The Giants and Athletics disagree about the rights to San Jose. The A’s note the Giants have those rights because Oakland was trying to keep the Giants in San Francisco:
Late Oakland owner Walter Haas gave the Giants the OK to assume rights to San Jose in a favor of sorts to former San Francisco owner Bob Lurie when his team was considering moving to Florida. The deal basically happened with a handshake – and “without compensation,” the A’s wrote – and then was approved by baseball’s owners.
The A’s said that “MLB-recorded minutes clearly indicate that the Giants were granted Santa Clara, subject to relocating to the city of Santa Clara.”
The Giants are not buying it:
Said the Giants: “The Giants’ territorial rights were not granted ‘subject to’ moving to Santa Clara County.”
The territorial rights have been “explicitly reaffirmed by Major League Baseball on four separate occasions,” according to the Giants, beginning when former Giants managing partner Peter Magowan bought the team before the 1993 season.
“Upon purchasing the team 20 years ago, our plan to revive the franchise relied heavily on targeting and solidifying our fan base in the largest and fastest growing county within our territory,” the Giants said. “Based on these Constitutionally-recognized territorial rights, the Giants invested hundreds of millions of dollars to save and stabilize the team for the Bay Area, built AT&T Park privately and has operated the franchise so that it can compete at the highest levels.”
San Jose is becoming the Alsace-Lorraine of Major League Baseball. So I suggest settling this the old fashioned way: Conduct a land war!
I propose a nine-game, winner takes San Jose series between the Giants and Athletics. As the Giants hold the rights currently, they receive home field advantage. The first two games take place in San Francisco, the next two in Oakland, and back and forth like that, no days off, with the nine and final game in SF if needed. First team to five wins owns San Jose. This would be a lot more fun than Bud Selig sitting in an office twisting arms.
“San Jose is becoming the Alsace-Lorraine of Major League Baseball.”
Love the reference.
They are in the same market and in different leagues. Stupid argument. It’s basically like the Yankees trying to block the Mets from moving to Newark.
As a resident of the county in question, I must say that the Giants are perceived here as unbelievably selfish, petulant and short-sighted. They don’t seem to want to acknowledge that they stand to gain a huge swath of A’s fans from wealthy Contra Costa and northern Alameda counties (to say nothing of Sacramento) should the A’s move to San Jose, while still retaining the loyalty of a very large chunk of Santa Clara denizens attracted to SF’s superior venue, team and rivalries.
The only conclusion we can draw is that the Giants wish for the A’s to move away from the Bay Area or be contracted: in short, to go away. This strikes us as cynical, predatory, monopolistic, and generally an affront to our liberal, Californian values.
On the other hand, we are aware of the train wreck that the A’s have become. It is very difficult to root for a team that consistently trades away its most attractive players. Yes, we know a new stadium would allow the A’s to increase their payroll; we see what’s going on in Miami. But it’s still hard to long for the A’s when you compare their revolving door of no-names with Panda, Freak, Beard and the other lovable Giants who captured our hearts just 16 months ago.
Pete Stahl
Pete » Thanks, Peter! Are you excited about Harvard in the NCAA tournament?
It’s nice to see the Crimson do well in any sport, of course, but it’s weird to think of Harvard as a men’s basketball power. Remind me to tell you about a conversation I had with Derek Bok about it years ago as he sat next to the Band at a hopeless basketball game high atop the Indoor Athletic Building.