As MLB’s owners meetings get underway this weekend, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred’s annual press conference was largely dominated by questions about the Oakland A’s proposed relocation to Las Vegas — and if fans were looking for even a baseline level of sympathy, they quickly discovered they had another thing coming. Manfred appeared unmoved by efforts to convince John Fisher to keep the team in Oakland, arguing that the city “made no offer” that would’ve made staying in the Bay Area a viable option.
Rob Manfred on the A’s relocation:
‘The real question is, what is it Oakland was prepared to do? There is no Oakland offer. OK? They never got to a point where they had a plan to build a stadium at any site. And it’s not just John Fisher. The community has to provide support.”— Joon Lee (@joonlee) June 15, 2023
To be clear, Manfred’s spin on things is at best a pretty loose interpretation of the facts. The city of Oakland did in fact engage Fisher on building a new stadium, focusing particularly on the Howard Terminal site; the sides just couldn’t come to an agreement on how big that project should be, and who exactly should pay for it. In fact, Oakland mayor Sheng Thao and an army of lawyers were set to continue negotiating with ownership as recently as this past April, only for Fisher to leak to the media that the team was moving ahead on a land purchase in Las Vegas.
I reached out to the Oakland Mayor’s office for a response to the Commissioner’s Comment. https://t.co/JHjSu3QbFk pic.twitter.com/45YzJiylf1
— Casey Pratt (@CaseyPrattABC7) June 15, 2023
Manfred also didn’t have too much affection for the “reverse boycott” held by A’s fans during Tuesday night’s home game against the Tampa Bay Rays.
Manfred on the reverse boycott by fans of the Oakland Athletics
— Joon Lee (@joonlee) June 15, 2023
“I mean, it was great. It is great to see what is this year almost an average Major League Baseball crowd in the facility for one night. That’s a great thing.”
(Again, for the record, the nearly 28,000 fans who packed the Oakland Coliseum represented an attendance figure well above league average for a Tuesday.)
Manfred’s comments all but confirmed what we already knew: The team’s move to Las Vegas is looking more and more like a done deal. On Wednesday, the Nevada legislature granted final approval to a bill that would allocate some $380 million in public funding toward a proposed $1.5 billion new baseball stadium on the south end of the Strip. It still needs to be signed into law by governor Joe Lombardo, and MLB’s owners still need to vote to approve the team’s relocation, but both of those are expected to happen at some point over the next two to three weeks.