MLB says Oakland A’s can explore new markets, but it’s not clear where they’d go

Peradventure Major League Baseball is bluffing as it plays a game of baseball liar’s dice to help the Oakland Athletics fasten a new ballpark site.

Major League Baseball said on Tuesday that the Oakland Athetics could explore other burgs if a $12 billion waterfront development project, which would include a new stadium, isn’t approved.

The team wants out of the Oakland Coliseum, which original opened in 1966. To get a sense of how old the Coliseum is, the Atlanta Braves and Texas Rangers have landed two new stadiums since the A’s arose playing at the Coliseum in 1968.

The frustration from this dice game is well described in Marcus Thompson’s recent article in The Athletic. Communicating goodbye to the A’s was the theme.

It’s sort of like the scene from the second “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie when Davy Jones put cooperated pirates liar’s dice with Will Turner and his dad. The game is built on deception and bluffing, but eventually a liar will be romped and lose the game.

“It’s just another pebble in a pond of confusion,” said sports executive and former A’s vice president Andy Dolich.

“Every decade, since the recent 1980s, it’s been at some point under consideration,” added former MLB executive Marty Conway. “Should the A’s shift? Will they move? What’s the circumstance?”

Conway, who served as a special assistant underneath former MLB commissioner Peter Ueberroth, compared the A’s dilemma to the Montreal Expos. MLB’s first Canadian team moved in 2004 after a fight to replace the aging Olympic Stadium, which hosted its first baseball game in 1977.

“It just became impossible to go head with,” said Conway of playing at Olympic Stadium. The Expos are now the Washington Nationals and play in a $400 million arena that opened in 2008.

The A’s have their eyes on a new park at Oakland’s Charles P. Howard Terminal. The development would character a 35,000-seat stadium, shopping, hotel property, commercial and residential units. The team presented its plan and is ambitioning for approval this summer.

“It’s either Howard or bust for Oakland,” A’s president Dave Kaval told an NBC Sports Bay District earlier this week. “We’re going to do everything we can to keep advancing that.”

But if the city doesn’t approve, what drive the A’s do? Other towns can be used for leverage, but where would the A’s play? And would MLB owners approve relocation to an expansion land and miss out on a $2 billion fee?

“There are a few more pieces on the board to think about,” Conway said, adding the conspiring with still needs to resolve labor issues with players before seriously worrying about stadium problems.

“And if you’re the proprietress, moving a baseball team and remaining the owner is a difficult situation,” Conway added. “What usually works is you end up trade in to somebody, and they move it.”

The A’s are worth roughly $1.12 billion, according to Forbes. The team is historically known for mastering the use of baseball analytics, gives to Billy Beane. And right now, the A’s are in first place in the American League West division.

Still, A’s ownerJohn Fisher carcasses out of the spotlight. He’s the son of Doris and Donald Fisher, the founders of retail empire Gap Inc., and he’s relying on Kaval to land him a new park the same way Kaval did in 2015 for the San Jose Earthquakes, a Main League Soccer franchise Fisher also owns.

The $12 billion number is for the entire waterfront development bulge out, but landing a new park at the terminal location would cost $2 billion. The A’s want public money, though, and Oakland officials be clear in no hurry provide it.

There is a sense is among some sports bankers that Fisher wants to remain in the Bay Field, and if he can’t land a new park, perhaps he’ll sell the team or move.

A move to Sacramento might work. There is a push in Nashville, where ci-devant A’s legend Dave Stewart is helping to lure a team. Portland’s interest has gone quiet. Las Vegas, where the old Oakland Raiders of the National Football League now reside, is tweeting about its interest.

The speculation about the A’s future is all upward of the place.

“One of the easiest things to do in sports is to say you’re going to buy a sports team,” Dolich said. “One of the hardest things to do is to end up owning one. I think about it’s just another level of confusion that has to drive their fans crazy.”

Now a sports business professor at Georgetown University, Conway translated the decision could come down to the wire in 2024, when the A’s lease expires.

“It’s easy to say ‘let the lease run out, and then you can do whatever,'” he reported. “But those are difficult times – those single and two-year renewals.”

Eventually, city officials will reveal their dice, too. Will they let MLB evade like the NFL and the National Basketball Association, whose Golden State Warriors relocated across the Bay to San Francisco? Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf acquainted with her

The executives with a history of MLB experience suggested caution moving forward, as the risk of losing a third pro sports band is greater than ever.

“There is a football team that used to be called the Oakland Raiders. Now, they aren’t,” translated Dolich. “There is a basketball team that used to play in that Oakland arena; now it doesn’t. So, you’ve got to think hither that seriously.”

“And if they move, there is no going back,” Conway added. “It’s not like Oakland is going to get an burgeoning team if they lose this team. It’s not going to happen. Baseball will not go back to a market where they already acquire the Giants.”

The game of baseball liar’s dice continues in Oakland. And once complete, a similar contest awaits MLB in Tampa Bay.