The first is, “What if Kevin Costner played sports?” The second is, “What if the player or coach were a child/woman/animal/alien/some other fish out of water?” The third: “What if managerial/ownership incompetence were actually managerial/ownership malfeasance?” There are three great often-repeated premises in sports comedies. Where did not seem important: elsewhere in Oakland - the famous $12 billion Howard Terminal site - or San Jose, or most recently Las Vegas. What’s happened since, and especially since Fisher bought Wolff out in late 2016, is a concerted effort to move the A’s. It was reasonable to expect the A’s to plan for a new stadium when Wolff and Fisher’s group bought the team.Īccording to a 2021 SFGATE story by Alex Coffey, Wolff was interested in at least exploring the possibility of building a new ballpark on the Coliseum site, but the idea was a nonstarter with Fisher. When Fisher and Wolff took over the A’s, the Oakland Coliseum was outdated, part of the concrete bowl generation of multi-purpose stadiums that almost every city with an NFL and MLB team adopted around 1970 and abandoned in the decade after the Orioles moved into Camden Yards in 1992. Since moving to Oakland in 1968, they’d won six pennants and four World Series. In 2005, Fisher, as part of an investment group that included his real estate partner Lew Wolff, bought the A’s, who had just made the playoffs four times in the previous five years. But fans get attached to local teams based in part on civic pride, and mining that pride is a lucrative grift for the likes of Fisher.įisher, 61, is worth north of $2 billion, gained not through any particular abundance of ingenuity or effort of labor, but through inheritance from his parents, who founded the Gap. Kaval and his employer, A’s owner John J.

Thao is savvy enough to know it’s a farce.

The “relationship,” the partnership, between fans, city, and team is a foundational pillar of the American sports franchise model. Said Thao: “I am deeply disappointed that the A’s have chosen not to negotiate with the City of Oakland as a true partner, in a way that respects the long relationship between the fans, the City and the team.” At this moment, I’m struck by the beginning of the statement Oakland mayor Sheng Thao gave the Chronicle.

The Body Politic by Howard Tayler