Oakland A's owner Lew Wolff had an informal on-stage conversation at the Rotary Club of San Jose on Wednesday. He answered questions from Santa Clara County assessor Larry Stone, who's been active in the effort to get the A's to move from Oakland to San Jose; and later from the audience. A's ownership has been waiting for the last three years for Major League Baseball to give them permission to relocate the team. There's been a flurry of speculation in the last few months that permission will come before Opening Day 2012. Although Wolff said he is optimistic, he was quick to diminish any hope of news his audience might have.
Thank you all for coming. I see a lot of press here. And I really wish I was here with a fantastic announcement for you. I commend you to the parable of the tortoise and the tortoise.
The tortoise Wolff is waiting on is MLB Commissioner Bud Selig. The A's can't move outside their territory of Alameda and Contra Costa counties without the permission of Major League Baseball. Selig appointed a committee to examine the possible Bay Area locations for the A's -- as of today, they've been at it for 1,061 days. And Wolff sounded slightly testy about the so-called "blue-ribbon" group's pace.
If one more person calls it a blue-ribbon committee, I'm gonna throw up. It's a committee. It's not a blue-ribbon committee. The gentlemen on the committee are good guys but they are doing the bidding of the commissioner. Baseball's gone from a $1 or $2 billion industry under Bud Selig to $7 or $8 billion. He's a deliberative person. But that deliberation, when you view the balance sheet -- he's done such a fabulous job. We're following the process. It's excruciating. But I think we're getting there. We have ways of being a belligerent owner. It's just not in me to do that.
The A's are restricted from moving to Santa Clara County because MLB has assigned that territory to the San Francisco Giants. Giants' ownership contends that a large part of their ticket sales and corporate support comes from Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, so a team in San Jose would cut into their support. As yet they haven't been amenable to making a deal to give up their rights to the area.
Wolff: The Giants are trying to stonewall it, which is certainly working -- for them. And we're saying "tell us what we can do." We think the facts are on our side. We don't want to hurt the Giants, in fact we think the end result will be a great result for everybody, a great new venue here as well as there, and competition for them. So it's just sort of strange, and it's hard to answer the question of why this has gone on so long.
As for Oakland, Wolff said when he bought the A's he had planned to build a new stadium there:
We really wanted to stay and figure it out in Oakland. At the time we started looking, we had the ability to get residential zoning or entitlements. The market was much different than today. Had that moved along, we would have had a ballpark there. Because that's the fan base, we have very loyal fans there, terrific people -- 99% of our fans are terrific, the others hate me.
Even if MLB grants Wolff's San Jose wish, there are a few other steps to go before work on a stadium can start. The city of San Jose has acquired most of the land they'd need, but not all of it. And the ballpark plan would have to pass a public referendum. Wolff said he didn't have a problem with putting the ballpark up for a vote.