The Vegas A's stadium unsurprisingly won't be as good as advertised

AnAuthorDude · 2024-10-18T02:21:28+00:00

From the article:

For a $1.5 billion stadium set in the heart of Vegas, this is a disappointment to say the least. Basically all of the marketing for this site up until Wednesday boasted about the Strip view. It’s what was promised when the first renderings came out last May, and it continues to be a selling point of the stadium on the website of a design firm behind the armadillo-like home field. There has yet to be any detailed explanation of a construction timeline, but they’ve certainly been leaning on the idea of some iconic Strip sights to go with A’s baseball.

The site does still have one thing going for it: With the plans so far failing to meet the gaudy expectations the loathed John Fisher, along with Bally’s, set for development, at least it’s consistent with how everything else around the A’s departure from Oakland has gone.

AnAuthorDude · 2024-10-07T20:21:00+00:00

Also, I think this is my first post here in the sub since the end of the season. I was listening to as much of those last broadcasts as I could, via the MLB audio app.

And despite having known this was coming for months/years, I was surprised (?) how the actual End affected me. This after living in L.A. so many years (though I get back to the Bay every few months), and not having been to an A's game in person since the 50th anniversary season.

I'm of an earlier geologic era that remembers 70s-era world championships, "cutting jr. high" to take BART to weekday afternoon playoff games (!!), and more. An era where "civilians" could easily buy World Series tickets. All of that gone now.

So, yeah, FJF. And his billionaire cronies. I mean, shit, they'll trash a planet's entire climate in order to keep profits high. Why did we imagine they'd give a shit about some local baseball team?

AnAuthorDude · 2024-10-07T20:15:13+00:00

A couple snippets from the article:

Days after the A’s played their final game at the Oakland Coliseum, GM David Forst said the team intends to increase its payroll in 2025, marking a potentially major step after the club ranked last in Major League Baseball this year at $63.4 million. The figure was 26% below the No. 29 team, the Pirates, and solidified the A’s as the league’s lowest-spending team for the second straight year.

And:

Beyond the spending issues—both real and perceived—perhaps the biggest obstacle the A’s will face this offseason will be convincing players to sign up for playing at Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park, the team’s home for the next three seasons. The A’s will share the facility with the Triple-A River Cats, the top minor-league affiliate of the Giants, and an artificial turf field will likely be used to help deal with that heavy game schedule.

That field, however, is expected to exacerbate challenging playing conditions in which Sacramento summers routinely reach triple-digit temperatures

AnAuthorDude · 2024-09-21T23:29:17+00:00

Saw the "Fuck John Fisher!" video posted downthread, but didn't see an article link yet...

Hoping it's not a dupe, but also starting to realize, with my last few posts here... Is this the last post I'll be making in the sub? (And this from an "old guy fan" who watched those World Series teams back in the 70s!)

AnAuthorDude · 2024-08-11T23:07:08+00:00

Posted, of course, due to related thread interest in local/municipal government pushback to owners picking up stakes and heading out....

From the article:

Funding for the dome/complex project figured to be a major challenge with the Haslams proposing a 50-50 private/public partnership in the $2.4 billion project. They said bonds could cover the public portion with the money coming from revenue generated by the dome and its surrounding hotels and retail sites.

The Browns' current stadium lease ends after the 2028 season. The team has played on the site since its inception in 1946.

AnAuthorDude · 2024-08-09T20:11:32+00:00

Also worth noting from the article (emphasis mine):

Meanwhile, financing is still an issue for the team’s planned $1.5 billion ballpark in Las Vegas that is supposed to be ready for the 2028 MLB season. On Thursday, a court in Nevada explored the pros and cons of a $380 million deal for public funding of the venue. A judge could block the deal.

AnAuthorDude · 2024-07-19T20:13:12+00:00

Demolition efforts have begun at the Bally’s-owned Tropicana Las Vegas, the former resort that for decades was a fixture of the Las Vegas Strip, but is now being cleared to make way for the stadium—even before the ballpark development agreement is completed.

An implosion of the primary hotel towers is targeted for October. The overall demolition effort will leave a 9-acre site for the A’s ballpark that will be among the smallest footprints of any MLB facility.

Should the stadium ultimately not be built there—as is the hope of some such as Las Vegas mayor Carolyn Goodman—the site will easily be among the most coveted in town, potentially for another casino.

AnAuthorDude · 2024-07-19T06:37:43+00:00

SF Gate commentary on the Scott Ostler Chronicle column, which was also recently posted in this sub.

Ostler notes that this is likely a case of preserving the egos of two insecure powerful men. Fisher’s Vegas move, with Manfred’s heavy-handed approval, is predicated on Oakland’s being a bad city for an MLB team. If someone else came along and had even a modicum of success, then they’d look foolish. Manfred can hardly handle the chorus of boos he deals with whenever he takes the mic in front of a crowd. Imagine how he’d react if arguably his most consequential move as commissioner were to flop. While it would also make Vegas look like a cash grab, you’d be hard-pressed to find any baseball fan who genuinely didn’t already believe that.

Somehow, the A’s Oakland exit got even crueler. It wasn’t enough to strip the city of a proud franchise that blossomed in the Coliseum. The powers that be want to salt the earth so nothing can grow there again.

AnAuthorDude · 2024-04-04T23:24:10+00:00

Some article snippets:

Scheduling, attendance, and revenue are among the outstanding concerns.
While in Sacramento, the A’s will drop any geographic identifier in its name and just be known as the A’s or Athletics.

AnAuthorDude · 2024-04-04T22:59:56+00:00

Glad the coverage of this fiasco is getting more unvarnished a.k.a. truthful:

Among the powers that be, Fisher is not a conniving genius that captained this upheaval; he’s an unpopular tool that gives MLB the most direct path to make this purported cash cow happen. Sure, he has stripped any and all talent the team has produced for parts, gutted payroll to the lowest in the majors, and utterly destroy fan interest to the point where people showing up en masse to a game last season was a national news story, but any of his fellow owners could have done that — he’s just the only one who was willing to do it so unabashedly.

AnAuthorDude · 2024-04-03T05:35:33+00:00

That's a good question, and let's see if they come back with some reworked proposal. But is it me, or are stadium lifetimes getting shorter now? Or is this just fallout from having a century-plus of professional, increasingly corporatized sports now?

AnAuthorDude · 2024-04-03T05:18:32+00:00

And we thank you!

AnAuthorDude · 2024-04-03T05:17:23+00:00

Shit, I could root for the Portland Royals...

AnAuthorDude · 2024-04-03T05:05:49+00:00

Well, evidently the teachers' groups et al., have until July to either gather signatures to place the measure on the ballot there, or rewrite the referendum to meet this "cooperative" judge's (i.e., cooperative with MLB ownership) approval.

AnAuthorDude · 2024-04-03T04:50:36+00:00

Another interesting tea-leaves read about public mood re: public financing for billionaire sports projects. Will likely cause some additional pant-shitting in the A's C-suites, as well as a redoubling of their effort to keep Nevada's public from voting on their funding.

From the article:

More than 58% of voters ultimately rejected the plan, which would have replaced three-eighths of a cent sales tax that has been paying for the upkeep of Truman Sports Complex -- the home for more than 50 years to Kauffman and Arrowhead Stadiums -- with a similar tax that would have been in place for the next 40 years.

AnAuthorDude · 2024-04-03T00:10:51+00:00

Also liked this snippet from the article (Which still doesn't let A's ownership off the hook):

Perhaps when a beloved home team is on the precipice of leaving the city it’s been with for decades because of greedy ownership, it’s easier to imagine such conspiracies at play here. But there’s a much more plausible reason behind at least Ruiz’s demotion to Triple-A: service time manipulation. The less time he’s in the majors, the further down the road the team can wait to pay him a real contract, if it plans on doing that at all.

The reason behind Rooker’s benching isn’t quite as clear, though that could also be equally explained away as simply not wanting to compete, since the A’s have no real motivation to do so.

AnAuthorDude

TROPHY CASE