Former MLB owner says ‘contempt’ of San Francisco Giants is why A’s left Oakland
The team known as the Oakland Athletics is two years away from officially moving to Las Vegas.
After decades in Oakland, it was a frustrating, sad ending for the franchise’s remaining diehard fans, brought on by Major League Baseball’s worst stadium situation.
For years, the Athletics and the city of Oakland have been trying to work out a deal for a new, multi-site stadium. They even came close at one point, when a deal for a large mega-waterfront site was about to come to fruition. The A’s even tried to move south into the San Jose area, hoping to capitalize on the growing, and often wealthy, Silicon Valley subset of the Bay Area.
However, nothing ever worked out, and the Athletics would play for three years in a minor league facility in Sacramento before moving to Vegas. There’s a lot of blame to go around, but one of the team’s former owners has one clear culprit:… The San Francisco Giants?
A general view of the Oakland Coliseum during the final game played by the Oakland Athletics last month. (Eakin Howard/Getty Images)
Former Athletics owner Lew Wolff blames the Giants for the A’s departure
Wolf came out with a new book, called “Moments,” and took a big shot at the Giants organization for pushing the Athletics to leave.
In the letter, per Athletiche said the move was “100 percent due to the Giants’ terrible, shameful, ongoing opposition.” Why? Because the Giants have prevented the A’s from moving anywhere near, on the grounds that they would be entering their MLB-defined local broadcast zone.
That area included San Jose, because at one point, decades earlier, the Giants had considered moving there themselves. At one point, the city of San Jose sued the Giants for their ability to block the A’s from moving there, but failed and the A’s deal fell through.
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“John Fisher is being accused of things he shouldn’t be accused of,” he said. “We tried everything we could think of, but the real key is that we didn’t have the power. The position of the Giants, they really let us down in trying to negotiate with Oakland.”
It’s true in that, although at the same time, many of the problems that arise in selling a yard start because the owners want to spend as little money as possible on their construction costs. Las Vegas and the state of Nevada gave the Athletics hundreds of millions of dollars to build their new stadium on The Strip, a handout that Oakland likely won’t be able to match. It begs the question that if these platforms are such a good investment, why don’t the owners plan to finance themselves?
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House Speaker Steve Yeager, US Representative Dina Titus, Athletics President Marc Badain, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, Athletics owner John Fisher, Gov. Joe Lombardo, LVVVA President Steve Hill and Clark County Commission Chairman Jim Gibson participate in a parade to celebrate the $1.75 billion, 33,000 athletics stadium in June 2025, in Las Vegas, Nev. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
The answer, of course, is that they don’t want to, because it’s more profitable to get taxpayers to subsidize them with a large percentage of it. Of course, the Giants didn’t help, and the Athletics probably should have been able to move to San Jose without a hitch. Indeed, MLB’s arcane antitrust exemptions and their property rights have interfered. Still, they had decades to do something in Oakland and they couldn’t.
The new Vegas stadium will be much better, and the city has already shown support for the Golden Knights and Raiders. None of this will make Oakland fans very happy.
