Oakland Athletics' Matt Chapman, left, celebrates with Matt Olson after the Athletics defeated the Seattle Mariners in a baseball game in Oakland, Calif., Wednesday, May 26, 2021. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Oakland Athletics representatives are in Las Vegas this week and are supposedly serious about the possibility of moving the franchise to Southern Nevada.
Don’t bet on it.
Don’t get me wrong. The A’s in Las Vegas would be tremendous for the state, for the A’s, for Las Vegas, for Major League players and for Major League Baseball. Oakland vs. Las Vegas? Come on. Nobody even wants to drive through Oakland, let alone live there.
But the A’s will likely never move to Las Vegas. First of all there is the cost. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported this week that the A’s told them a new stadium would cost about $1 billion and the A’s, who can barely afford the toll to cross the Bay Bridge, will not pay for all of it. Can Clark County convince its voters to fund another billion-dollar stadium, so soon after it somehow got the $2 billion Allegiant Stadium built for the NFL’s Las Vegas Raiders? Come on.
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The A’s likely do not want to leave Oakland. The city now, after all, is theirs for the taking. No more Golden State Warriors to compete with for the professional sports dollar. No more Oakland Raiders. The A’s now could own Oakland, such that it is.
And, make no mistake, Oakland needs the A’s. Other than the A’s, about all Oakland has left is a good view of San Francisco. Oakland has already lost the NBA, NFL and NHL (the California Golden Seals in the mid-1970s). It can’t afford to lose Major League Baseball, too. The A’s leave town and Oakland suddenly becomes Wichita, though with better views (depending on which direction you look).
The A’s, which will also reportedly visit Portland and possibly Nashville, Montreal, Charlotte, Vancouver and any other city looking for cheap publicity in the coming weeks, are likely just trying to call Oakland’s bluff. There will be an Oakland City Council vote on a proposed $12 billion complex that includes a baseball stadium on July 20. That’s when things will really get serious.
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Las Vegas has played host to numerous Major League Baseball games in the past. Most of them, of course, were spring training games.
But the Oakland A’s actually started their 1996 regular season at Las Vegas’ Cashman Field with two games against the Toronto Blue Jays and four against the Detroit Tigers (the A’s went 2-4). The 9,334-seat Cashman Field, now primarily used for soccer, was filled for the six big league games as Southern Nevada proudly showed its enthusiasm for big league baseball.
The Las Vegas of 1996 doesn’t compare to the Las Vegas of 2021. The city and the area has matured and grown up. Southern Nevada, now that it has the NFL and NHL, is a legitimate major league city now. The UNLV Rebels are nothing more than a big high school now to Las Vegas. Southern Nevada is truly ready for Major League Baseball.
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If the A’s do move to Las Vegas, that would likely mean the end of the Las Vegas Aviators of the former Pacific Coast League (now called Triple-A West). The Aviators, which play in Summerlin at the 2-year-old $150 million Las Vegas Ballpark, just so happen to be the Triple-A affiliate of the Oakland A’s. How convenient.
So getting the Aviators out of town won’t be a problem. No Triple-A franchise, after all, wants to be located in the same city as a Major League franchise (just like no Mountain West football school wants to compete with the NFL).
The A’s lease at the Oakland Coliseum runs out after 2024 so none of this is happening tomorrow. Don’t feel sorry for the Aviators, who would have plenty of time to find a new home.
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All the Aviators would have to do is look to the north. Reno would be the perfect new home of the Aviators. There are plenty of A’s fans in Northern Nevada. A’s fans from Oakland (and the Sacramento area) would come to Reno to watch games. It is a short flight from Reno to Las Vegas, in case the A’s would need a player in a hurry. The Aviators (they’d have to come up with a new name) would be a natural fit in Northern Nevada.
Northern Nevada will always be grateful to the Arizona Diamondbacks for putting a Triple-A franchise in town. But, let’s face it, Northern Nevada does not exactly have a huge Diamondbacks fan base, even though the team’s Triple-A team has been here since 2009. The A’s Triple-A team would be a huge hit in Reno, especially if they are Nevada’s team.
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When the San Francisco Giants needed a new stadium in the late 1990s they barely had to ask. The same was true for the San Francisco 49ers about 10 years ago.
The A’s have been fighting with Oakland for decades. The Raiders battled with the city of Oakland ever since they moved back to the area in 1995. The Golden State Warriors didn’t battle Oakland because, well, they didn’t even try to stay in Oakland.
There is no question which city (San Francisco or Oakland) in the Bay Area loves its professional sports franchises the most and treats them the best. Oakland is just not a big league town and has always gotten what it deserved. They need to save the A’s for the area before it is too late.
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Does anybody actually believe the Los Angeles Lakers will be eliminated by the Phoenix Suns? Yes, anything can happen. Every now and then LeBron James does simply get bored. But this is not one of those times.
The NBA playoffs without the Lakers and LeBron would be a disaster for the league. The NBA is simply not ready for a LeBron-less Finals. He’s been in nine of the last 10. When LeBron was not in the Finals over those 10 years a team from Canada, for goodness sake, won the title. That does nobody any good.
The NBA championship trophy should feature LeBron’s likeness. The Larry O’Brien trophy? Please. Nobody knows who Larry O’Brien is anymore. Never did, actually. It’s the LeBron Trophy.
The league, everyone knows, is desperately craving a Lakers-Brooklyn Nets Finals. LeBron and Anthony Davis against Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving. Los Angeles against New York.
It would likely be one of the most-watched Finals in history, you know, if people actually still watched TV. It would be the first NBA Finals where everyone outside of L.A. and New York hoped both teams lost.
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We don’t want to jinx it but there is a good chance something special will take place at Peccole Park this weekend.
The Nevada Wolf Pack baseball team is hosting the San Jose State Spartans for four games starting Friday at 5 p.m. with a Mountain West title and a NCAA Regional berth on the line. The Pack, at most, only needs to split the four-game series to win the conference crown. They might have to win just one game and maybe not even that, depending on what San Diego State does in three games against New Mexico.
Winning the Mountain West is always significant (just ask the football team) but the Pack baseball team has done that before (2015, 2018).
This weekend could be historic because the Mountain West regular season champion this year gets the conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA Regionals. The Pack hasn’t been to the Regionals since 2000. Twitter and Facebook weren’t even invented yet.
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