Today, the owners will vote to move the A's to Las Vegas
Democracy: It just doesn't work, folks
There is a very obvious moral case to keep the A’s in Oakland. Ownership has been letting that fanbase down for decades, and still they can muster the will to come out and make their voices heard: Don’t move, John Fisher. Sell the team, John Fisher. I never liked the Gap anyway, John Fisher, you asshole. The fans deserve to keep their team. It is 100% the right thing to do. In the long run, the team will make more money. The sport will thrive. Everyone will be better off.
This argument is useless and will never work.
What John Fisher, an asshole, wants is simply lots of money as soon as possible with no risk. More money, a little later, with moderate risk is obviously not going to fly. Half of the Bay Area is a much more lucrative prize than all of southern Nevada, but he does not want half of the Bay Area, so off he will go, taking his lesser, stupider prize.
The other owners are also interested in money, so one would think that less money coming into the league would be the opposite of what they want. However, giving the Brewers or the Diamondbacks or the next cheap team the ability to more effectively extort their municipalities for New Stadium Money would seem to be in everyone’s interest, and so at the owners’ meeting today, the league is expected to vote unanimously (or near-unanimously) to approve the A’s move to Las Vegas.
But here’s my thought: what if it’s not in the other teams’ interest?
Because, as stated above, you’re not gonna convince billionaires to do the right thing by appealing to morality. If morality was important to them, they wouldn’t be billionaires. No, you’ll only convince them through the magic of greed. As in, this thing will mean they have less money than this other thing.
And I think there’s a case for that. Because the A’s, if they stayed in Oakland and were run by an owner who gave a shit about them (I know, but go with me on this), could easily become a franchise near the top of the league in revenue. There are so many people in the Bay Area who are absurdly rich. I just looked up houses in Berkeley on Redfin. The cheapest place you can buy in Berkeley right now — the cheapest! — is a 1 bedroom, 1 bath apartment. 658 square feet. It costs $485,000.
Are you honestly, seriously telling me that you, John Fisher, you asshole, cannot make money in a city that’s next door to that? And more to the point, are you telling the other owners that you can’t make money when you’re next door to that? That it’s not worth some extra investment to put your stadium next to a literal fucking money tree that drops money on you every second of every day, to the point that some days you look at it and go, “Ugh, I don’t feel like having money today, I want something else?” That’s ridiculous! That’s a ridiculous thing to both say and think!
A well-run Athletics franchise in Oakland (I know, I know, just hypothetically) would not need revenue sharing money from the other teams. They would be paying into revenue sharing, not taking money from it. Instead of leeching off of the other rich guys, they would be…not leeching off the other rich guys, which doesn’t sound like that great of a pitch, until you realize that the other rich guys are literally the only ones voting on this.
Why would you vote to keep giving money to misers forever? Because let’s be honest: Las Vegas is a small market, the stadium will be tiny, the TV deal won’t be that great, and even in a best case scenario, the Las Vegas A’s won’t bring in a ton of revenue. If you are an MLB owner, you are ensuring this status quo, which you don’t like, will last forever. Why would you vote for that? How is that worth a yes vote?
Now, you might be saying, other owners might want exactly this. They want the A’s to not have that much revenue, and to cap out at a Brewers level, and to never be a real threat to them. And yes, that’s possible, but that brings up an important question in this, a Giants-themed newsletter: What about the Giants?
Because the Giants having free rein of the Bay Area is terrible news for everyone other than the Giants. Don’t get me wrong: I am in favor of the Giants having stupid money to spend on every free agent ever. But the Yankees shouldn’t be. The Cubs shouldn’t be. The Dodgers sure as hell shouldn’t be. The Giants will be able to raise the price of literally every free agent they see in the corner of their eye, and the Bay Area will basically demand they do it.
The Giants will be the only game in town, and they won’t have any excuses to not spend money, because they’ll have so much money to spend. They already have San Francisco and Silicon Valley money. Soon, though, they’ll have Mission Rock money. They’ll have East Bay money. They will be a funnel into which all of the money in the baseball-loving Bay Area goes, and it becomes Giants revenue. They will get more money by spending some on a good product, and so they will. And other teams should be terrified of that.
Because what if the Giants, instead of being in the ballpark with the Phillies for Bryce Harper, were totally fine going to 13 years, $400 million? I’ll tell you what: they would have one shiny Bryce Harper. What if they outbid the Yankees for Aaron Judge? I’ll tell you what: the Yankees were not going to be outbid, so they would have just had to spend way more money. These are both suboptimal scenarios for the non-Giants teams involved. And by voting for the A’s to move, they are making them happen.
This is a shortsighted vote. This is a stupid vote. This is, plainly, a shitty thing to do too, but we’re not talking about that today. Everyone (other than the Giants, who will admittedly make out like bandits here) voting for this move is spending two dollars tomorrow to make one today. They’re all assholes, every last one of them. I mean, especially John Fisher:
But all of them. They’re all assholes. I’m almost glad they’re idiots voting idiotically. They deserve it. The only problem is, in 10 years, they’ll come whining to us about the problems they created. Shut up, assholes. You did this to yourselves, and you’ll never stop. Because not only are you greedy, you’re dumb too.
"They will be a funnel into which all of the money in the baseball-loving Bay Area goes, and it becomes Giants revenue. They will get more money by spending some on a good product, and so they will. And other teams should be terrified of that.... The only problem is, in 10 years, they’ll come whining to us about the problems they created. Shut up, assholes. "
Yeah, my guess is that when the Giants start spending stupid money on players, then that will be the owners' justification for a real salary cap or a steeper luxury tax or some other shit they can use to curb players' salaries.