Oakland Mayor Confronts MLB Commissioner With Stadium Plan

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.

Sorry, but Shoeless Joe and the Mountain Man have left and gone away, Mrs. Robinson.

Like the other professional sports czars, Manfred now works strictly for the team owners. When it comes to getting public financing for new stadiums or relocating teams, these commissioners—particularly in the NFL—often pit several cities against each other in a bidding war and squeeze the biggest chunk of public funds from some lucky county hungry for a franchise.

For most of this year, Manfred has been the front man for a greased-skids move of the Oakland Athletics to Las Vegas. Last month, the MLB commissioner declared that it was a done deal—a new stadium for the Athletics would be built on the site of the Tropicana Casino on the Vegas Strip—with a hefty investment of public funds from Clark County, which a few years ago paid a hefty sum to lure Oakland’s football team, the Raiders, to Las Vegas.

A vote by the team owners was a mere formality, Manfred said. The governor of Nevada soon would hold a public ceremony signing a bill funding the new Las Vegas ballpark (which he did).

At a press conference, someone asked Manfred if Oakland had made a counter-offer to keep the A’s— who moved to the West Coast from Kansas City in 1968 (when Mrs. Robinson topped Billboard’s Hot 100 for three weeks)—in the city on the Bay.

“There is no Oakland offer, OK? They never got to a point where they had a plan to build a stadium at any site,” Manfred declared.

Sorry, Rob, but based on what transpired on Sunday night in Seattle, we’re going to put an E-C on our scorecard for that play (error—commissioner).

In the hotel room at the Four Seasons it was probably really quiet because the mayor was busy handing the commissioner 31 thick document files from a small pulley cart she had rolled into the hotel room.

Inside the files were the plans for a Waterfront Ballpark District at Oakland’s Howard Terminal, a 55-acre development that will include 3,000 residential units and 1.5M SF of commercial space and a new 35,000-seat ballpark for the Oakland Athletics with a spectacular view of the San Francisco skyline. The plans Manfred had said didn’t exist.

In her letter to the commissioner, Thao said the city was “extremely close” to finalizing a deal with the current ownership of the A’s to keep the team in Oakland.

It also was really quiet in that hotel room because Manfred was practicing how he would look when word of this meeting leaked out to the global press corps covering baseball’s annual summer festival. Take foot, insert in mouth.

Thao, who was elected in November, took office in January. She told the assembled media in Seattle that the MLB Commissioner’s office and the Oakland A’s ownership told her office in January not to bother joining the negotiations over the future of the team because they had it under control.

Regarding Manfred’s statement that Oakland had never made an offer, Thao didn’t call the commissioner a liar, she just said his statement was “completely false.” Like a high hard one from Bob Gibson, right under the chin of a batter who was crowding the plate on the night when Gibson struck out a record 17 in Game 1 of the 1968 World Series.

After he met Oakland’s mayor for the first time on Sunday, Manfred mumbled something about giving Oakland’s plan a full hearing before the owners vote on the plan to move the A’s to Las Vegas.

Eagle-eyed sportswriters noted that Manfred has not secured permission from the MLB Players Association—the players’ union—to have the A’s play in minor league ballparks in Nevada for two years while a new ballpark is built on the Strip.

Thao helpfully suggested that the owners could vote down the Las Vegas proposal, approve Oakland’s plan to keep the A’s and award Las Vegas an expansion franchise.

The MLB beat writers in attendance helpfully suggested that perhaps the Oakland A’s could thrive in their current location under new ownership. Several noted that many MLB owners would prefer to bring in some new players with a stronger fiscal stack rotation to run an expansion franchise in Las Vegas and right the floundering franchise in Oakland, a team vying for the worst record in baseball this season.

When an Oakland A’s player came up to bat at the All-Star Game on Tuesday night, the fans in the stands at Seattle’s T-Mobile Park helpfully suggested—loud enough to hear on the national TV broadcast: “Sell the team!”

Bryce Harper, the Phillies outfielder who narrowly lost the fan voting to be the National League’s All-Star DH this year—who was born in Las Vegas—helpfully issued a statement that he would like to see the A’s remain in Oakland and Las Vegas get an expansion team.

Does anybody know the morning line in Vegas on Oakland hanging onto the Athletics and Vegas getting an expansion franchise and Manfred claiming that was his actual plan to begin with?

It’s a long-shot, but we might take that bet.