If baseball mythology really came to life, if teams really were civic assets and owners really were stewards of those public trusts, Rob Manfred would have issued a starkly different statement when the Oakland Athletics decided they wanted to move to Las Vegas.
Instead of extending his support to the A's, the commissioner should have said the following: "I appreciate the effort the A's have put into pursuing a new ballpark in Oakland. But, in baseball, we do not abandon our fans unless we have exhausted all of our options. The only team to move in the past 50 years — the Montreal Expos — did so because the league already had stepped in to buy the team.
"I respect that John Fisher, the A's owner, sees Las Vegas as his most viable option. Before I ask owners to consider approving a move, I am asking any investors interested in buying the A's to contact my office. Any buyer would be required to keep the team in Oakland and pay for a new ballpark next to the Coliseum, where the A's currently play.
"If a qualified bidder emerges, my office will negotiate a sale in which Mr. Fisher would receive full and fair market value. If no qualified bidder emerges, I will recommend owners approve a move to Las Vegas."
That is pretty much what happened in 1992, when the San Francisco Giants had agreed to move to St. Petersburg, Fla. But the league wanted the Giants to stay in San Francisco, and the team was sold to local investors.
I asked Manfred last year if he would take the same approach if the A's wanted to move from Oakland.
"I think John Fisher — really at my urging — has done everything humanly possible to find a viable stadium plan in Oakland," Manfred said then. "He's spent millions and millions of dollars. He's focused solely on Oakland for years.
"Secondly, unlike the San Francisco situation, Oakland was granted permission to explore the Las Vegas alternative, for the simple reason that the progress in Oakland at the time was not far enough or fast enough."
Fisher pursued a complex deal for a waterfront ballpark in Oakland, a project that real estate developer and former A's managing partner Lew Wolff previously had called "close to impossible." Fisher declined to consider a new ballpark on the Coliseum site, which sits on development-ready property with a freeway on one side and subway and train stops on the other.
"When you're going to privately finance a ballpark, to the tune of a billion dollars," Manfred said, "I think you're entitled to a certain amount of respect, with respect to where you want to make that investment."
That is unfortunate. Joe Lacob, whose Golden State Warriors won four NBA championships within eight years, has said he would buy the A's and build at the Coliseum. Lacob built a privately financed arena for the Warriors in San Francisco, and he shrugs off NBA luxury taxes in the pursuit of trophies. For an A's fan, this would be about as fan-friendly as it gets.
Baseball cherishes its antitrust exemption, which allows the league to control where its teams play, without fear that an owner unilaterally would decide to move his team.
The league touts this relocation control as fan-friendly, and not without reason: In the last half-century, the Raiders have moved from Oakland to Los Angeles to Oakland to Las Vegas; the Rams from Los Angeles to Anaheim to St. Louis to Los Angeles.
But the A's would have been playing in San Jose by now if the San Francisco Giants had not invoked their territorial rights to block the move. San Jose sued and lost, with courts reluctantly citing the antitrust exemption. The league declined to push back. The commissioner works for the owners, after all, and no owner wants to lose any of his rights.
And now? The commissioner works for the owners, and Fisher does not want to sell. If Manfred leaned on Fisher to sell, every other owner might wonder when the commissioner might try to push him out too.
Fisher fields a noncompetitive team, which is not a sin among his fellow owners.
Frank McCourt was forced out of Dodgers ownership because the spectacle that was his divorce trial revealed that he and his ex-wife diverted massive amounts of team revenue — $189 million, the league alleged — for personal use. The potential for fans in other markets to wonder if the owner of their team did something like that — well, that was a sin among his fellow owners.
On his way out, Fisher ought to do one decent thing for Oakland. In 2019, the A's agreed to pay $85 million for half-ownership of the Coliseum site. If the A's secured their waterfront ballpark, they could have been partners with the city of Oakland in determining how to reuse the 150-acre site.
Since the A's are rushing to call themselves Las Vegas, they should have no say in what happens to that Oakland property, let alone profit in any development from it.
The A's don't need the money. They are saving hundreds of millions in potential moving costs, since Manfred has said the league will not assess the team a relocation fee.
The right thing to do is for Fisher to make clear the A's will donate their interest in that land to the city of Oakland. Manfred should not have to lean upon him to do that.
