Nobody moves a pro sports franchise unless they think they’re going to get more money in the new place, end of story…
The Oakland A’s are moving to Sacramento for three years and playing in a minor-league stadium because they think they can spend less and get more than they would playing at the Coliseum for three more years. You can’t really blame them there. Heck, with their announced crowds for the first six games in Oakland this season they wouldn’t even have officially filled Sutter Health Park’s 14,000 capacity. Their “biggest crowd” was the season opener with 13,522, and probably that many in the parking lot for the fan boycott. Their combined attendance for all six games was just over 45,000, or still some 10,000 less than the official Coliseum capacity for one game…
Let’s be clear, I’m not absolving A’s owner John Fisher in the slightest. From all appearances he is cash-poor and hoping to shoestring things long enough to get to Vegas and rake in the dough, if there is any to rake. He’s no doubt getting a cut-rate sweetheart deal from Sutter Health Park owner and NBA Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadive, his buddy, on the lease terms. If he had just come up with $87 million more when the City of Oakland asked him to there would already be construction started at Howard Terminal for a new ballpark, which is why Oakland asked him for $90 million in their last-ditch lease offer to keep the team three more years…
Some people are blaming Oakland for asking for that $90 million in their offer to the A’s. Some people need to realize that John Fisher had no intention of keeping the team in Oakland any longer than he absolutely had to. His entire goal for the next three years is to spend even less money, if possible, than he already has been doing. And that means playing in a Triple-A ballpark, anywhere. It’s why the Salt Lake City plan was floated, it was why moving to Vegas already and playing in the Triple-A affiliate Aviators ballpark was floated, and it’s why he signed a deal with Sacramento…
There are other people who pay no attention to sports being grumpy and saying “They’re not actually going to play in Sacramento, it’s West Sacramento!” Buddy, have you noticed where the San Francisco 49ers have played since 2014? Have you noticed where the New York Jets and Giants have played since the mid-1970’s? You have clearly not been paying attention, so get outta here with that…
Since the A’s are going to be the first MLB team to play less than three years in a city since the early American League years, when the Milwaukee Brewers played just the first 1901 season before moving to St. Louis for 50 years, and the Baltimore Orioles played just 1901-‘02 before collapsing and the franchise rights sold to what eventually became the New York Yankees, I was going to talk about those teams, but instead they are only worth those mentions…
EDIT: It has been quite a week so I have no idea how I forgot one of the most notorious one-year orphans of major league history, the expansion 1969 Seattle Pilots. They played one year in a 14,000 seat minor-league stadium (what a disaster, MLB will never allow that to happen again!) before basically declaring bankruptcy. There was no decision on where they would play in 1970 until a week before the season started. The team trucks literally drove from Arizona spring training to Salt Lake City and parked, waiting for the decision. Northwest to Seattle or northeast to Milwaukee? Seattle was declared insolvent, they sold the team to a group led by a used-car salesman you’ve never heard of again (man, I wish that were true), and they have remained the Milwaukee Brewers ever since. Thanks to Mike Ficher (no relation to that other prominent Fisher) for the reminder…
The best comparison to the A’s moving to Sacramento for three years before then going to Vegas is the NFL’s Tennessee Oilers of the mid-90’s. If you’re unfamiliar with that or it slipped your mind, let me enlighten you, because the situation is almost word-for-word as stupid as what’s happening now…
After the 1995 season, Houston Oilers owner Bud Adams announced plans to move the team to Nashville, but a new stadium for the team wouldn’t be ready until 1999. As expected, hardly anybody showed up for the 1996 season, and there were still two years before the new stadium would open…
So, Adams did almost exactly what John Fisher is doing now. He announced plans to move the team to Tennessee anyway and play somewhere else for two years until the new stadium was ready. He didn’t want to play in Nashville at Vanderbilt Stadium because capacity there is “only” 41,000. And he didn’t want to play at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, a three-hour drive to the east, because their capacity is 102,000. He knew that would never sell out, and with the NFL’s teevee blackout rules at the time only allowing fans in the home market to watch if the home game was a sellout, no fans in Tennessee would get to watch their new team, immediately driving fan interest away…
The compromise was to play at the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, capacity 50,000, a three-hour drive to the west. It was a disaster from the beginning. First of all, Memphis had been turned down for an NFL expansion team not too long before (they would have been called the “Memphis Hound Dogs” as an homage to Elvis, obviously, and I still want Hound Dogs merch), so they were still stinging there- that was when they expanded to Jacksonville and Carolina. In addition, the Memphis team of the USFL in the mid-70’s had sued the NFL for violating anti-trust law and refusing to add their team, instead choosing Seattle and Tampa in that expansion. So Memphis was still miffed there…
Plus, it was only supposed to be for two years. No matter how much there was fan support in Memphis, whether they sold out every game or not, the team was off to Nashville regardless. So there was no reason to support the team locally. As a result, they never sold out the 50,000 seat Liberty Bowl that first year. Of the eight regular season games, attendance was somewhere in the mid-20’s. Only two games officially drew over 30,000. The first was the season opener, when they beat the Oakland Raiders in OT (I mean, of course they did), and even that number looks like fuzzy math at “30,171.” The second was the final game against the Steelers because most of the fans at that point were Steelers fans it was the closest thing they had to a sellout, with 50,677, officially…
Even though they were supposed to play a second year in Memphis, at this point Adams said “screw it” (again, money) and moved to Nashville anyway, playing at the “too small” Vanderbilt Stadium…
The feeling at the time, at least what I can recall, is that the Oilers were a sad, vagabond franchise with a clueless, money-challenged owner. It didn’t seem like they knew what they were doing at all. I watched highlights of the Tennessee Oilers and it just looked sad. They looked sad at the Liberty Bowl, and they looked sad at Vanderbilt Stadium. It sure didn’t help that their name was a sad combination of where they had been and where they were going. None of it was a good look for the league, the franchise and the sport…
They changed their name to the “Tennessee Titans” and moved into the new stadium in 1999 and made the Super Bowl that same year, coming a Kevin Dyson stretch away from forcing overtime against the greatest show on turf, the St. Louis Rams, who had recently moved from L.A., making it the first expansion-era franchise-moved Super Bowl matchup…
So if history is our guide, the “Athletics,” (since they will not be taking the “Sacramento” name at all) will spend one sad year at Sutter Health Park and then go play in Vegas anyway. Though I doubt they’ll make the World Series the year they actually move into their new park, because they’d actually have to have a new park at some point…
You heard it here first, because the Tennessee Oilers told me so…
Note: the original version of this post omitted the Seattle Pilots and erroneously said the Titans made the Super Bowl in their 2nd year of their new Nashville Stadium. Again, it’s been quite a week…
Excellent article.
To clarify: the legendary Seattle Pilots played one season (1969) in the Emerald City--at a minor league park, Sick Stadium--before making rhe suds run to Milwaukee. Yeah, all connected.
The Memphis Southmen--who were born but never played a game as the Toronto Northmen (suspect if they had moved to Sacramento, they would have been the Westmen)--played in the World Football League in 1974 and 1975.
The Memphis Showboats--Reggie White signed his first professional football contract with the team--played in the United States Football League in 1984 and 1985.
I reached out to two friends who live in the Sacramento area and are big baseball fans. They plan to see games and one will wait in line to get tickets to see the Red Sox. Will not be about the Athletics--will be about transplants and Sacrown fans thrilled to see MLB teams like rhe Yankees, Red Sox, Astros....suspect the Athletics will sell out Sutter Health Park on a regular basis depending on the opponent. Every game next season might feel like an away game for the Athletics..
Sutter Health Park is where the Sacramento River Cats, the SF Giants' Triple-A team, plays. MLB says it will workout scheduling. Will that scheduling benefit the A's more than the Giant's farm team? If so, maybe the Giants/River Cats can demand a % of the A's gate. Which is likely to be better than in Oakland for the simple reason that Sacramento area residents will have an opportunity to see other MLB teams that are way better than the A's without having to drive down to San Francisco. The A's might find that there are more fans rooting for the visiting team than the temporary team. Go Mariners! And, yes, of course, Fisher sucks.