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The A's Moving to Sacramento???

8K views 55 replies 21 participants last post by  VansTripp 
#1 ·
Interesting article... I agree.


Marcos Bretón: Perfectly logical to move the A's here
By Marcos Bretón -- Bee Sports Columnist
Published 2:15 am PDT Friday, July 29, 2005
Story appeared in Sports section, Page C1

Stuck in traffic on a gorgeous Bay Area afternoon, it became crystal clear why the A's belong in Sacramento.

Because A's fans have to be bribed to see baseball's hottest team.

Because if not for cheap grub - for $1 hot dogs and root beer floats - and if not for $1 tickets, you wouldn't have seen 15,000 ticketless people show up at the Coliseum for Wednesday's stirring A's win over Cleveland in extra innings.

You would have seen about 25,000 fans, give or take, which is about the A's average this season, down from last year and one of the lowest attendance figures in Major League Baseball.

Indeed, it could be called pathetic how the A's can't simply be great and draw fans. Or it could be called embarrassing how they can win 38 of 52 games, including 11 of the past 14, and still draw less than mediocre slugs such as tonight's A's opponent, the Detroit Tigers.

"I have no idea how many fans we will have (tonight), and that's the tough thing," said A's general manager Billy Beane.

"You should know."

Yes, you should. But the A's can't take anything for granted, though they are the toast of baseball and are playing .700 ball on the wings of Rich Harden, Barry Zito, Dan Johnson and Bobby Crosby.

For them, outdrawing the woeful Colorado Rockies is considered a victory.

There are many reasons for this, but let's not lose the point: Sacramento could do much better.

Sacramento could provide the land for a stadium that the A's will never find in Oakland or in Contra Costa County.

Sacramento is far enough away from the Bay Area for the A's to finally climb out from under the Giants' shadow but close enough to maintain their sense of history in Northern California.

Sacramento is as rabid about its sports as the Bay Area is blasé about the A's. A simple "celebrity" softball game at Raley Field as part of the recent Triple-A All Star game festivities drew a stunning 14,414 people on a steaming Monday night a few weeks back.

Yes, there was also a Triple-A home run derby that night, but the point is: Can you imagine the local drawing power for big-league baseball?

The A's would sell out nightly, particularly given new A's owner Lew Wolff's hope for an intimate new stadium seating 35,000 or so.

Build it here, Lew, they will come.

A month ago, the University of the Pacific's Business Forecasting Center told The Bee's Andrew McIntosh the Sacramento region's economy will more than double in the next quarter century. The four-county area - Sacramento, Yolo, Placer and El Dorado - will grow to 3.5 million residents.

Personal incomes will rise above the state average, the local professional and business sector will add 13,500 jobs in the next 2 1/2 years, and by 2030, the region's gross economic product will soar from $84 billion to $200 billion.

Why not get in on the ground floor of all that? Why not be like "The Jeffersons" and "move on up," and out of a horrible stadium, a depressed economy in Oakland and a dysfunctional political climate that will never generate a stadium in the East Bay. Ever.

Of course, Beane - also a minority owner in the team - will entertain no such discussions right now. He, Wolff and the rest of A's ownership say they are "committed" to the Bay Area. They have to say that.

But Beane also knows too well how his team is boxed into a relative corner of obscurity in the crowded Bay Area sports scene.

"Our biggest days are always when we have dollar (promotions)," Beane said. "The fact of the matter is, our venue is old. It's outdated."

Yes, the Coliseum is a hole where even 40,000-plus crowds seem smaller in a cavernous space. Compare the number of A's games on Fox Sports Net to those of the Giants. It's not even close. Meanwhile, the A's seemingly switch radio stations every year. Currently they are on KFRC, which plays religious music. That's pretty sad for a four-time world champion.

For their part, the Giants, who haven't won a title in 51 years and have not won one in 47 years in San Francisco, are on KNBR, a 24-hour sports titan that can be heard throughout the West.

"The Giants have a radio station that reaches Utah, so what team (is the Bay Area) going to get into?" asked Tyler Bleszinski, who runs athleticsnation.com, a popular A's blog. "If you're a Sacramento A's fan, you live out in the cold."

Time to embrace a bold idea: The A's should move to Sacramento, where it's always warm.
 
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#52 ·
OK, back to topic. :) It was a GREAT game tonight, and the As won! :banana:

They didn't win by a huge margin, like the Angels did last night, but the place was rocking! :rock: Over 45,000 people were in attendance. :eek:kay:

As to the location of a new ballpark for the team, the owner is still looking at locations in Oakland. The latest to strike his fancy is the current site of the Coliseum Flea Market at 66th and High Streets, which is private property. Mr. Wolff appears to realize that both the proximity of BART and the freeway are indispensible for bringing the fans to the games. In conjunction with the stadium he plans a a major retail development and housing. It is expected that he will bring these plans before the Oakland-Alameda Joint Powers Authority this coming Friday.

Source: Matier & Ross, SF Chronicle 8/10/05
 
#53 ·
:jk:
Bond James Bond said:
I think they should go to San Jose. And they should change their name to the Silicon Valley Chips. :)
Silicon Valley (Cow) Chips? :jk:
 
#54 ·
Average Home Attendance as of Aug 11,2005
Under 30,000
Chicago Sox 28,552
Milwaukee 28,094
Minnesota 26,277
Detroit 26,199
Arizona 25,880
Oakland 25,333
Cincinnati 25,109
Toronto 24,278
Pittsburgh 24,118
Colorado 23,921
Cleveland 23,302
Florida 22,588
Kansas City 18,738
Tampa Bay 13,881
 
#55 ·
This article is humorous....

New ballpark site not one for sore eyes
Ray Ratto

Thursday, August 11, 2005

The news of Oakland's newest ballpark plan was supposed to remain a secret until the city's Joint Powers Board announced it Friday, but you know how people are -- can't keep their yaps shut, especially around those noxious busybodies Matier and Ross.

But as a crowd of 45,131 enjoyed the A's and Angels on Wednesday night (when they weren't lowering the tone of the nation by doing the Wave), making the Coliseum seem downright cozy even with the baleful glare of Al's World in center field, the question kept cropping up -- is this just another cheap tease for a fan base that craves nothing more than certainty?

As Angels reliever Scot Shields turned into Billy Koch before a full house in the A's 4-3 victory, the mind kept wandering to the Coliseum flea market, the place that ownership front man Lewis Wolff now thinks is the best place for the new yard.

Centrally located as it is between the old rug warehouse and the High Street Overpass junkyard, it seems like the perfect place for ... well, for a flea market. It used to be the perfect place for a drive-in theater, but it's an Antiques Roadshow world out there now, one man's junk is another man's junque, and besides, they don't make trunks roomy enough for you to hide your friends the way they used to.

Anyway, when you get right down to it, the A's aren't being held down by their ballpark much at all. Fact is (and who doesn't enjoy a good fact now and then?), they're probably better off staying where they are than sinking nine figures into a site that makes sense only to the editors of Redeveloped Flea Market Quarterly.

This seems like heresy to those of you who look at the Giants' ballpark and confuse it for the Louvre -- ignoring, of course, Giants' management's attempts to have its value reassessed downward for the property tax benefits because clearly management sees it as a slowly decomposing dump no matter what your own lying eyes might tell you.

But trust us on this one, real estate really is about location, location, location, and in any event, A's fans are going to be a lot happier over the next few years than Giants fans no matter where their seats are.

Never mind now, when the A's are in the middle of the American League playoff race while the Giants are trying to convince skeptics that they didn't just dope-slap their flagship station into institutional submission. Ignore the fact that the Giants' biggest injury has crippled the team's ability to compete credibly, while Oakland's two worst injuries (Erubiel Durazo and Octavio Dotel) made the team noticeably better. Skip over the relative ages of the two rosters -- Ashton Kutcher vs. Charles Durning, more or less.

Simply put, the A's look like a much better bet over the next few years than the Giants, even if they don't get Flea Market Field built, and even if their next radio station (apparently an FM outlet now that KFRC is all-hosanna, all-the-time) doesn't have the wattage of KNBR.

Thus, the idea behind putting the ballpark further away from a BART stop, between two freeway off-ramps, and with a lovely view of San Leandro Boulevard seems odd, and bordering on the downright misguided.

What the A's need more than a hard-to-get-to boutique is to stop spotting the rest of the league two months. What the A's need more than giving up a good location for a crummy one is for owner John (It's My Checkbook And I'll Buy If I Want To) Fisher to buy a radio station, grease a couple of FCC commissioners (yeah, like that doesn't happen), jack up the signal and control the station content the way the Giants used to and are about to again.

And what the A's need most of all is to keep winning.

The Giants filled their building in Year One (2000) because it was Year One. They filled it in 2001 because Year One went so well and because Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs. They filled it in 2002 because Bonds hit 73 homers in 2001, had an even better year in 2002, and because their team went to the World Series. They filled it in 2003 because of the residual effects of 2002, and because they won 100 games. They filled it in 2004 because of 2003, and because Bonds closed in on Babe Ruth. And they are filling it now because the people who bought season tickets thought they'd see Bonds pass Ruth.

This is four years more than most parks get, and the A's shouldn't bank on five years of sellouts just because the Giants got them. The Giants got good, they got lucky, and they got Bonds, not necessarily in that order.

But they should also note that the Giants have a mortgage the size of Red Square (they are paying Derek Jeter's salary and then some every year to a bank teller in North Carolina named Morty even before the spoils get divvied up), have investors constantly banging their metal cups against the grating in front of the ticket windows demanding their share, and they are about to embark on a full makeover before a fan base spoiled beyond rotten and in no mood for this rebuilding nonsense.

The A's have none of those things, good or bad. They have youth, a small and tight organization, an owner who would rather test the flammability of his own pajamas while wearing them than be seen in public, and a general manager who has the fan base eating out of his dog's dish.

Mostly, good. On the other hand, it is also an operation that cannot afford to make a mistake, especially a $350 million mistake, just out of a misplaced sense of ballpark envy. Right now, they get all the money the current plant generates, pay almost no rent, and can just lean back watching the Giants' year in hell while they enjoy their latest reaper-cheating season.

They can wait for something better than this, in other words. They should want to do better.

E-mail Ray Ratto at rratto@sfchronicle.com.

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