https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/giants/article/a-s-leave-las-vegas-giants-deserve-blame-17916455.php

John Shea
April 26, 2023
Updated: April 26, 2023 7:23 p.m.

Two days after the Oakland Athletics announced their plan to purchase property off the Las Vegas Strip to build a ballpark, a major step toward their relocation, the San Francisco Giants issued a statement: “The A’s are such a big part of Bay Area baseball history, the East Bay and the greater community. If this comes to be, it will be a loss not only for A’s fans but for all baseball fans.”

That didn’t sit well with former A’s co-owner Lew Wolff, who worked for a decade with two ownership groups as the team’s point man on ballpark pursuits in both the East and South Bay.

“The Giants’ statement expressing sadness that the A’s may be leaving California is beyond disingenuous,” Wolff said.

Wolff and several local officials who tried to find the A’s a new Bay Area home say that if the A’s do move, the Giants will have played a significant role in driving the green and gold out of town.

Wolff’s efforts to put the A’s in San Jose were blocked because of MLB’s claim that territorial rights there belonged to the Giants — who wouldn’t relinquish them to accommodate the A’s, having received them from MLB with the blessing of their East Bay neighbor.

“If it were not for the Giants’ vehement and combative opposition a decade ago,” former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said, “I have zero doubt — and I share this view with many people most deeply engaged in bringing an MLB team to San Jose — that the A’s would be playing in downtown San Jose today in a stadium built at no taxpayer expense.

“The Giants hired and paid attorneys to sue the city, they organized an opposition group, and most importantly, they pressured the commissioner to keep San Jose a minor-league baseball city.”

After failed attempts to initially build at the Coliseum site, then another site adjacent to the Coliseum and in Fremont, the A’s were closing in on finalizing a ballpark deal in San Jose in 2011 but hit a roadblock when a lawsuit was filed against the city of San Jose by “Stand For San Jose” — initially described as a concerned citizens group.

But “Stand For San Jose” was supported by the Giants (according to reports at the time), who opposed the A’s moving to the South Bay, suggesting it was home to a good portion of their fans and would violate their territorial rights.

A court ultimately ruled in 2013 that San Jose should have sought voter approval to determine the potential ballpark site, and the sale of the land to the A’s was blocked, a victory for the Giants. San Jose then sued MLB, challenging its exemption to federal antitrust law, a suit that was rejected in 2015 by the Supreme Court.

“They used any measure, direct and hidden, to harm our activities to try to develop a new venue over 50 miles away from their ballpark after we could not get traction in Oakland,” Wolff said.

The attorney representing “Stand For San Jose” was Ron Van Buskirk, who more recently reappeared representing the “East Oakland Stadium Alliance,” a coalition that pushed for the A’s to redevelop at the Coliseum site so they wouldn’t build at Howard Terminal.

Reached for this story, Van Buskirk and Mike Jacob, vice president and general counsel for the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, said the Giants have not been involved in the “East Oakland Stadium Alliance” (as they were with “Stand For San Jose”).

Van Buskirk’s law firm is high-powered San Francisco-based Pillsbury, and also represents Schnitzer Steel, the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, the California Trucking Association, the Harbor Trucking Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union, all of which opposed the A’s constructing a ballpark at the waterfront.

Pillsbury has had a long-standing connection with the Giants as outside counsel. According to its website, the firm handled the team’s legal issues in the 1990s relating to construction of the Giants’ ballpark, which opened in 2000.

In 2008, the Giants promoted Bill Neukom, one of the nation’s most influential lawyers, to their managing general partner during the peak of the A’s efforts in the South Bay. Neukom had been lead lawyer at Microsoft and president of the American Bar Association, and replaced Peter Magowan for three years before giving way to Larry Baer.

Fearing litigation, then-Commissioner Bud Selig did very little to help the A’s beyond appointing a committee in March 2009 to analyze the team’s ballpark situation in the Bay Area.

“Bud didn’t want to be associated with a team leaving,” Wolff said. “I tried to argue that the move to San Jose wasn’t a move out of the area. But the Giants and Larry did a great job always talking about their territory. I think the real hook is, if the A’s have to move out of the state, the Giants are part of the blame.”

For those unsuccessful in bids to move the A’s to the South Bay, the territorial rights were unsettling because of how they were obtained — former A’s owner Walter Haas agreed to allow former Giants owner Bob Lurie to include Santa Clara in the Giants’ territory when Lurie sought a ballpark in the South Bay.

“On one hand, you had Walter Haas essentially saving the Giants for the Bay Area by allowing San Jose and Santa Clara County to be signed over to the Giants, which he thought was the right thing to do,” said Tom McEnery, who served as San Jose mayor when Haas agreed to the arrangement. “On the other hand, you had Larry Baer given a chance to essentially save the A’s and allowing them a chance to play in a great area, which would have made for two successful teams in the Bay Area, but he looked for the last dollar and rejected it, which was terribly one-sided and incredibly selfish and incredibly bad for the sport of baseball. It was and is a sad story.”

Rob Manfred replaced Selig in 2014 and inherited the A’s stadium quandary. Two years later, Wolff left the A’s. Dave Kaval became team president, and owner John Fisher’s focus eventually turned to Howard Terminal after the Laney College failure.

Beyond the territorial-rights issue is revenue sharing, another sore point for the A’s, who have believed high-revenue teams — including the Giants — tried to cut them off. The A’s began getting phased out of receiving revenue sharing in 2017. Because of the low revenues they generate at the Coliseum, they are now getting phased back in as part of the collective bargaining agreement — pending their getting a stadium deal by January.

By not receiving full revenue sharing, the A’s lost approximately $175 million from 2017 through 2024 (there was none in 2020), according to an industry source familiar with MLB’s revenue-sharing program. It’s a reason the A’s have cited for their low payrolls and decisions against keeping core players.

Now the A’s seem headed to Las Vegas, leaving Northern California a one-team market.

“The Giants got their way with Major League Baseball,” Liccardo said, “and the entire Bay Area will lose a team as a result.”

Contacted for this story, the Giants chose not to comment.

Why do the Giants have to help the A's?

They're competing for some of the same fans.

They were here first. Why should they give up some of their territory
or market?