Oakland Athletics will 'most likely' move to Las Vegas, says MLB commissioner: Troubled Bay Area team is ranked dead last in ballpark attendance while lease on Coliseum is up in 2024 and plans for new stadium have come and gone

UK Daily Mail ^ | October 31, 2022 | James Gordon

[C19fan]

It's a safe bet that the Oakland Athletics baseball team will leave the city for Las Vegas, according to MLB commissioner Rob Manfred.

Manfred said in an interview Friday with Sirius XM that he is no longer optimistic that the A's will stay in Oakland.

'It just doesn't look like it's going to happen,' Manfred said.

[C19fan]

I was invited to a A's v. Yankees game at the Oakland ColiseumMausoleum back in the first decade of the 2000s. The place was a soulless dump. I cannot imagine how bad it has gotten now. The Oakland Mausoleum along with the Sky Dome in Toronto are the last two dual purpose stadiums in operation. There is no way the City of Oakland was ever going to pony up money they do not have. San Francisco has been adamant about protecting its rights in San Jose. Las Vegas has been very willing to spend money on luring pro teams. Las Vegas, with its tourism industry, has funded the stadiums and arenas on the backs of tourists.

[zeestephen]

Maybe they should move back to Kansas City?

[Roccus]

...or Philadelphia...

[T.B. Yoits]

Go to Vegas and change the name to the Las Vegas Aces.

There is no future in Oakland.

[pepsionice]

Part of this story is that the teams have evolved in terms of ‘cost’ and the Oakland doesn’t have enough people who are willing to pay out $300 for two people to attend a game, park their car, or take care of beer/food. I could have told you that back in the late 1990s when cost was ramping up.

Vegas? If they are smart, there will be over 300 party rooms on the main deck areas...with guests to lounge around and watch the game.

[BBQToadRibs2]

Professional sports have been pricing themselves out from the average person. Ticket prices are ridiculous along with the food. You want to take the family to a game? It’s a couple hundred bucks. Pass.

[Dan in Wichita]

I'm old enough to remember the A's winning the World Series in 1972, 1973, and 1974. Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers, Joe Rudi... they had great teams.

What memories!

[joethedrummer]

“Professional sports have been pricing themselves out from the average person. Ticket prices are ridiculous along with the food. You want to take the family to a game? It’s a couple hundred bucks. Pass.“

Yep! Not to mention another $30 for parking…. And all so that you can watch soulless minor league action, complete with commercials throughout.

Ugh..

[Dr. Franklin]

...or Philadelphia...

The Philadelphia Athletics won 9 American League pennants, appeared in 8 World Series, winning 5 of them before leaving for KC in 1955. The Phildelphia Phillies have yet to reach any of these records. The 1929 Phidelphia A's are regarded as the best baseball team ever, being statistically better than the 1927 Yankees. The decline of the A's in Philly resulted from manager Connie Mack becoming the owner and his refusal to pay for good talent. The old man in the tower in The Natural is based on Connie Mack and his office in the Shibe Field (later Connie Mack Stadium) tower.

[V_TWIN]

Who wants to take the family to a ballpark that has a high probability of some sort of crime being perpetuated against them?

Druggers and muggers......where do I sign up for that?

Vilify the police and this is what happens.

[Dr. Franklin]

Shibe Field (later Connie Mack Stadium)

Shibe Park (later Connie Mack Stadium)

[Alberta's Child]

Philadelphia was the third-largest metro area in the U.S. before the 1950 census. It has been slowly losing ground ever since then. It also has the disadvantage of overlapping with the much larger metro NYC sports market to a degree.

It's gotten to the point where it may not even be considered a "large" sports market anymore.

[ScottinVA]

They sure did. In 1971, when the A’s were in their ascendency, I attended a game that July against the California Angels. Vida Blue was on the mound and Rudy May started for the Angels. Blue went 11 innings and struck out 18, while May went 10 and fanned 11. The A’s finally won in the bottom of the 20th inning when Angel Mangual doubled in Curt Blefary. It was truly a classic.

[Dan in Wichita]

20 innings. Wow! Were you the only person still in the stadium when the game ended?

[ScottinVA]

Ha! Almost! My dad and I were with the junket from the Vallejo, CA Elks, and by the time the game ended, there were probably 3,000 in the stadium. Started out with an announced attendance of 33,000+. The game finally ended around 2 a.m.

A couple corrections on my earlier comment. Blue struck out 17 over 11 innings and May went 12 innings and struck out 13. Back then, complete games by pitchers were the rule, rather than the exception.

[noiseman]

If they move to Vegas they’d better build an indoor stadium. The ubiquitous nostalgic old-timey brick ballpark would keep the paramedics busy treating heat stroke.

[texas booster]

The game of baseball, through the first 30 years of its professional existence, had undergone an aggressive evolution with rules that finally settled in for the long run after the Turn of the Century. But the maturation of the ballparks in which the game was played dragged along at a much slower rate. Yes, they gradually grew bigger, but structurally and aesthetically there was neutral advancement. Elegance, on occasion, would rear its pretty head at the front entrance, such as the classy medieval spires at Boston’s South End Grounds or the Romanesque Palace of the Fans in Cincinnati. But for the most part, major league venues were essentially no different from what they had been decades earlier: Physically basic, architecturally uninspiring and, as purely built with wood, prone to a five-alarm blaze at any moment. 

Shibe Park provided baseball with its long overdue great leap forward. The first folks to stumble upon its magnificent, opulent façade could not have imagined that a ballfield hid behind it. This place, a ballpark? Perhaps an opera house or five-star hotel, but not a ballpark. 

Constructed with cutting-edge steel-and-concrete techniques, Shibe Park would become, along with the future openings of the Houston Astrodome and Baltimore’s Oriole Park at Camden Yards, one of the seminal turning points in ballpark history. It sprang a revolution that resulted in a turnover of nearly all major league ballparks over the next 15 years and put an end to the fading debate over whether baseball had graduated to modern times. 

Over its long life, Shibe Park would be home to two of baseball’s greatest and most fleeting dynasties, a jaw-dropping pennant race collapse, and an awful lot of awful baseball. The fans were often far from civilized—this is Philadelphia, after all—but through thick and (mostly) thin, they got a kick out of the place. 

From the "This Great Game" website.

[csvset]

If I were going to the Coliseum, I would take BART (train), and walk directly into the stadium. The neighborhood surrounding the Coliseum is a good place to get shot robbed or killed and it has been that way forever.

Saw a World Series game there in 74. Few years later saw several Concerts there . I imagine it’s a run down dump . Locally there is a 50 year old venue that is crumbling, but the city kicks the can down the road. So it goes.

[1Old Pro]

If they move to Vegas they’d better build an indoor stadium.

No doubt and it will cost a billion dollars. But frankly, Vegas is a good spot for major league sports teams as there are thousands of fans that look for entertainment options.

[Dr. Franklin]

Philadelphia was the third-largest metro area in the U.S. before the 1950 census. It has been slowly losing ground ever since then. It also has the disadvantage of overlapping with the much larger metro NYC sports market to a degree.
It's gotten to the point where it may not even be considered a "large" sports market anymore.

Philadelphia is now the 6th largest city in the U.S. LA, Houston, and Phoenix have past it since 1950. However, the Phildelphia media market is fourth largest in the U.S., ahead of Houston and Phoenix, since its suburbs, including in NJ count in this category:
Ranking the U.S.' largest media markets
MLB has 30 teams in 27 cities. Philadelphia is the largest media market to have only one team, but you think the fourth largest media market isn't a "large" sports market. Of course, you have strange ideas about many things...