Wednesday, February 7, 2024

One petard, hoisted

 You gotta love it when a guy who has it coming gets it in spades. It's a reminder that sometimes there is justice in the world, even if its won-loss ain't nothin' to write home about these days.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, may we re-introduce you to Oakland A's owner John Fisher, currently being hoist by his own petard because he'd like to move his team but can't because of his own greed. 

He's let their current venue, the Oakland Coliseum, fall apart because he refused to make even rudimentary improvements to it. And he's cheapo-ed the ballclub, too, to the point where it's become the laughingstock of baseball. 

Or maybe there's another word to describe a team that went 50-112 last year and was the worst team in the majors by six games.

How does anyone with an ounce of business sense think this is the way you pitch a product to a new market? Especially when that market is Las Vegas?

It's as if Gordon Gekko started to tell those investors "Greed is good" and then was strangled mid-sentence by his own Windsor knot. Greed is - GAACK!

Anyway, no surprise there's virtually zero enthusiasm for the A's in Vegas, which has indicated in every possible way it has very little interest in Fisher's gas-station sushi of a ballclub. Part of this is because, yes, the product stinks; part of it is because Fisher's trying to swing a deal for a ballpark on a plot of land right off the Strip, a location absolutely no one thinks is feasible.

Not only that, but Fisher hasn't helped matters by refusing to share the artist's renderings of said ballpark with city officials. Soaking the taxpayers for $380 million of the proposed cost isn't going over very well either. 

Little wonder, then, that this happened yesterday: The mayor of Las Vegas -- the mayor -- came out and basically told the A's, "Yeah, no, we're good. Try to work something out with Oakland."

"I just think there's an appetite (in Oakland)," Carolyn Goodman said on the Front Office Sports Today podcast. "I run into people from Oakland all the time. They want to keep the team ... I love the people from Oakland. I think they deserve to have their team."

Hell of a Bat Signal there, by golly. When even the mayor of the city to which you want to relocate is advocating for the city you're trying to leave, how much clearer can it be that THEY DON'T WANT YOU?

Yessiree. Greed is-GAAACK, right, John Fisher?

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