...I'm glad that Stanford won't go 0-12 in football this year.
About the whole Oakland/Fremont A's fiasco, I must admit that I'm rather indifferent. I really like the A's-- they're by far my favorite American League team, and since my favorite National League team, the Rockies (showing some love to my hometown), are usually out of contention by August, I rarely if ever have to worry about split loyalties...
I've read a lot of comments on the SFGate's blog about the impending A's move and the possible move of the 49ers to Santa Clara. Most of the comments, quite frankly, are inane-- either the politicians are all a bunch of "pussy's" for not shelling out more than $500 million of taxpayer money to billionaire owners, or it's all the fault of San Francisco and Oakland drug addicts, flamboyantly gay men, homeless people, and street criminals who have made the franchise owners flee in terror to the suburbs...
I get the impression (reinforced by many of the blog comments) that many of the same people who piss and moan about tax dollars being spent on education, health care, and affordable housing (things that generally contribute to the stability of society at large) have no problem whatsoever coughing up hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize privately-held, for-profit entities owned by multi-millionaires and billionaires. And for what, ultimately? An inflated sense of self-worth if your team is a winner?
On a purely emotional level, I can understand the desire to keep a team in town...I grew up in Denver, which lives and breathes Bronco football. Even though my family left Denver at the beginning of 1982, I remember how happy I was when the Broncos won their first Super Bowl in January of 1998. My brother and I talked on the phone immediately after the game-- the Broncos' first trip to the Super Bowl twenty years earlier had ended in a 27-10 loss to the Cowboys, and we were relieved to the have the curse of four blowout Bronco Super Bowl losses lifted.
It's easy to forget, though, that in 1997 and 1998, Broncos owner Pat Bowlen was making threats to move the team if local taxpayers didn't pay up for a new stadium. Admittedly, Mile High Stadium was an aging facility, but we're talking about a team that routinely packs 75,000-plus into the stands for every home game, and that has been the case for years...I remember that after flying into Denver for a weekend of gigs with the New Morty Show in 1997, I talked with a baggage handler at the airport who said that the new Bronco logo was a sign that Pat Bowlen was serious about moving the team if he didn't get a publicly-funded stadium. His reasoning? For the first time, there was no "D" on the Bronco helmets (the Broncos have the same "D"-less logo now)...I must admit, the man had a point. His concern was an indication of the anxiety that Bronco fans had to deal with. Oh, and Pat Bowlen got his new stadium: Invesco Field at Mile High Stadium.
Having played sports myself as a child, there was an appeal to growing up following a team. It is amazing how a sports franchise can bring people together who otherwise would be separated by race, class, income, political views, et cetera. I've exchanged many a high-five with individuals with whom I probably have absolutely nothing in common other than the team we like. I also wonder what it would have been like to have grown up in Chicago in the days of Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, and Ron Santo (or Early Wynn, Nellie Fox and Luis Aparicio if you followed the White Sox), or in New York in the 1940's and '50's, or in Pittsburgh in 1960, just to name a few examples. But the money wasn't as much of an issue then: the salaries weren't astronomical, and most of the ballparks weren't decked out like new Vegas casinos...
Let's face it: most owners of professional sports franchises are corporate executives. In general, corporate execs have no qualms about playing one locale against another to build a factory or what have you-- looking for the lowest wage scale, the most preferable tax abatement plan, the least unionized population, et cetera...so why do we expect them to be any different when it comes to the sports teams they own? In addition, most corporate executives don't become corporate executives without finding ways to foist a large percentage of their costs onto others-- in this case, the local taxpayers. If it's not Lew Wolff looking for a better deal for the A's, it's the Maloof brothers threatening to move the Sacramento Kings if the voters don't pony up the dough for a new arena (the voters voted "no" on that one, by the way), or the new ownership of the Seattle Sonics threatening to do the same.
So as you find out more about how the sports world works, the illusions fall by the wayside. There is no genuine attachment between owners and the areas in which their teams play, in most cases. There probably never has been...
As for what to call the A's, I think the "Fremont A's" would be a huge mistake. The first five years would be taken up with, "Where the f--- is Fremont?" After all, we don't have the Irving Cowboys in the NFL, or the Arlington Rangers in baseball, or the Auburn Hills Pistons in the NBA. Or the East Rutherford Jets, or the Foxboro Patriots, or the Landover Redskins. And the "Silicon Valley A's?" Yecch! I'm convinced that the A's ownership would have chosen San Jose, except for that a large percentage of Giants fans live in the South Bay. The whole territorial rights issue is a moot point now that the Montreal Expos moved to Washington, D.C., less than an hour away from Baltimore...so should they remain the "Oakland A's?" There are sticky issues with that as well...
Fortunately, there are some instances of teams financing their ballparks primarily through private means, though that can saddle a team with debts. But at least it's not leaving taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars. I think the idea of publicly-owned teams (like the Green Bay Packers in the NFL) shows a lot of promise, but the leadership of major league baseball has never allowed for that (even franchises that claim to do poorly financially increase significantly in value)...
Finally, there's the issue of whether new stadia bring benefits to the surrounding areas-- many people argue, "Yeah, it may cost $500 million to build the stadium, but look at all the money that will be spent in the city at bars and restaurants and shops!" Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College economics professor, is one of the foremost experts on this area of economic analysis, and his research shows that in most cases, the costs outweigh the benefits. Ultimately, it might not be such a bad thing for the A's to move down to Fremont-- as pointed out by Patrick Hoge in today's Chronicle, the city of Oakland itself doesn't gain much at all financially from having the A's play there.
In other words, stay tuned...
