty surrounding the possible move remains, however. A political action committee in Las Vegas is pursuing a referendum for the public to potentially vote against proposed stadium funding in next year’s November election. Additionally, there are serious questions about the viability of a ballpark plan that doesn’t include a roof or a retractable dome, given the oppressive summer heat in the Nevada desert.
The A’s lease at the antiquated Oakland Coliseum expires after next season, and no concrete plan has been presented regarding where the American League team would play until the completion of a Las Vegas facility in 2028, at the earliest.
Should the move come to fruition, the A’s would be the first Major League franchise to relocate since the Montreal Expos left to become the Washington Nationals in 2005. The most recent previous move had come in 1972, when the Washington Senators transferred to Texas and became the Rangers.
The A’s, a franchise born in Philadelphia that later played in Kansas City, Missouri, moved to Oakland in 1968. The team has experienced many ups and downs since, including winning World Series championships in 1972, ’73, ’74, and ’89, and finishing with the worst record in the Major Leagues, 50–112, while having baseball’s lowest player payroll last season.
While not at all unexpected, the owners’ note understandably further devastated A’s backers, who have feared exactly such a development for decades.
“You know as well as I do that it was almost perfunctory,” longtime A’s fan Daryl Paulson told The Epoch Times, pointing to the makeup of Major League Baseball’s relocation committee that evaluated the A’s request to move. “They were going to approve it, and everybody knew it.”
The committee consisted of Philadelphia Phillies CEO John Middleton, Kansas City Royals CEO John Sherman, and Milwaukee Brewers Chairman Mark Attanasio. The Royals and Brewers are seeking stadium upgrades in their respective cities.
“They didn’t put the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers on the committee,” Mr. Paulson said. “They put on two teams that are having [stadium] issues, and they’re the ones who are going to recommend to all the owners what to do? All the other owners are basically in it for themselves. They’re billionaires who want to make sure they keep all their options open. It was meaningless, the whole thing.”
Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao said she hasn’t given up on retaining a Major League team in the city.
“We are disappointed by the outcome of this vote,” Ms. Thao said in a statement. “But we do not see this as the end of the road. We all know there is a long way to go before [there are] shovels in the ground, and that there are a number of unresolved issues surrounding this move. I have also made it clear to the commissioner that the A’s branding and name should stay in Oakland, and we will continue to work to pursue expansion opportunities. Baseball has a home in Oakland even if the A’s ownership relocates.”
Ms. Thao sent a letter on Nov. 8 telling 15 Major League team owners that the city still wanted to keep the A’s and had secured $928 million toward funding for a stadium and surrounding development.
The A’s could become the fourth major professional sports franchise to leave Oakland.
The California Golden Seals of the NHL departed for Cleveland to become the short-lived Barons in 1976. The NFL’s Raiders bolted for Los Angeles after the 1981 season, and then after having returned to Oakland in 1995, left for Las Vegas following the 2019 season. That same year, the Golden State Warriors of the NBA moved across the Bay to San Francisco.
Frustrated by decades of unsuccessfully pursuing a new Bay Area stadium to replace the 57-year-old Coliseum, which has fallen into great disrepair, A’s owner John Fisher has become an outcast in Oakland. Much the same happened with Al Davis, the late former Raiders owner.
“Today is an incredibly difficult day for Oakland A’s fans,” Mr. Fisher told reporters following the relocation vote during owners’ meetings in Arlington, Texas. “It’s a great day for Las Vegas.”
Fisher didn’t take questions from reporters after delivering the brief statement.
Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, who had backed Mr. Fisher’s efforts to move the team and waived an estimated $300 million relocation fee, echoed the A’s owner.
“I know this is a terrible day for fans in Oakland,” Mr. Manfred said on a podium at the owners’ meetings. “That’s why we always had a policy of doing everything humanly possible to avoid a relocation, and I truly believe that in this case. I think it’s beyond debate that the status quo in Oakland was untenable. And I absolutely am convinced that there was not a viable path forward in Oakland.”
Few, if any, in the East Bay city and surrounding area are of the same mind.
The Oakland 68s, a fan group that sent representatives to the owners’ meetings, called for an opening day attendance boycott next season. Numerous protests in opposition to the proposed move took place this past season. Chants of “Sell the team” were constant at A’s home games, and a “reverse boycott” of a June game drew more than 27,000 fans, who loudly implored Mr. Fisher to sell.
“Like most of our fans right now, we are very disappointed,” the 68s said in a statement. “We saw this coming. ... Right now, it’s hard to be diplomatic, especially when MLB and the A’s are turning their backs on one of the most diverse cities in America. This fan base has given a blueprint for how to engage with fans and has put in way more work over the last 18 years than the organization. We will challenge this relocation and seek to disrupt it in any way possible.”
The best chance that the A’s might remain in Oakland now probably lies with legal challenges from a teachers’ union in Nevada over the $380 million that the state has committed to building a $1.5 billion ballpark for the A’s on the Las Vegas Strip.
“I have some hope that possibly the state of Nevada and this teachers union thing will put a kibosh on some or all of the money, and make them reconsider,” said Mr. Paulson, who lives in nearby Dublin and has been attending A’s games for more than 50 years. “Other than all the things that would normally be submitted in an application for moving, like financing plans, ballpark plans, that’s the only little shred of hope that I have.”
