A high-stakes drama played out behind closed doors on Sunday night in Seattle as Major League Baseball—including the commissioner and most of the team owners—gathered to join the festivities for the 93^rd annual All-Star Game.

Over at the Four Seasons hotel, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao was having what everyone described as a "quiet" meeting with MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred—a meeting that Thao had requested in a July 9 letter to Manfred in which the mayor said she needed to clear up his "misperceptions" about the status of Oakland's plan to develop a new baseball stadium for the Oakland Athletics.

Before we tell you about that, let's clear up some misperceptions you may have about the commissioner of baseball. You're probably thinking of Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, the chiseled Rushmore-like giant who banished Shoeless Joe Jackson and seven other Chicago White Sox players for helping some Chicago bookies throw the 1919 World Series.