City Council approves Victory Court EIR contract

On Monday night, another hurdle was cleared with the Oakland City Council voting 6-2 to approve the $750,000 Professional Service Agreement (PSA) with LSA Associates on the the environmental impact report (EIR) for the proposed ballpark at Victory Court. Only Nancy Nadel and Ignacio De La Fuente opposed, which was no surprise given their opposition during the CCCEDA meeting last Tuesday. For his part, De La Fuente prefers to wait on an official commitment from Major League Baseball, and while City Council President Jane Brunner showed empathy to De La Fuente's concerns, she stated that such a passive approach simply would not be in the City's best interest. "If we did not do this, we would be out of the game tomorrow," she said. Ross Retzler, one of the public speakers, also summed it up nicely: a yes vote on the EIR funding "will send a message to Major League Baseball," he said.

Cheers reverberated around the Council chambers at the conclusion of the voting, with Brunner officially announcing the approval. It was by far the loudest emotional outburst for any of the items on the meeting's agenda. The rousing ovation was followed by robust "Let's Go Oakland" chants.

To recap: the City Council voted to authorize up to $750,000 to spend on an EIR, but with two provisions (resulting from the previous meeting):

• The contract between the City of Oakland and LSA Associates is subject to termination at any time, without the City being on the hook for the balance, and;
  
• Conservative spending on "tangible certainties."

Victory Court EIR is Money Well Spent

Hey, fellow A's fans. Here are some things to consider going into tonight's Oakland City Council meeting where they will vote to approve (or reject) a contract to do an EIR for the Victory Court ballpark site:

• This contract is for a maximum of $750,000 of REDEVELOPMENT FUNDS, not money from the General Fund.
• The CEDA Committee last week wisely approved a provision allowing the Oakland Redevelopment Agency to cancel the contract at any time if MLB decides to allow the A's to move to San Jose.
• Some have said this study will cost $4 to $5 million dollars. This is simply NOT TRUE. The EIR contract is for a maximum of $750,000.
• This money will be wisely spent, even if a ballpark is never built at Victory Court. The area needs to be revitalized and new development there can retain current jobs and provide new ones even without a new ballpark. So, this is not wasted money, even if no stadium is built.

It is imperative that we encourage the city council to approve this EIR contract tonight. Disapproval in this early stage could have disastrous effects on the longstanding efforts to keep the A's in Oakland. Everyone attending tonight is encouraged to step up and make their voices heard.

Let's go, A's! And keep them in Oakland!

6PM Tuesday, Victory Court EIR Meeting

We couldn't be more excited about the City Council meeting scheduled at around 6 p.m. this Tuesday night at Oakland City Hall to approve the Victory Court ballpark EIR contract. (It starts at 5:30 p.m., but the A's item will start a bit later.)

Either way, let's all be there, A's fans!

The 200-plus A's fans who packed Oakland City Hall three weeks ago left that night with the kind of big smiles and good vibes that we haven't seen with the Green-and-Gold since the Tejada/Tim Hudson years.

After years of being told what they are not, A's fans reveled that night in how great their city, their baseball team, and yes, even they themselves, can be. Enjoying the break from being constantly put down by team owners, A's fans instead felt a sense of optimism. Passion. Pride. Unity. Community. That's what baseball is supposed to bring to a city. Remember when Oakland A's baseball was always about that? It wasn't that long ago. Now, the meeting this Tuesday evening at Oakland City Hall is another chance to recapture that spirit.

An author I once saw at a Marcus Books reading in West Oakland put it best. She said, "Thanks for coming out to see me. But then again, you didn't come out to be with me, did you? You came out to be with each other."

That's the power of sports in one quote. Sure, it's great to win, but even when you don't, that strong sense of community that a baseball team delivers to its region is what really brings people back to the ballpark year after year.

They call the holidays the most wonderful time of the year. What will be even better is the thrill of Opening Day 2015 at an Oakland A’s new ballpark at Victory Court. This Tuesday, hopefully, that beautiful dream will be one step closer to reality.

Be there on Tuesday night, A's fans. Let's go, Oakland!

WHAT: Oakland City Council Meeting
WHY: Approve Victory Court ballpark EIR
WHEN: 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 21
WHERE: Oakland City Hall
ADDRESS: 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza (14th St. & Broadway)

BART: City Center/12^th St. station, PARKING: Clay Street Garage (on Clay St. between 14^th & 16^th streets)

The Tuesday Vote

On Tuesday, the City Council Community and Economic Development Agency (CCCEDA) held a regular meeting to discuss, among other things, the funding of the EIR for the proposed A's ballpark at Victory Court. After submitting the Request for Qualifications back in August, and sifting through the responses, the City of Oakland decided on a $750,000 deal with LSA Associates, who had performed the EIR for the Measure DD improvements at Lake Merritt, just a few blocks away from the ballpark site.

Nancy Nadel spoke (not as part of the panel) and expressed concern about the funding sources, citing what she perceives is a shortage of parking in DTO and the need for the parking garage at 21st and Telegraph to be built with that money. What she apparently forgot is that there is ample parking away from the Telegraph/Broadway area if you actually look for it; a later speaker pointed out that very fact. Nadel also questioned what she called the “righteousness” of the plan, stating that no funds should be extended without negotiations.

Bryan Grunwald was on hand to promote his ballpark-over-980 plan yet once more, but it was shot down by the panel because, in their words, Major League Baseball prefers Victory Court and exploring any other sites will only create unnecessary delays and complexity to the study. Grunwald will likely give it one last fling at the City Council meeting on Tuesday, December 21. As it stands, the EIR will have two alternatives: a ballpark at Victory Court, and a CEQA-mandated "no project" alternative (standard on all environmental studies in California).Other speakers were decidedly in favor of the deal. One stated emphatically that “we’re gonna have to take chances in this city.” Another bluntly called the Grunwald's idea “a waste of time.” The final speaker felt that the EIR should include a cost/benefit analysis of relocating the businesses at Victory Court, or as he called it, the “business environment.” It should be noted that environmental documents don’t include such things as “business environment”; they examine only the physical impacts, such as noise, soils, aesthetics, greenhouse gases, water quality, etc.

Recapping the final vote: the EIR funding passed 3-1, with an added provision that would take the City of Oakland off the hook for the balance of the $750,000 cost to LSA Associates should MLB halt the proceedings. The three “yes” votes were from Jane Brunner, Larry Reid and Patricia Kernighan. The lone “no” was from Ignacio De La Fuente, who wanted to hold off on funding until the City got a commitment from both MLB and A's owner Lewis Wolff.

EBX: Next Tuesday Critical for Victory Court

In Robert Gammon's 92510 blog, he went into detail Friday about the upcoming Community and Economic Development Agency meeting vote on the ballpark EIR slat for next Tuesday. Gammon wrote:

The city's proposal to spend $750,000 on an environmental impact report for a new Oakland A's ballpark in Jack London Square is scheduled to go before a council committee on Tuesday. The council's Community and Economic Development Agency committee will examine the financing proposal at its regular 1:30 p.m. meeting at City Hall on December 14. The item then likely will be forwarded to the full council for approval on December 21.

Approval of the $750,000 is pivotal for the proposed Victory Court ballpark site to move forward. The ballpark cannot advance without the environmental impact report. At the very least, the council would need to approve funding for a traffic study related to the environmental impact report. But if the council decides to not spend any money, it would send a clear signal to Major League Baseball that Oakland is not serious about trying to keep the A's.

It is important that the funding is approved by the city and it just might. Yes votes on Tuesday from councilmembers Jane Brunner, Larry Reid, and Pat Kernighan will be enough to send the issue to the City Council for a Dec. 21 vote. Yes votes there from those three, along with Rebecca Kaplan and Mayor-Elect Jean Quan, would be enough to approve the measure. Gammon predicts that the $350,000 for a traffic study will get easily approved, while approval of the whole $750,000 to pay for the entire EIR is likely but not a slam dunk. Stay tuned.

Rumors Fly MLB Will Rule for Oakland

Much of the Oakland A's Internet world was abuzz with this Ballpark Digest article that reported that, because Oakland's redevelopment agency is in better shape than San Jose's, Major League Baseball is now looking more favorably at Oakland as MLB gets close to making their decision on the A's fate. Here's a quote from the article:

That financing wherewithal is expected to carry a lot of weight with the special committee weighing the location of a new A's ballpark. It's also expected to give them cover: the mantra from MLB Commissioner Bud Selig is that his sport is loathe to allow a franchise shift unless all efforts have been made to keep the team in its current community. If Oakland has a site, the money and the will to put together a ballpark package, we're guessing MLB will take the safe route and recommend the team stay there, as opposed to creating a messy territorial battle by allowing a move to San Jose. Indeed, the talk at the Winter Meetings is that an Oakland recommendation is now pretty much a done deal -- with the additional spin (albeit accurate) that this proved the committee was right all along in waiting things out before making a recommendation.

This news, along with the Dec. 8 East Bay Express article that detailed Oakland's progress with MLB, revealed the growing positive momentum for building a new stadium at the Victory Court location by Jack London Square. The waterfront Oakland spot is preferred by Major League Baseball, according to Robert Gammon's Express story. It also shows the level of involvement that Major League Baseball has put into this project. While the Internet sewing circles speculated what this all meant, A's owner Lew Wolff was quick to dismiss it through Susan Slusser at the S.F. Chronicle and Jane Lee of MLB.com. While most of the response is the canned response we have heard for the last 18 months from Lew -- "We have exhausted every option in Oakland" -- one of the more interesting nuggets from the Slusser piece stated:

If the A's are not granted the territorial rights they want in San Jose, they are under no obligation to move to a site recommended by the committee. They can spend no money at all and stay at the Coliseum, or the owners can sell the team.

Under no obligation, Lew? Deciding the future location of the A's franchise is exactly why MLB appointed the three-person committee to study Bay Area ballpark sites. Also, if Wolff were to take this route, the people who claim that Wolff hates Oakland would only have a stronger case. It would be franchise suicide to not work with a viable Oakland ballpark plan like the one that the city and MLB reportedly have forged.

The Jane Lee piece reports that Wolff says he has not talked to the city in two years. That's a flat out lie by Wolff. (Given his past problems with telling the truth, maybe we shouldn't be surprised.) In fact, Wolff is well aware of the progress that has been made at Victory Court. However, I am starting to wonder how much Lew Wolff matters in all this. Remember, in March of 2009, Barbara Boxer and Ron Dellums sent letters to Bud Selig to address this matter and bypassed Wolff entirely, prompting Selig to form the three-member A's ballpark committee, which has caused all this controversy. All the news coming from the Oakland backers talk about working with Major League Baseball officials and not Lew Wolff himself. Judging by the fact that we have been hearing the same canned responses from Wolff in that time period, it leads me to believe that he might not be in the loop as much as he'd like to believe.

Also keep in mind that, while he is the A's ownership managing partner, his financial share in the team is about 10%. If MLB can convince other MLB owners that Oakland is a workable choice, they might be able to convince the A's other partners, including billionaire John Fisher, that investing in an attractive ballpark in Oakland can and would be a profitable enterprise, regardless of Wolff's personal feelings towards Oakland and San Jose. Then, Wolff could easily sell to a more enthusiastic team owner and still make a tidy profit in doing so.

MLB: Victory Court is Serious Business

A hot-off-the-presses East Bay Express story on the A's ballpark search declares that Oakland's redevelopment agency is in the best shape of all Bay Area cities still vying to be the Oakland Athletics' home city and that, most importantly, "Major League Baseball knows it."

The new article, written by investigative reporter Robert Gammon, goes on to report:

... while San Jose's plan is hindered by financial woes, Oakland's is not. Budget documents show that Oakland's redevelopment fund for the Downtown/Jack London Square area, also known as the city's Central District, will have a projected $20 million total surplus in its operations and capital accounts next year. In addition, City Administrator Dan Lindheim, who also manages the redevelopment agency, says the Central District has plenty of bonding capacity to finance what's needed for the ballpark.

In fact, Major League Baseball's blue ribbon task force has combed through the financial records of Oakland's redevelopment agency in recent months to confirm that the city's ballpark plan pencils out, Lindheim said. The league also brought in noted stadium architects Populous, the designers of AT&T Park in San Francisco, to examine Oakland's planned site for the new stadium in Jack London Square, known as Victory Court. Populous, formerly known as HOK Sports, analyzed East Bay ballpark sites during former City Manager Robert Bobb's tenure. "They've spent an enormous amount of money on high-priced consultants to go through this," Lindheim said, referring to the league's task force.

If parking was once considered a roadblock, information provided to MLB by Oakland officials seems to have quelled that concern. Gammon wrote:

The city plans to build 2,500 parking spots on the Victory Court site, and the rest will be off-site. One of the leading options is to turn vacant parcels underneath I-880 into surface parking lots. Such a move would give the city at least 10,000 parking spaces within five-eighths of a mile of the ballpark.

Gammon also noted the importance of the support that Mayor-Elect Jean Quan has for this project. Quan reportedly said: "I think it will help bring us out of the recession." There are still issues to resolve -- most notably, negotiating with businesses who would have to be relocated from the Victory Court site, and the possibility of adding another offramp from Interstate 880, which is adjacent to the ballpark site. But Gammon's story included one tidbit that should quiet any critics who say that MLB will reject the Jack London Square site. According to Gammon, MLB officials themselves are the ones most enthusiastic about Victory Court as a ballpark location:

The league's experts selected the Victory Court site as the most viable spot for a new ballpark. It's not far from downtown, it's close to BART, and it's on Oakland's waterfront — and thus met major criteria set out by the league. "They like the waterfront site," Lindheim noted.

45,000!

Congrats to Let's Go Oakland for going over 45,000 fans on Facebook. It's fitting that LGO's Facebook page hit that milestone on Dec. 1, the same day that more than 200 A's fans packed Oakland City Hall in support of a new Jack London Square ballpark at Victory Court.

Now, some Facebook critics say that these pages are trivial and don't represent true political or financial support. But recent political research strongly suggests that those critics have been wrong. In November's elections, the candidate who more people "liked" on Facebook won in 71 percent of Senate elections. Twitter was even more accurate, with the candidates with more followers winning in 74 percent of elections, according to news reports.

So, when Let's Go Oakland declares that they're all for building a new A's ballpark in Oakland, and 45,000 A's fans throw their support behind that by joining LGO's Facebook page, it's nothing to sneeze at. LGO's 45,000 members prove even more significant when one looks at the paltry Facebook numbers garnered by any other city vying for the A's. Those other places have only a tiny fraction of what Let's Go Oakland has assembled, either on Facebook or at Oakland City Hall on Dec. 1, when even the second overflow room was overflowing into the hallways. It's a sign that what Mayor-Elect Jean Quan and Let's Go Oakland are proposing -- a Victory Court ballpark at Jack London Square -- is what the vast majority of A's fans want, too.

So, here's a big congratulations to Let's Go Oakland for reaching another milestone. Just like the many Oakland A's fans you've inspired, we know you won't rest until the A's future in Oakland is secured.

Planning Commission Meeting Recap

On Wednesday night, more than 200 A's fans packed the meeting rooms at City Hall in anticipation of the start of the environmental review process for a proposed A's ballpark at Victory Court. The hearing room was so packed, the fire marshal showed up and cleared the room and ordered the extra fans into an overflow room where people could watch the meeting on TV. And then the overflow room was standing room only. Fans that got to the 6 p.m. meeting found out that the ballpark item would not be discussed until 7:30, so we thank every body who stuck around for the duration of the long meeting. After surveying the large crowd, Planning Commissioner Doug Boxer joked, "You hold a planning commission meeting and a rally breaks out."

All kidding aside, it was no rally, of course, but rather one important step in what will be a long, transparent political process. Also packing city hall was the local media.

VSmoothe at ABetterOakland did an excellent write up with complete video footage.

The Oakland Tribune's take is here.

Here is the San Francisco Chronicle's story.

Oakland North had a nice piece.

KTVU's video showed off Oaklandish’s great "StAy" T-shirt, which Oaklandish generously donated to the first 75 fans in attendance.

And KPIX had a good story and video on the meeting.

There was concern amongst the planning commissioners and other attendees that the public comments would stray off topic but everyone did a good job of staying relatively on topic. Some of the speakers discussed improving pedestrian access under the I-880 freeway. BaseballOakland's Mike Davie spoke about bicycle access at the park (we've talked about that before on this blog), for example. And Bryan Grunwald reiterated his idea for building a stadium over the I-980 freeway, calling for it to be studied in the EIR.

We are very glad this process is going forward. It is a marathon and not a sprint but the work that many of Oakland leaders have done so far have put us in a solid position to keep the A's and to develop the city of Oakland's economic base.

"A Better Oakland" Looks at Victory Court

Over Thanksgiving weekend, popular Oakland blogger VSmoothe discussed the Victory Court proposal on her blog, A Better Oakland. She also mentioned that the site will be publicly discussed at this Wednesday's Oakland Planning Commission meeting.

We've always been fans of VSmoothe's blog, even the past times she was pessimistic about a new Oakland A's ballpark. So we consider it great progress that she now thinks a ballpark at Victory Court is a very real possibility and that, despite some of her concerns, the site could "spur the success of Jack London Square and the Lake Merritt BART Station area" and the Victory Court A's ballpark surrounding areas of Chinatown, downtown and Laney College.

She also notes many of the area's strengths, such as the abundant parking around the Jack London Square, Chinatown and Laney College areas.

We also would like to add that Victory Court's public transit options are excellent: the Lake Merritt BART station is as close to Victory Court as the Coliseum BART is to the Coliseum; the Broadway St. "B" Shuttle could easily service the park; the nearby Amtrak station is a stop for ACE and Capitol Corridor commuter trains, as well as Amtrak; the Jack London Ferry stop is nearby, and a closer ferry stop could be added to serve the stadium directly, just as was done at China Basin for San Francisco’s AT&T Park.

To her credit, VSmoothe also noted the few concerns around the site. She says that getting to Victory Court en masse by automobile during game time might be a problem, to name one example. Addressing concerns of nearby residents and businesses obviously will be paramount. But these and other potential issues are not insurmountable and any dismissals of the site are premature.

Instead, VSmoothe's blog post recognized that the public planning process has only started, and Wednesday's public meeting is just one step in a continuing, multi-step process that will allow the public to share their concerns and weigh in on the ballpark site with transparency. Part of that public process calls for identifying possible problems and coming up with solutions. San Francisco found a way to build new infrastructure around AT&T Park and to address traffic concerns, for example. There is no reason to believe that Oakland cannot accomplish the same.

Second, VSmoothe informed her readers by writing in detail about the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) process:

Basically, California state law requires that before a City can approve a development, they have to recognize what impacts that project will have on the surrounding environment. An EIR is the document that tells them what those impacts are going to be.

When a developer or, in this case, the City decides that they need to complete an EIR, the first step is to issue a Notice of Preparation (NOP), which briefly describes the proposal and notes what types of impacts are expected. The City issued a NOP (PDF) for a ballpark at the Victory Court location on November 10th. The purpose of this document is to alert the public and other interested parties that you are doing an EIR.

In short, Wednesday’s meeting will be an EIR scoping session to solicit public comments on the NOP.

For further explanation, VSmoothe quotes from the EIR staff report:

The main purpose of this scoping session is to solicit comments from both the Commission and the public on what types of information and analysis should be considered in the EIR. Specifically, comments should focus on discussing possible impacts on the physical environment, ways in which potential adverse effects might be minimized, and alternatives to the project in light of the EIR's purpose to provide useful and accurate information about such factors. Comments related to policy considerations and the merits of the project will be the subject of future, duly noticed public meetings.

In other words, you can go to the hearing to give your comments or you can put questions and/or comments in writing.

Those fans who are anxious to get something done, like, yesterday, should keep in mind that this process is a marathon and not a sprint. It takes time, and you want the city to study the site carefully in a transparent way. Meetings like the one being held Wednesday are crucial to that city process. As the Victory Court plan evolves, attending the meetings is the best way to find out the plan’s details and its real viability.

In the meantime, we look forward to seeing all of you at City Hall at 6PM on Wednesday night, as Oakland residents continue the fight to retain the A's here in Oakland.

Here are the details for the meeting:

WHEN: 6PM, this Wednesday, Dec. 1
WHERE: Oakland City Hall, in Hearing Room One
ADDRESS: One Frank Ogawa Plaza (14th St. & Broadway)
WHAT: Oakland Planning Commission Meeting
WHY: New A's baseball park near Jack London Square

Express: Oakland & Quan Call Victory Court the Top Ballpark Site

An East Bay Express story by reporter Robert Gammon announced what the the scheduled Dec. 1 Planning Commission meeting had suggested: that the Victory Court ballpark site is the front-runner among Oakland's options. Even better was the news that the city is moving forward in conducting an environmental impact report for the site, an important step in the development process. (For those who might not closely follow land-use issues.)

Our favorite part of the Express article came from Mayor-Elect Jean Quan, who said she called MLB the day after she won the election.

"I wanted to let them know that I won, and that I would be fighting to keep the A's," Quan said. "And I wanted to make sure they knew that I would be doing everything possible to keep the negotiations going."

Gammon's story also featured these factoids:

*Oakland officials plan to use Redevelopment Agency funds for both the land acquisition and the EIR.

*City Administrator Dan Lindheim is leading the negotiations with MLB, making clear that MLB and the city of Oakland are in talks.

*Lindheim also said that MLB wants to have a new stadium for the A's in place by Opening Day 2015.

*Quan believes that the new ballpark will not only spur development at Jack London Square, Oak-to-Ninth, and Lake Merritt, but also will help nearby Chinatown businesses.

*Jim Falaschi (Jack London Square Partners) and Michael Ghielmetti (President, Signature Properties) control areas around Victory Court and both are in favor of the ballpark.

6PM, Dec. 1, Oakland City Hall

Another big step in building a new A's ballpark in Oakland is about to be taken.

The Oakland Planning Commission will hold a hearing on a proposal for Oakland's Victory Court site, a baseball-only waterfront ballpark. The meeting will begin at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 1, in Hearing Room 1 at Oakland City Hall. The meeting is open to the public, so all A's fans should plan on being there. Oakland City Hall is located at 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza, near the corner of Broadway Street and 14th Street in downtown Oakland. BART riders can exit at the City Center/12th Street station. Garage parking is available behind City Hall at the Clay Street Garage, located on Clay Street between 14th and 16th streets.

See you there. Let's Go Oak-land!!

The Dirty Dozen: A Recap of Wolff's Lies in AN Interview

The final part of Lew Wolff's interview with Athletics Nation concluded on Nov. 11.
Part I is here. Part II is here. And Part III is here.

Our sincere kudos to AN's Tyler Bleszinski for asking some tough questions. Unfortunately, Wolff's answers were filled with so many lies and factual inaccuracies we're still looking for the proper name for his 'performance.' Our favorite is, "Lew's Lie-a-palooza."

In the meantime, we divided our interview recap into a few categories better describing Wolff's falsehoods. Here's the recap:

MISLEADING

1. "TB: ...How would you anticipate (a new ballpark) impacting team spending?
Wolff: Huge. We will be able to do so much we can't do right now. However, I still don't think we would be ... going after free agents on a large scale. The ideal for us ... (is) ... after we know that they’re pretty good, buy them out of arbitration years and get a couple of extra years and pay for that. And even that still gives the player another bite of the free agent apple if we can’t keep them. ...I don’t think we’d go after (Mark) Teixeira for seven years or eight years, although who knows? But we would be in a much better position to attract and retain the players we want." (Part II)

Very misleading, Lew. Sure, it sounds exciting. Until you consider that Wolff's scenario is no different from how the A's have been doing business for about a decade. It's been Billy Beane's strategy for years to, as Wolff says, "buy young players out of their arbitration years and get a couple of extra years." John Hart of the Cleveland Indians was the first baseball GM to employ this strategy in the late '90s, and Beane followed suit in the early 2000s. So, when Wolff says a new stadium's impact will be "huge" and then he excitedly describes how it's going to be different, all he's doing is describing how the A's ALREADY do business at the Coliseum. Which makes sense because Wolff is already on record as saying that the A's approach will be "business as usual" once they get a new ballpark. Which Lew Wolff should we believe? Try the one that’s going to change little and spend less money.

OUTRIGHT LIES

2. "TB: Did the A's turn a profit in 2010?
Wolff: This year? We just about broke even.
TB: Is that a little over or a little under?
Wolff: I'm hoping it's over. ...We will be plus or minus around a million dollars one way or another ..." (Part II)

Around a "million dollars, plus or minus?" Really, Lew? Forbes Magazine disagrees with you. Forbes said that last year the A's profit was a whopping $22.1 million. That’s quite a bit more than "just about broke even." And the 2010 attendance was slightly above last year's, so the A's 2010 operating income very likely was much closer to 2009's $22.1 million, rather than Wolff's "around a million dollars, plus or minus." Wolff's apologists might claim that Forbes is way off. But, consider this: Forbes is a conservative magazine with a long history of strong reporting credibility. In contrast, baseball owners like Wolff and Fisher have a history of lying about their finances. Just this season, the finances for a handful of MLB franchises were leaked to the media. The leaked reports showed that team owners were lying about their finances and exaggerating their money woes in the lead-up to a new stadium. Sound familiar?

3. "We need to be in a downtown because the infrastructure is there. In Fremont, we would have created our own downtown. In Oakland, we have real problems of transportation and off ramps, just one thing after another." (Part III)

This is one of Wolff's oddest answers. There's no way Wolff could have "created" the kind of century-old downtown infrastructure in Fremont that the Bay Area's largest cities, including Oakland, already possess. Yet he now says that's the kind of downtown he needs. As for Oakland’s “problems of transportation and off ramps,” we really don’t know what he’s referring to. The Coliseum complex is a model of public access – it’s centrally located in the Bay Area, adjacent to a major freeway, and it features every kind of public transit station (BART subway, Amtrak, ACE & Capitol Corridor trains, AC Transit buses) that the Bay Area offers, except a ferry stop.

Also, the proposed Victory Court site has excellent transit options (BART, Jack London ferry stop, the free Broadway Street shuttle, Amtrak, ACE & Capitol Corridor trains, AC Transit buses) and, next door on I-880, there are ongoing freeway/road improvements that are soon to be completed.

4. "Wolff: 2006, right. We didn't sell out any of those games in Oakland.
TB: Any of the ALCS games?
Wolff: If we did, you have to check on that I'm not exactly sure. (Part II)

Wolff is lying here. Those Coliseum 2006 ALCS games were indeed sold out. The Coliseum capacity in 2006 was 34,077. A simple check of Retrosheet.org shows that Oakland attendance was 35,655 for Game 1 and 36,168 for Game 2. If that isn't a sellout, then I'm Matt Stairs.

5. "TB: Someone ... put up a story from 1998 from the Chronicle, where you were quoted as saying, "I wouldn't spend five minutes in any other city in California outside of San Jose."
Wolff: That was long before I was an owner, years ago. Yeah, we were trying to get the Giants to San Jose at that time. I was a businessperson in San Jose at that time so I was just trying to attract the Giants." (Part II)

Wolff is lying here, too. The 1998 Chronicle article is 100 percent about the A's and their desire to move to the South Bay. It was written by then-Chronicle A's beat writer, Steve Kettman, and it completely flies in the face of Wolff's answer to the question. Secondly, it would have been impossible for Wolff to move the Giants to the South Bay in 1998, as Wolff asserts he was doing, because they had already broken ground at China Basin in 1997 for the building of Pacific Bell Park (now AT&T Park). The ballot initiative for the Giants' Pac Bell Park passed in 1996.

6. "When I arrived in Oakland ... the number one location for the new ballpark was ... the "uptown site" ... which was designated for residential ... thus the best opportunity was not available to us or the Hofmann-Schott ownership." (Part I)

Also not true, Lew. The Uptown site was on the table for the A's throughout part of 2001 and nearly all of 2002. Unfortunately, the A's showed zero public support for the Uptown site. A's co-owner Steve Schott and team president Mike Crowley appeared at City Council meetings in Santa Clara in 2001 to publicly ask Santa Clara officials about moving the A's there. But neither Schott nor Crowley — or any A's employee, for that matter — ever appeared at an Oakland City Council meeting for the Uptown site. Even when Oakland leaders invited HOK Architects and ballpark consultant Rick Horrow to a City Council meeting in 2002, Schott and the A's were a total no-show. If the A's had shown even the slightest interest in the Uptown site, they might have been playing there at 20th Street and Telegraph Avenue, right next to the Fox Theater, for decades to come. Just weeks after that 2002 public city meeting, which included a standing-room-only crowd of A's fans, Schott told the S.F. Chronicle that he still wanted to move to the A's to the South Bay and then he insulted Oakland officials by saying "Basically, they're 0 for 2" on stadium construction. With Uptown still on the table at that point, Schott didn't do anything to go after it. His apathy is right there in this Chronicle article.

7. "I tried to be nice to a couple of people - a guy with one of those signs, ‘We hate Lew,’ you know?" (Part III)

Actually, Lew, there's never been a sign at the Coliseum with that message. One outfield sign this year said, "Wolff Hates Oakland" – big difference from what you said. Other signs said, "Fisher=Greed" or "Wolff Lied, He Never Tried." No sign ever said, "We hate Lew."

8. “No public money” (Part I)

(NOTE: To be clear, we're not against a public-private solution for ballpark funding. What we don't like is Wolff's misrepresentation of the facts.)

Wolff keeps saying the A's ballpark will be "privately financed." But he’s just playing with semantics. What Wolff really means is he won’t use a city’s general fund. But, a city’s other public revenue he’s more than happy to grab. If Wolff really doesn’t plan to use public funds, then why are the financial woes of the San Jose Redevelopment Agency threatening to torpedo Wolff's ballpark deal? "Privately financed" should mean that a city's money won’t come into play, but Wolff wants it both ways here. Instead, he's banking on the Redevelopment Agency to purchase land parcels for him and then give them to him for free. As an alternative to that, he’s also proposing that San Jose city officials sell the city’s precious remaining land parcels in order to pay for HIS ballclub’s stadium deal. On closer inspection, that doesn’t really sound "privately financed." Again, structuring a deal like this isn't bad, but just don't call it "privately financed." It's not.

9. "And we are, I believe, the only team in baseball to share our ballpark with another professional sports team." (Part I)

Not true, Lew. The Miami Dolphins and the Florida Marlins currently share Sun Life Stadium (formerly Joe Robbie Stadium and Pro Player Park). The Marlins are slated to move into a park in 2012.

10. "We explored every possible opportunity to remain in Oakland ... then and only then did we alter our focus to Fremont." (Part I)

This is Wolff's biggest lie. In fact, Wolff's one and only attempt at an Oakland site was his impossibly complex plan north of the Oakland Coliseum in August 2005, which called for buying out and moving dozens and dozens of East Oakland business owners. If Wolff was sincere about that plan, then why did he spend just as much time chatting with Fremont officials about their proposal at that public Oakland meeting than he did with Oakland officials? Read this excerpt from a 2006 East Bay Express story:

According to a column by Mark Purdy in the San Jose Mercury News, Wolff was introduced to Cisco CEO John Chambers in the fall of 2005 by former A's co-owner Ken Hofmann. Wolff and Chambers quickly began discussing a deal for the 143-acre Cisco-Catellus property, to which Cisco still held the rights.

Yep, you read that right. The article says that Wolff was in talks with Fremont and Cisco in the FALL OF 2005 (emphasis mine) — that's just weeks after Wolff first proposed his hopelessly complex East Oakland plan. Then, he said that the East Oakland plan "must" include a new BART station, a requirement he never demanded from Fremont or San Jose. Also, when former Oakland Councilman Dick Spees offered to head a business-booster committee to help Wolff build community support for his East Oakland plan, Wolff stiff-armed Spees and said he didn't need any help.

Given all of this, do you still believe Wolff made an "exhaustive" effort in Oakland? We sure don’t.

DOUBLE STANDARD

11. "Every redevelopment agency, every city is having financial trouble." (Part I)

A classic Lew Wolff double-standard. When Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums approached Wolff to offer help on a new Oakland ballpark, Wolff said that Oakland "has other priorities" besides baseball. But when other cities he wants to move to have similar financial problems, suddenly those "priorities" are no big deal for Wolff.

JUST NONSENSE

12. "We spent close to $80 million (in Fremont) ... roughly half is ancillary real estate, of which now that $40 million is worth $20 million. ...And we've written off another $28 million to $35 million for environmental impact reports and hundreds of architectural costs. ...$25 million to $30 million (is) absolutely non-recoverable." (Part II)

Our reponse to that: Huh?!

Seriously, Wolff's response begs more questions than it answers. Sorry, even the most expensive EIRs and architectural renderings, retainer fees, and other miscellaneous costs don't add up to $25 million. So, what exactly was the "non-recoverable" sum of $25 to $30 million spent on, Lew? And, almost two years after you gave up on Fremont, you still can't determine whether you spent $28 million or $35 million (or some figure in between) on land-prep costs? Then again, what's an easy $7 million among friends? And supposing you're telling the truth, Lew, are we supposed to be impressed that you blew almost $30 million on a very flawed stadium plan that no one was excited about except you and the mayor of Fremont? Doesn't that call into question your judgment? If only you were so laid-back with player costs, then maybe you guys wouldn't trade every fan-favorite player that comes down the pike.

There are actually a handful of other Wolff interview responses that we'll delve into in the coming weeks. Until then, we have to ask, if Wolff is wildly incorrect about the small stuff, like playoff game attendance, what else isn't he telling us?

Congrats to Mayor-Elect Jean Quan

It's a few days late, but we can't let this busy week end without giving a hearty congratulations to Oakland's new Mayor-Elect Jean Quan. The City Councilwoman has made history -- she will be Oakland's first female mayor and its first Asian-American mayor. That's reason enough to cheer her victory. The other reason we're happy to see her win is that Quan is vocally in favor of building a new waterfront A's ballpark at Oakland's Victory Court site, right next to Jack London Square.

So, congrats again, Mayor-Elect Quan. Now, let's keep the A's in Oakland!

Wolff Lies, Pt. II

Yesterday we talked about the factual inaccuracies in Lew Wolff's arguments in Part One of his Athletics Nation interview. Today, we do more of the same for Part Two:

TB: There are some conspiracy theorists out there who claim that you never really had any intention of moving to Fremont. They say that the Fremont stadium effort was an effort to get the Giants and baseball to consider San Jose more seriously. Someone even in the piece I ran yesterday about favorable/unfavorable put up a story from 1998 from the Chronicle, where you were quoted as saying, "I wouldn’t spend five minutes in any other city in California outside of San Jose."

LW: That was long before I was an owner, years ago. Yeah, we were trying to get the Giants to San Jose at that time. I was a business person in San Jose at that time so I was just trying to attract the Giants.

The article in question — click here for it — was written by Steve Kettmann, the Chronicle beat writer covering the A's at the time. (Kettmann would later go on to write another article about Wolff and the A's in 2009.) But let's discuss Wolff's quote. First of all, the 1998 Chronicle piece is 100 percent about the A's. It completely flies in the face of what Wolff is saying in regards to moving the Giants. Secondly, in 1998 in would be impossible to move the Giants out of San Francisco. They had already broken ground in 1997 for the building of Pacific Bell Park (now AT&T Park). The ballot initiative for Pac Bell Park passed in 1996.

LW: When we won the division and we were in the "final four" three years ago.

TB: 2006

LW: 2006, right. We didn't sell out any of those games in Oakland.

TB: Any of the ALCS games?

LW: If we did, you have to check on that I’m not exactly sure. ...

Wolff is lying here. Those Coliseum games were indeed sold out. The Coliseum capacity in 2006 was 34,077. A simple check of Retrosheet.org shows that Oakland attendance was 35,655 for Game 1 and 36,168 for Game 2. If that isn't a sellout then I'm John Jaha.

Continuing along those same lines:

LW: But the most interesting part was we didn’t change prices significantly [after 2006] and we had less season ticket holders interested in buying season tickets for the next season than we had the year before. Hard to believe. You tell me why that is.

Here's why, Lew. First, A's-game prices skyrocketed from 2005-2006, and continued to go up in 2007. Also, look at what happened in the off-season.

1. Wolff announced his desire to move to Fremont (unpopular with fans)
2. Barry Zito signed with the Giants (loss of fan favorite)
3. Frank Thomas departs to Toronto (loss of fan favorite)

In some ways, I'm tired of writing these articles. I really am. However, due to Wolff's constant lies and inaccuracies we have no choice but to fight back with the facts. Moving the A's is one thing. Moving them based on total falsehoods is another.

Part 3 is coming soon ...

Wolff Lies in Interview, Pt. I

On Nov. 7, Dave Newhouse penned a column in which he candidly called Lew Wolff a liar. Just two days later, Wolff gave an interview and promptly proved Newhouse right. There are several outright lies and factual inaccuracies that Wolff told in his Nov. 9 interview with Athletics Nation.

Let's just dive right in and list them. Wolff said:

"No public money"

Wolff keeps saying that he'll ask a city to spend "no public money" and that a new A's ballpark will be "privately financed." But he's just playing with semantics. What Wolff really means is he won't use a city's general fund. But, he definitely plans to take a city's other sources of tax revenue, including redevelopment agency money. If Wolff really doesn't plan to use any public funds, then why are the financial woes of the San Jose Redevelopment Agency threatening to torpedo Wolff's ballpark deal, as the San Jose Mercury News reported? "Privately financed" should mean that millions of dollars of a city's money won't come into play, but Wolff is trying to have it both ways here. Instead, he's banking on San Jose's Redevelopment Agency to purchase land parcels for him and then to give that valuable land to him for free. As an alternative to that, he's also proposing that San Jose city officials sell the city's precious remaining land parcels in order to pay for HIS ballclub's stadium deal. Does that sound like "privately financed" to you? Nah, we don't think so, either.

"We explored every possible opportunity to remain in Oakland … then and only then did we alter our focus to Fremont."

This is Wolff's biggest lie and his most oft-repeated one. But in fact, Wolff's one and only attempt at an Oakland site was his impossibly complex plan north of the Oakland Coliseum in August 2005, which called for buying out and moving dozens and dozens of East Oakland business owners. If Wolff was sincere about that plan, then why did he spend just as much time chatting with Fremont officials about their proposal at that public Oakland meeting than he did with Oakland officials? Read this excerpt from a 2006 East Bay Express story:

According to a column by Mark Purdy in the San Jose Mercury News, Wolff was introduced to Cisco CEO John Chambers in the fall of 2005 by former A's co-owner Ken Hofmann. Wolff and Chambers quickly began discussing a deal for the 143-acre Cisco-Catellus property, to which Cisco still held the rights.

Yep, you read that right. The article says that Wolff was in talks with Fremont and Cisco in the FALL OF 2005 (emphasis mine) — that's just weeks after Wolff first proposed his hopelessly complex East Oakland plan. Then, he said that the East Oakland plan "must" include a new BART station, a requirement he never demanded from Fremont or San Jose. Also, when former Oakland Councilman Dick Spees offered to head a business-booster committee to help Wolff build community support for his East Oakland plan, Wolff stiff-armed Spees and said he didn’t need any help. Hmmmm. Lastly, look at this Wolff quote from 1998 — yes, from 12 years ago:

If I was going to pursue a ballpark, I would certainly do it in San Jose, not depend on a vote outside of San Jose, and I would work through the mayor and the Redevelopment Agency. It's the difference between a big-league city and a nonbig-league city. I wouldn't spend five minutes on any other city besides San Jose.

Given all of this, do you still believe Wolff made an "exhaustive" effort in Oakland? We sure don't.

"When I arrived in Oakland ... the number one location for the new ballpark was … the 'uptown site' ... which was designated for residential ... thus the best opportunity was not available to us or the Hofmann-Schott ownership."

Also not true, Lew. The Uptown site was on the table for the A's throughout part of 2001 and nearly all of 2002. Unfortunately, the A's showed zero public support for the Uptown site. A's co-owner Steve Schott and team president Mike Crowley appeared at City Council meetings in Santa Clara in 2001 to publicly ask Santa Clara officials about moving the A's there. But neither Schott nor Crowley — or any A's employee, for that matter — ever appeared at an Oakland City Council meeting for the Uptown site. Even when Oakland leaders invited HOK Architects and ballpark consultant Rick Horrow to a City Council meeting in 2002, Schott and the A's were a total no-show. If the A's had shown even the slightest interest in the Uptown site, they might already be playing there at 20th St. and Telegraph Ave., right next to the Fox Theater, for decades to come. Just weeks after that public city meeting, which included a standing-room-only crowd of A's fans, Schott told the S.F. Chronicle that he still wanted to move to the A's to the South Bay and then he insulted Oakland officials by saying "they're 0 for 2" on stadium construction. With Uptown still on the table at that point, Schott didn't do anything to go after it. His apathy is right there in this Chronicle article.

“Every redevelopment agency, every city is having financial trouble.”

A classic Lew Wolff double-standard. A few years ago Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums approached Wolff, offering help on a new Oakland ballpark, Wolff shrugged him off and said that Oakland "has other priorities" besides baseball. But when other cities he wants to move to have similar financial problems, suddenly it’s no big deal for Wolff.

“And we are, I believe, the only team in baseball to share our ballpark with another professional sports team.”

Not true, Lew. The Miami Dolphins and the Florida Marlins currently share Sun Life Stadium (formerly Joe Robbie Stadium and Pro Player Park). The Marlins are slated to move into a park in two years, so for the next 24 months, Lew, you remain wildly inaccurate.

We could go on and dissect other Wolff inaccuracies, but we’ll stop here for now. We'll get to them later in the week. As for now, we can’t wait to read Part II of the interview.

Congrats to the Giants

The San Francisco Giants are World Series Champions. We at BaseballOakland want to extend our congratulations for this accomplishment to the team, the owners, and their fans. They all earned this.

The team is a likable group of homegrown young talent, combined with cast-offs and misfits who play as a team and leave their egos up in the seats with the fans. The team kind of reminds me of Oakland.

To the ownership, this is the result of embracing your community, uniting your fan base, and effectively marketing your product. The current A's ownership could learn a lot from them.

The fans? I know what you're thinking: "Those yuppie, hipster, bandwagon jumpers — why do they deserve this?" Well, those types of fans may be over-represented at AT&T Park now, but it wasn’t always like this. There are many Giant fans who tortured through a cold, lonely, Tuesday-night, extra-inning loss at Candlestick in the '70s, '80s and '90s. Those fans earned and deserve this championship and that parade. As former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown said at the start of the series, "Everybody's a baseball expert now, but where were you when the Giants really needed you?" There is still a contingent of fans from that past era who can enjoy a game without having a computer on their lap. As two old friends of mine who are longtime Giant fans, and who attended this series told each other after the Giants won, "We can die happy now."

Gammon: Wolff & Fisher Gave $25K to Perata Campaign

Robert Gammon of the East Bay Express reported Monday that Lew Wolff and John Fisher have given a combined $25,000 to a political committee that's supporting Oakland mayoral candidate Don Perata.

Why is this important? We'll let Gammon explain:

The move is unusual because Oakland sports team owners don't typically attempt to sway city elections and because Wolff is known for being frugal with his money. The large donations also came after recent statements made by Perata that stopping the A's move to the South Bay will not be a priority if he becomes mayor.

So, as Gammon notes, Wolff and Fisher, who are trying to move the A's out of Oakland and into the South Bay, now are trying to affect who will be Oakland's next mayor. And the one Oakland candidate they are giving money to — Perata — is the one who has been the most ambivalent or outright negative about keeping the A's in town. Hmmm. It's also interesting to note that Fisher and his family have been staunch Republicans and Perata is a longtime Democrat and once one of the most powerful Democrats in California. So, why would Fisher and Wolff donate to the political committee that's backing Perata?

Gammon asked Wolff that question:

In an interview, Wolff denied that Perata's stance on the A's had anything to do with his $10,000 donation, saying he's supporting the ex-senator because he thinks he's the best mayoral candidate. Fisher donated $15,000. "I've known him for years," Wolff said of Perata, "and I respect him." Wolff also said he hasn't been paying attention to what Perata has been saying on the campaign trail.

Oakland Tribune columnist Dave Newhouse said it's unprecedented for an Oakland sports team owner donating these sums of money for the Oakland mayor’s race. Gammon wrote:

"I've been in Oakland since 1964, and I’ve never heard of anything like this," Newhouse said in an interview after being told of what Wolff had done. Newhouse also said that Perata's disinterest in keeping the A's in Oakland "makes more sense" in light of Wolff's attempt to get the ex-senator elected.

City councilmembers Rebecca Kaplan and Jean Quan are the two candidates who have the best chance to beat Perata. Kaplan and Quan also strongly favor keeping the A's in Oakland. Perata, meanwhile, seemed resigned to losing the A's in a recent interview, according to Newhouse. So, Wolff and Fisher are backing Perata.

Or as Gammon wrote in the East Bay Express article:

... it seems unlikely that Wolff and Fisher would support a candidate who would try to stop their San Jose plans.

The hypocrisy of Wolff and Fisher has become obvious. While they have ignored Oakland residents, A's fans, and the ballpark efforts of Oakland officials, Wolff and Fisher have thrown their money into the Oakland mayor's race, and not to help Oakland, but specifically to meddle with Oakland just to serve their own interests in another city. Wolff and Fisher do not have Oakland's best interests at heart; in fact, they want to take jobs and redevelopment opportunities away from Oakland. The truth is Wolff and Fisher have other priorities than to meddle with Oakland's mayoral race, such as the cash-strapped agency they've partnered with or valuable members of the A's coaching staff leaving the organization.

Market the A's Better, Part IV

We love our Oakland A's, obviously. But we're not so crazy about how A's owners Lew Wolff and John Fisher market the team. Or, in their case, fail to market the team.

Which is why we started our ongoing series: How to Market the A's Better to Oakland and the Bay Area. Part One can be found by clicking here. Part Two is here. Part Three is here. To fill the gaping hole in the front office's marketing efforts, here are more ideas:

Bring back Fan Fest: Tens of thousands of A's tickets were sold at Fan Fest each year. So why did Wolff cancel it permanently in 2009? It doesn't make any sense. Held in late January each year, it drew about 20,000 fans each time, firing up fans and reminding them that the new season was right around the corner.

Expand the Junior A's Little League program: Does it even exist anymore? It probably does. Yet, I almost never see it advertised. In the East Bay on weekends, I often see children from the Junior Giants program — decked out in their mini Giants uniforms. It's smart marketing/advertising — nothing melts an old baseball fan's heart more than seeing kids love the game of baseball. Plus a potential ticket buyer is seeing the Giants logo on the kids' uniforms. In the meantime, where are the A's and the Junior A's program? It's lackluster, like everything else the A's do around their marketing.

Get a local non-cable channel to televise games: When the A's signed an exclusive TV contract with Comcast, they eliminated a large chunk of their viewing audience who have another cable provider, like Direct TV or Dish or no cable at all.

Send the Holiday Caravan to your team's hometown: Last year, Matier and Ross reported that the annual A's Holiday Caravan made seven appearances, with three of them being in San Jose and NONE in the team's hometown in Oakland. Way to be in the holiday spirit. Also, is that really any way to sell tickets?

Bring back A's Dugout stores: During the Haas years, the A's had an A's Dugout store in downtown Oakland. Steve Schott got rid of it when he and Ken Hofmann took over as owners in 1995. Again, it provides a physical presence in the community where merchandise and tickets could be sold. Bring it back, and not just in Oakland. With retail space rents way down, put an A's Dugout store in surrounding East Bay towns, as well as in the biggest towns in Marin, Solano, and Sonoma counties.

There are many more marketing ideas for reaching out to fans and corporations to sell A's tickets. If you have any ideas, please e-mail them to us at baseballoakland@gmail.com. Keep 'em coming, and we will, too. Someone has to.

Mercury News: A's San Jose Deal in Peril?

Friday morning brought news that might be a deal-breaker for Lew Wolff's years-old plan to move the A's out of Oakland. At the very least, the news revealed Wolff's double-standard regarding Oakland in his stadium quest.

First, let's look at what Tracy Seipel of The San Jose Mercury News wrote:

San Jose's redevelopment agency is in such rough financial shape that its leaders now say they may not be able to buy the last parcels for a downtown baseball stadium for the Oakland A's.

Despite the bad news, Wolff gave optimistic quotes: "Whatever issues we run into, we will figure out how to get them done."

But neither Wolff nor San Jose officials gave specifics on how the cash-strapped redevelopment agency's problems might be solved. Seipel wrote:

... he (Wolff) and agency officials both said no details of a possible land purchase by Wolff had been discussed ...

Regardless of what happens next, Wolff has revealed yet again how he has one set of rules for Oakland, and another set of rules for the cities to which he’s tried to move the A's. It also refutes the lie that Oakland leaders haven't worked to keep the A’s. The truth is, Oakland officials frequently have tried hard to reach out to A's owners like Wolff and former owner Steve Schott.

The problem is, whenever Oakland officials tried to work with Wolff, he would throw up roadblocks by giving weak excuses. More than once, Wolff has said, "Oakland has too many other priorities" to take care of before solving the ballpark problem. Yet, when it comes to the severe economic problems of cities he’s trying to move to, such as Fremont a few years ago or now San Jose's nearly broke redevelopment agency, Wolff's attitude is the total opposite.

"There isn’t a redevelopment agency or city or federal or state government that isn't in some form of disarray at this point," Wolff told the Mercury News on Oct. 14 regarding San Jose’s economic woes.

In Oakland, Wolff's attitude is: "Sorry, you have too many other priorities."

In Fremont and San Jose it's: "Whatever the issues are, don’t worry we’ll solve them."

(By the way, I’m not knocking Fremont or San Jose at all. Those are fine cities in their own right. Baseball should be bringing this region together. Sadly, Wolff's stadium machinations instead have been dividing A's fans.)

There are other examples of Wolff's blatant Oakland double standard. He often said Oakland is "too built up," but in fact one study says Oakland has more than 1,200 vacant acres of land. Wolff also ruled out the Coliseum site because of some vague problem with the site’s “utilities.” Yet in his favored South Bay site, a large PG&E substation for some reason is considered no big deal. At the complicated East Oakland site Wolff proposed just a few months before moving on to Fremont, Wolff said that a newly constructed BART station was "a must" for the site to work. Yet, in Fremont and San Jose, Wolff has treated those sites' lack of a BART station as no big deal.

It's been 12 years since Wolff was first quoted as saying that he would move the A's to the South Bay. It's been seven years since he first joined the A's front office and started actively trying to move the A's out of town. After all those years of trying — and failing — Wolff has been ruining a once-great franchise and he’s been turning off thousands of loyal fans. In short, most of the problems the A's have are of Wolff's own doing.

Wolff often whines of being "held hostage" by territorial rights. As usual, Wolff has it backwards. A's fans are the ones who've been held hostage — by Wolff and his never-ending pipe dream of moving the team out of town. If the Mercury News Oct. 15 article proved anything, it's that all these years later, Wolff really isn't that much closer to making that fairy tale a reality. In the meantime, one of pro sports' greatest franchises — The Oakland Athletics — continues to wither in Wolff's hands.

Bike Oakland

Among the reasons I chose to live in this fine city are Oakland's growing urban core and the fact that it is becoming a hotbed of new transit-oriented development. We believe that keeping the A's here in Oakland, especially closer to the center of town and near transit options, would be a cornerstone for Oakland's ongoing urban renaissance. So, it should come as no surprise that Oakland has had an explosion of biking in the past year, with a reported 18 percent increase of bicycle use as a regular form of transit (myself included.) In fact, Oakland is even developing its own creative bicycle culture. Including organizations such as Oaklavia, the East Bay Bike Party, and Walk Oakland Bike Oakland's "Bike-in Movies," it is astonishing how much the bicycle is transforming Oakland.

Now, how does this relate to the A's? According to the 2010 Oakland Bikeways map image (click here for it), the Victory Court ballpark site is literally SURROUNDED by bike routes. As seen during Eat Real Festival, Art Murmur and even Art and Soul, Oaklanders are preferring to bike to large-scale events, as opposed to using the car. Victory Court is right smack in the center of these events, offering easy bicycle access to most points in Oakland. I currently live in North Oakland and ride my bike for the majority of my inter-Oakland travels. If the A's were to take a cue from the Giants and offer bike valet at the stadium (run by the SFBC), many people would take full advantage of this, offering a greater incentive to go to games and easing traffic by taking cars off the road. Imagine eating brunch at the beautiful Lake Merritt Hotel's Terrace Room and still being able to take in a 1 p.m. afternoon game. Or biking to Beer Revolution and then zipping down 3rd Street afterward for a night game. The bikeability of Oakland would make attending A's games much more fun for fans while allowing a greater opportunity for business growth in Oakland.

Mayoral Candidates on Oakland Sports

I wanted to take care of this blog yesterday, but my second team, the Phillies, had a rather busy day yesterday and I got caught up in the excitement. Now back to the subject at hand. Dave Newhouse profiled the Oakland mayoral race's front-runners, Don Perata, Rebecca Kaplan, Jean Quan and Joe Tuman, and their opinions on sports issues here in Oakland.

The first thing that was discussed was the possibility of renaming the "Golden State" Warriors the "Oakland" Warriors. Quote from the candidates:

Perata: "Unless they carry your name, their value is limited to the community. That franchise has been a wreck, but it's the 11th most profitable franchise in the NBA. This is a good market for them."

Tuman: "I go to their games, by the way. The impact of not calling the team 'Oakland' is to reinforce this negative image about the town, that there's something bad about branding with 'Oakland.' I would push for it, but I'm not going to pay for it."

Kaplan: "Oakland has a psychological problem, where we expect too little. I would absolutely push for (the 'Oakland' Warriors), but I wouldn't do just that. If you look at why Oakland doesn't make money off sports, it doesn't have the ancillary businesses on site -- no places to make money for the city."

Quan: "I would push for it. The Warriors are my favorite team -- I like fast action. But we need stronger ties between the team and the community."

All the candidates agree on this issue, although for different reasons. But BaseballOakland agrees that the time has come for the Warriors to adopt the name of the city in which they have been playing for more than 30 years.

The next question was about keeping the A's in Oakland.

Quan: "I think this (city) is the soul of Major League Baseball -- great diversity, ethnically and income-wise. I met Lew Wolff after I got elected. He didn't say 'girlie,' but almost. There's not a transit-rich (baseball) site that's more ready to go in the entire Bay Area than 'Victory Court' (in Jack London Square). We own most of it, and could develop it as an entertainment (center)."

Kaplan: "I love the A's. Lew Wolff felt (Mayor) Jerry Brown didn't care. The A's could succeed here very well. I believe we could have a football and baseball stadium on the Coliseum site. We own the land. San Jose is not a done deal. They have a local law that requires a ballot measure, and they did not put it on the November ballot. So there's a window of opportunity here."

Tuman: "I'll be blunt. In professional sports, it's 'show me the money.' ... I won't spend a dime of public money on keeping the Oakland Athletics here when I can't pay for police officers or keep the streets safe. I'm not saying it can't work, but let's be objective."

Perata: "I probably know a little more about this stuff than most people. I was part of two Raider deals that both failed. We got held up; we really did -- by both (the A's and Raiders). We got rid of the Coliseum board and then politicized it. ... In retrospect, it was a disaster. I don't think the A's are going to stay here. We can't play in this game, putting up the money. We haven't been smart with our franchises.

Quan has always supported Victory Court and the Oak-to-9th development. Rebecca Kaplan has made transit-oriented development a major part of her platform. She has long advocated for placing Oaklands' teams near transit and development opportunities so that Oakland can retain tax revenue from fans spending in neighborhoods around its sports facilities.

The one thing causing some confusion is Perata's pessimism. This could stem from the fact that Lew Wolff has refused to acknowledge Oakland's recent efforts. Getting some input from the A's will be a difficult task for any candidate because Wolff has nothing but tunnel-vision to points south. One thing to remember is that some of Perata's biggest supporters such as John Protopappas, Phil Tagami and Michael Ghielmetti have also been major players in keeping the A's in Oakland.

Timeline Reveals 15 Years of Schott & Wolff Mistreating Oakland

In 1995, about 10 years before Lew Wolff and John Fisher bought the A's, the team's new owners were Steve Schott and Ken Hoffman. Schott was a one-man wrecking crew; a PR nightmare on legs. In Schott's first interview as A's owner, all Schott did was rip Rickey Henderson, Mark McGwire, and Terry Steinbach. Nice first impression. Within days, he chased away manager Tony La Russa, beloved A's announcer Lon Simmons, Rickey Henderson and Dennis Eckersley. Pinching pennies and saving money were always behind Schott's moves, most of which made fans scratch their heads or want to pull their hair out.

From the moment he took over, Schott was obsessed with moving the A's to the South Bay, and almost immediately, he directed his right hand man at the time, Ed Alvarez, to look into moving the team out of Oakland. Within a couple of years, Alvarez and Schott had a falling out and Alvarez filed a wrongful lawsuit against Schott, which they eventually settled quietly out of court.

But don't take my word for it. You can read all about these and other parts of Schott’s malevolent reign as team owner in our ownership timeline, which has Web links to almost every item. In short, the timeline is a 15-year look at the A’s ownership and their relentless efforts to turn their backs on their loyal fans and the city of Oakland.

Pick a month out of any year from the timeline and you’ll see Schott — and later Wolff — putting his foot in his mouth, whining about money, or saying something crass or brazenly anti-Oakland — all things that turned off the average fan.

Seriously, pick any random month: How about July 1997? That time features a Chronicle article where the A’s traded Mark McGwire just two months after McGwire criticized Schott for publicly saying the A’s might move out of Oakland after the ’98 season.

How about March of 2001? That's when Schott attended a Santa Clara city council meeting to announce that he needed time to convince Commissioner Selig to allow him to move there.

Or how about March 1998? That’s another Chronicle article, this time with quotes from a "South Bay developer" named Lew Wolff who says in print: "If I was going to pursue a ballpark, I would certainly do it in San Jose … and I would work through the mayor and the Redevelopment Agency."

Yep, that's what Wolff was saying in 1998 — 12 years ago. More than a decade later, it's exactly what Wolff is trying to do now.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's a whole lot more in that timeline. Just click here for more.

My point is that, contrary to what the anti-Oakland crowd likes to say, the truth is that since 1995, time and again, the city of Oakland has reached out to A's owners. And for the past 15 years, time and again Schott and Wolff failed to reciprocate because they’ve been hell-bent on their quixotic quest to move the team south.

But don't take anybody at their word, even us. Verify all of this by going to the timeline and checking out Schott's and Wolff's whole sorry history.

Be warned, however. If you’re an A's fan, you might want to pour yourself a stiff drink first. Leave it to Rickey Henderson to best summarize the whole situation. In the same 1998 article that contains the above Wolff quote, Rickey all but shakes his head at how Schott was running the A's at the time. Rickey said: "Oakland can support a big-league team … The Haas family put more into the community. That's why they had the support of the community."

Market the A's Better, Part III

This is part three of our ongoing series: How to Market the A's Better to Oakland and the Bay Area. Part One can be found by clicking here.

Part Two can be found by clicking here.

We started this series because Lew Wolff and John Fisher do very little in marketing the A's to A's fans. So, to fill the gaping hole in the front office's marketing efforts, here are more ideas:

Celebrate the history of the A's more: It was nice to see Joe Rudi back at the Coliseum this year, but one 1970s Throwback Day per year doesn't cut it. The Oakland A's have one of the best team histories from which to draw, but in the past 15 years, the Giants have run circles around Steve Schott and now Lew Wolff, in terms of celebrating their team's amazing tradition. Baseball is all about nostalgia and tradition. So, it boggles the mind why the A's currently don’t make much use of their uniquely rich and colorful history.

Advertise in foreign languages: During the Moneyball years, the A's should have had Spanish-language billboards with Miguel Tejadas face in Oakland's largest Hispanic neighborhood, the Fruitvale District. Why can't the A's and Gio Gonzales do that now? They can do the same with Kurt Suzuki in Japantown in San Francisco, or in the Tri-City area (Fremont, Union City, Newark) where the Asian population is quite large. If those local markets have been previously unenthusiastic about A's baseball, maybe it's because no one has reached out to them.

College Nights: Hold a separate Stanford Night and UC Berkeley night and St. Mary's Night and Cal State East Bay Night, etc., at the Coliseum during different A's games. Also, we recommend setting up a ticket window at each of the campuses of the four-year universities where you can sell A's tickets for a student discount all season long. Also, hold A's events in the main student center one day per year at each of the campuses each March (a month before the season starts) to generate interest right when people are starting to think about baseball. If you make it affordable for these students to enjoy a game when they're broke and eating ramen three nights a week at age 20, they might reward that loyalty by buying A's tickets when they're older and have more disposable income after they join the work force. There's also a long-term strategy of gaining new fans from people that come from all around the country to attend local universities and whose loyalties are up for grabs when they move to a new area. These same students eventually settle down, of course. And if you win their fan loyalty then they'll raise their future kids to be A's fans once they've started a family and bought a house in the Bay Area. Promotions such as College Nights work for the short term and the long term for a MLB franchise’s health.

There are many, many more ideas for reaching out to fans and corporations to sell A's tickets. We'll share more of them next week. In the meantime, ask yourself: Why aren't Wolff and Fisher doing at least some of these ideas in order to sell tickets? Oakland isn't failing Wolff and Fisher, rather it's these owners who are failing Oakland.

Ratto: A's Owners' Strategy is the Problem

The A's just held Fan Appreciation Day, which is ironic, because no owners show less day-to-day appreciation for their fans than Lew Wolff and John Fisher.

Example: The A's keep few concession stands open at the Coliseum, which contributes to unnecessarily long lines. And if you sit in the bleachers, then you have to walk literally halfway across the stadium just to wait in one of those long lines to get something as basic as a hot dog. What if you're a senior citizen with creaky knees, or a single mom taking your rambunctious young kids to the ballpark? What should be fun is instead quickly made very inconvenient. That's not fan-friendly. It's called running things on the cheap and having little regard for your customers. And it's just one of many different examples of how Wolff and Fisher mismanage the A's and then scapegoat Oakland and loyal A's fans.

So, when Wolff's apologists say the A’s need a new stadium to solve their problems, they're putting the cart before the horse. Yes, we all want a new ballpark. But the A's need new owners first. Because this ownership group is deeply, deeply flawed and their problems will follow them wherever they try to take the team.

In a recent column, Ray Ratto called out Wolff and Fisher. Ratto essentially stated that the Oakland Coliseum isn't the problem. The A's owners and their weak marketing strategy are the problem. Here’s a Ratto excerpt:

In the meantime, the fan base is withering away because it is on to the other part of the problem – it knows when its emotional needs aren't being catered to, and though this team was better than any of the previous three, it still doesn't grip the fan's heart the way it should because the A's have become a way station. That won't change until the wait-for-the-ballpark philosophy is abandoned.

As the 43,000 fans on Let's Go Oakland's Facebook page partly proves, the vast majority of A's fans in the Bay Area want the team to stay in Oakland and build on its rich 43-year history with the city. After all, baseball is all about tradition and the A's winning tradition in Oakland is second only to some team called the New York Yankees. Wolff's apologists — they're dwindling, but there still are a few left — say that once Wolff gets a new ballpark, then all of the A's problems will be solved. They'll draw more fans and they'll win more games.

It's not that simple, of course. First of all, new ballparks aren’t some magic pill for attendance problems — just ask Washington, San Diego, and several other teams whose attendance plummeted after a very brief honeymoon. Plus, Wolff is on the record as saying that the team won't change its penny-pinching ways even after getting a new ballpark. If it's going to be "business as usual" after the A's get a new stadium — Wolff's words, not ours — then why does he need a new one?

In the meantime, A's fans all over the Bay Area are staying away from the Coliseum because Wolff and Fisher have turned off fans through their constant bashing of Oakland, through bad anti-fan-friendly ideas like tarping the third deck, and by making not so subtle threats to move the A's "out of California," even though there's really nowhere for them to go. But Ratto puts it best:

A's fans in Oakland keep waiting for the San Jose shoe to drop, having been told repeatedly that they, through their current location, stand in the way of progress. That's another excellent way to be convinced to love the team at a safe distance.

For the past five years, Wolff and Fisher have never really tried to sell tickets, nor have they consistently tried to put a winner on the field. If they do, then fans will come like they did earlier in the decade — when they averaged 27,000 fans per game at the same maligned Coliseum. But then Wolff won't have a rationale for moving. See, just like an unproven player who keeps disappointing when given a chance, Wolff and Fisher remain unproven as owners. They’ve never proved that they will work hard to draw fans and corporations, so why do we trust they will work hard — or even know how — to sell tickets and suites with a new stadium in the future? Truth is, we don’t.

Or, as Ratto wrote:

The A's current model isn't working for anyone, and that's the truth. They may be harder to hit, but at this pace, they're going to become harder to love.

KTRB for Sale

The A's radio flagship station situation was thrown into chaos yet again when KTRB-860 announced two weeks ago that it was laying off staff. Rumors flew that the station would stop broadcasting altogether. Those rumors proved to be untrue. What was true was that the station's cash-flow problems have been brewing for a while. According to Susan Slusser, A's fans were getting spotty reception at times this summer because the station wasn't even paying its diesel fuel bills.

So now that the dust has settled after a few weeks, here's what we know: No more polarizing political pundits on the "all-sports" station. A's games will continue to be broadcast through what's left of the regular season. Same with Chris Townsend's pregame and postgame shows.

More importantly, the station's owners, Jim and Harry Pappas, have turned the station over to Comerica Bank. The station is for sale again, and probably for a very good price.

Will Lew Wolff and John Fisher buy it and make it their very own KNBR?

That would be the smart play, and the best marketing decision they’ve made in years. So you have every reason to be skeptical that they'll actually do it.

How this affects A's broadcasts in 2011 or if they'll switch to yet another station, remains to be seen. Like a lot of parts about the A’s media strategy, there is more uncertainty and confusion at work than a coherent plan.

Just like with Wolff's circuitous, seven-year stadium search, we'll have to continue to wait and see.

Film Fest Caps Month of Oakland Festivals

The Oakland Underground Film Festival begins tonight, screening independent films all weekend at Linden Street Brewery near Jack London Square, and at Grand Lake Theater near Lake Merritt.

The Wall Street Journal last week did a roundup of Oakland hot spots, yet another national nod to Oakland's red hot entertainment scene. The four-day film festival will only add to that surging prestige. The entire film fest schedule can be viewed by clicking here.

This Sunday, Oakland's Rockridge district is hosting its Out & About Festival from 12 to 6 p.m. These are hardly the only festivals in Oakland — in fact, the past month has felt like a nonstop street party.

About 10 days ago, the 2nd annual Taste of Temescal festival featured nearly 25 restaurants and it sold out ahead of time, yet another sign that the North Oakland neighborhood is completely revitalized.

In mid-September, the Oakland Museum of California hosted the O Zone party, which drew thousands of people to recently renovated museum. Just a week before that, the first annual Oakland Pride Day was held Sept. 5 in downtown Oakland. It was the first LGBT Pride festival held in Oaktown since 2004. Organizers say they want to make it an annual thing.

On the last weekend of August, the annual Eat Real Festival garnered huge crowds at Jack London Square, just a hooked golf shot away from Oakland's proposed Jack London ballpark sites that would house a new A's ballpark. The same weekend, the 23rd annual Oakland Chinatown StreetFest was held in downtown Oakland streets.

Finally, the Art & Soul Festival last month brought tens of thousands to downtown on a sunny late August weekend, spotlighting classic Oakland musical talent like En Vogue and (old A's front office employee) MC Hammer.

A waterfront Oakland ballpark will perfectly fuse the city’s rich sports history with its hot 21st-century entertainment scene. We can't wait.

Killion on Wolff & MLB $$ Leaks

In the time since Ann Killion left The San Jose Mercury News for CSN Bay Area and Sports Illustrated, she has written some very critical columns about Lew Wolff and John Fisher.

Last week the South Bay columnist wrote another one about Wolff, this time featuring the headline: "A's could contend, but owners would rather move to San Jose."

Killion referred to the recent leak about the finances of several MLB teams. Those leaks were especially embarrassing for the Pirates and the Marlins – two franchises who had cried poor to get publicly financed stadiums built for them. But the leaks showed that the Pirates and Marlins, and their owners, have been dishonest about their finances.

Killion noted that Fisher and Wolff caught a break when the leaks did not include the Athletics' real financial figures. Killion wrote:

It would be a bit distasteful to have the details of their role as a baseball welfare recipient exposed, especially while Fisher's family has a fine art collection being shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art ("Calder to Warhol," running through Sept. 19).

Why would it be distasteful for Wolff and Fisher? Killion explains:

Wolff and Fisher -- who have been eyeing San Jose since they bought the team in 2005 -- would like you to believe that they've done all they can to make it work in Oakland, though boosting their team's payroll and adding pieces that could help fuel a serious playoff run hasn't been among their strategies.

Killion's column echoes similar ones penned recently by longtime sportswriters Ray Ratto, Monte Poole, and Lowell Cohn. And Killion even took a shot at Billy Beane, who usually avoids the barbs of most sportswriters. Here's Killion's take:

The A's were in virtually the same position at the July trade deadline and clearly in need of some offensive help, yet ... General manager Billy Beane was happy to uncharacteristically sit on the sidelines and do nothing.

So, according to Killion, the A's owners are not willing to spend any money or time to improve some of the franchise's problems. As we've seen in other cities, new ballparks are no panaceas for revenue problems. Just as many new ballparks fail to solve a team's competition problems and money woes as there are successful ones. It all comes down to ownership. So, until Wolff and Fisher either change course and work hard and show fans that they care, or until they sell the team to an owner who will do those things, then A’s fans will continue to be stuck in limbo.