Something stinks in Oakland.
And it’s not just the lingering stench of raw sewage in the clubhouse from a few years ago or what that possum keeps leaving all over the visitors broadcast booth at Oakland Coliseum.
It’s coming from Oakland Athletics owner John Fisher and the reeking piles he has heaped on the city’s avid sports fans who, after years of tolerating revolving-door rosters within efforts to win, got stuck this year with what might literally be the worst team in MLB history — the year after steep ticket-price increases that coincided with the team’s lowest attendance since the 1970s.
And then came last week’s double-finger salute to the entire East Bay when Fisher entered into a binding agreement to purchase 49 acres near the Las Vegas Strip, where he plans to move the team once a new stadium is built.
Talk about craps.
Certainly the smell of it.
Debate all you want about how much of the A’s likely move is the fault of skeptical or frugal local politicians, the greedy owner or lack of good-faith negotiations — not to mention the seemingly giddy approval of baseball’s corporate lawyer-in-chief, commissioner Rob Manfred.
But if history tells us anything, it’s always been a sucker bet to be an A’s fan.
Even during the glory years of Reggie Jackson, Joe Rudi and three straight World Series championships in the 1970s, cheap, eccentric owner Charles O. Finley tried to sell all his best players to other teams with free agency upon the league — until then-MLB commissioner Bowie Kuhn nixed the sales.
The great Jose Canseco juiced teams of the late-1980s looked like juggernauts until face-planting in two of the three World Series they reached, against the 1988 Los Angeles Dodgers and Lou Piniella’s 1990 Cincinnati Reds.
But even before Finley’s Oakland teams, fans’ loyalty was misspent on his — and previous owners’ — A’s teams.
It was Finley who snatched the franchise from fans in Kansas City who spent 13 years building their baseball relationships with the team, moving the A’s to Oakland for the 1968 season. And that wasn’t the worst betrayal of fans for the franchise. The Philadelphia A’s fielded some of the city’s greatest big-league teams — during a time when the Phillies often were a laughingstock.
A founding American League franchise, the A’s uprooted after 54 years in Philadelphia that included seven pennants and five World Series titles (albeit, all in the first 31 years).
A move to Las Vegas would make the A’s the only MLB franchise to move three times.
Since 1900 nine MLB franchises have relocated. Only one other has moved more than once — the Braves going from Boston to Milwaukee to Atlanta.
The lame-duck Montreal Expos moved in 2005 to become the Washington Nationals. You have to go back 35 years before that to find the second most-recent MLB move (when the 1969 Seattle Pilots became the 1970 Milwaukee Brewers).
It’s not a legacy worth celebrating — and especially if it’s extended to include the move to Vegas.
That would be a move more worthy relegation, like they do in the Premier League (you know: like in Ted Lasso), if integrity mattered in a league that has the power to block the move thanks to its unjust antitrust exemption.
Instead, the team has the blessing to move to the gambling capital of world from the league that once banned icons Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle from the sport because they took post-playing-career jobs as greeters/ambassadors for casinos in Atlantic City, N.J. (They were reinstated a few years later by the next commissioner).
The Chicago Cubs expect later this year to open their new year-round sports book, a more than 2,000-square-foot facility built into the Addison and Sheffield corner of Wrigley Field, a few miles from where the famed Black Sox scandal in 1919 led to the installation of a baseball commissioner, to gambling becoming baseball’s greatest sin and to Shoeless Joe Jackson and seven Chicago White Sox teammates being banned for life for taking payoffs from gamblers to throw the ’19 World Series.
And Pete Rose, MLB’s hit king, remains on the permanently banned list for gambling on baseball a few decades later, with Manfred recently saying he has no intention of lifting Rose’s ban.
It’s all connected in an ugly, greedy, malodorous hypocrisy that serves mainly to remind us that the house always wins — whether that house is a casino or your smiling, local baseball owner.
MLB Short Hops
Friendlier Confines: If Hall of Fame-bound Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw, 35, never pitches at Wrigley Field again, he can walk away from Sunday’s final start of the season there better for the experience. With his six-inning victory for the Dodgers over the Cubs, Kershaw’s 201st career victory also was his third at Wrigley Field, evening his career mark there to 3-3 (3.09 ERA) in six starts (not counting 2-1, 2.50 in the playoffs). It was one of only two places on earth he had a losing record. The other: “Arizona,” he said. Yes, he’s aware of that 8-11 career mark on the road against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
WayTooEarly NL Manager of the Year watch: The Pittsburgh Pirates entered the week with the best record in the National League — second in the majors. That’s not a typo. It’s also not yet May, so there’s that. But nobody saw even this much coming, not after back-to-back 100-loss seasons with little offseason movement beyond bringing back former Pirates MVP Andrew McCutchen. Whatever strings manager Derek Shelton’s pulling in his third full season, they’re the right ones so far. Enough that the team gave him a contract extension over the weekend. His greatest competition might come from division-rival Craig Counsell of the Milwaukee Brewers, who’s probably the best manager in the game who inexplicably has never won a manager of the year award.
Right down Broadway: Baseball history’s full of Hamiltons, from Billy to Josh to Eppie — 20 in all. But far more rare is the baseball Miranda, especially when he’s from a family like Minnesota Twins infielder José. The second-year big-leaguer, who hit .268 with 15 home runs in 125 games as a rookie last year, is the cousin of Tony Award-winning playwright, songwriter and performer Lin-Manuel Miranda of “Hamilton” fame. The player’s cousin was the biggest star at the ballpark one day last week, though you wouldn’t have known it to hear him talk about the younger Miranda:
Trop the Hammer: The Rays (18-3) continued their best-in-baseball start through the weekend with another series sweep, this one over the Chicago White Sox, thanks in part to a pair of walk-off wins. It left them with three home games on the April schedule to win — against the Houston Astros, starting Monday — to preserve an unblemished home record for the opening month (13-0, including one game in March. Perhaps related, the Astros are the third team the Rays have played this year that currently is within five games of .500. They previously swept the Boston Red Sox (12-11 through Sunday) and suffered their first two losses of the season against the Toronto Blue Jays (13-9).
Guy can do everything: Superstar Mookie Betts, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Gold Glove right fielder, loves playing the infield and — given the Dodgers’ critical lack of middle infield depth — got a first career start at shortstop Sunday, an event he called a “dream come true.” He not only handled the position like a veteran there but delivered a two-run homer and two-run double in the 7-3 win. Betts, who was a shortstop when drafted out of high school by the Red Sox, made his big-league debut at short three nights earlier, late in the game. And with Gavin Lux (knee) out for the year, Miguel Rojas (hamstring) out for the next few weeks, and Chris Taylor dealing with a day-to-day oblique injury, Betts could see more time at short, maybe regularly for a while — “There’s runway there,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
Spirit of Wrigley: The Cubs’ neighborhood lost a beloved Wrigleyville icon Monday when Beth Murphy — owner of the popular Murphy’s Bleachers bar at the corner of Waveland and Sheffield, across the street from the ballpark — passed after a long illness. Her presence was a spirited fixture that reflected much of the character of the neighborhood for decades, at least until current team ownership began buying up much of the surrounding real estate and replacing some of the old standbys with hulking steel-and-glass revenue producers for the team.
Gordon Wittenmyer covers Major League Baseball for Sportsnaut. You can follow him on Twitter at @GDubCub.