Hoo boy, fuck this guy. Some highlights:
What was your impression of [the reverse boycot]?
Manfred: It was great. It’s 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.
Also:
What kind of sense have you gotten from the owners in your kind of informal conversations this week about how they feel about a potential move? It’s not really sneaking up on anyone.
Manfred: It has always been baseball’s policy and preference to stay put. I think that always colors any conversation about relocation. Having said that, I think the owners as a whole understand that there has been a multi-year, pushing-a-decade effort where for the vast majority of the time, the sole focus was Oakland. Look, believe me, and I hear from ‘em, I feel sorry for the fans in Oakland. I do not like this outcome, I understand why they feel the way they do. I think that the real question is, what is it that 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. You don’t build a stadium based on the club activity alone. The community has to provide support and you know, at some point, you come to the realization, it’s just not going to happen.
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I hate to this this, all of the conversation in th media is just soundbite snipes, but everyone is just sort of resigned to the fact that A’s fans are going to be disappointed no matter how it shakes out.
LV is gonna get sadled with a stadium deal that will end up being a bad deal for tax payers, Oakland will have a monument to failure in the decaying Coliseum, Fisher will get rich(er) when he sells the team.
Owning a team is a good deal if you have the capital. I’m sure someone would be able to come to the table with the city of Oakland, field a competitive team, and pay Fisher enough money that he’s in the green. The only thing that prevents that from happening is that it’s not enough money for Fisher. This is the fruition of a long plan to maximize profits on behalf of Fisher at almost everyone else’s expense.
The league and Manfried could make him sell. They could threaten to revoke their ability to play other teams if they had the courage, or block the move and restrict revenue sharing and strangle Fisher to sell. But Rob is too scared to cross that line because he’s serving at the pleasure of 30 owners, all of whom might speak publicly about supporting Oakland but would be very very nervous about Rob or the MLB taking any anti ownership stance.
It’s just all a huge bummer, sorry A’s.