Rob Manfred Has His Version of the Truth, and It's a Lie
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and Oakland's Mayor Sheng Thao have been exchanging blows in the media since the A's announced their intention to relocate the franchise to Las Vegas. The Chronicle recently published a full rundown of the he-said, she-said of it all, along with some new quotes from both sides.
On the one side, we have the Commissioner of Baseball, who effectively works for the owners, and takes shots in the media that would otherwise be directed at the billionaires. On the other side we have a city's mayor, who has been in office since January and is in the process of having a beloved sports franchise ripped away. Based solely on that information, who would you wager is more likely to tell the truth?
One accusation that Manfred is throwing out there is that Thao was never told not to speak directly to him by the A's. At the time that the deal blew up in April, it was widely reported that this was in fact the case, but now, in September, with a rushed relocation vote looming, it's not?
Manfred's specific language lends credence to the fact that Thao was in fact asked not to call up MLB to speak directly with the Commissioner. "The A’s did not prevent mayor Thao or her staff from having conversations with MLB or the commissioner to advance the project." Not preventing her is not the same as not requesting her not to make the call. So yes, the A's didn't take her phone away (presumably).
Manfred also said "I'm told that's not true," in reference to the A's not wanting the mayor to call. So on one hand, we have multiple people that were in the room telling reporters that it is true, and on the other hand we have Manfred playing a game of telephone with the people that want him to spin their narrative.
Tough one.
The Commissioner also threw in this wonderful nugget in reference to the city claiming that the deficit was just $90 million on a $12 billion project at the time the A's announced their Vegas plans. "We were close to a deal.’ Honestly, if they were that close to a deal, why didn’t she throw the hundred million on the table?” Manfred asked, trying to emphasize that the sides weren’t close."
Ah yes, because cities are made of money and have all of the financial resources of a billionaire or a $10 billion industry like baseball. What reason would Oakland have to lie about how close they were? If they got them back to the table and they were still too far apart, what purpose would that serve?
This entire process has been about A's owner John Fisher spending as little money as possible to get a new ballpark that will increase the franchise's value and then make it more profitable when he inevitably sells the team. If you don't think that's true, then why go from a legacy building project like Howard Terminal that would sit on 55 acres to a domed field in the desert on nine acres?
Fisher told ESPN earlier this week, "I'm a local, right? Bay Area native. And so I think if there was anyone who was going to give it their all to try and make it work, it was going to be me." That doesn't ring true either. If the two sides were indeed so close to a deal, then no, and he did not in fact "just throw the hundred million on the table" which is apparently super easy to do. He also didn't try the "finance the entire project on your own" route.
This entire process is turning out to be a sham. The relocation committee consists of the owners of the Brewers, Royals, and Phillies. The Brewers and Royals are trying to secure public funding for ballpark use as we speak. Of course they want the A's to relocate, because that will increase their own leverage against the cities they reside in.
The A's submitted their relocation application, presumably just marking "c" for every answer on their Scantron, because they left the essay questions completely blank. Like where will the team play for three full seasons (at least) while they wait for the Vegas ballpark to be built? What will the ballpark look like? Who will be designing the project? How exactly will the funding work? These are fairly basic questions that don't have answers yet, and there is reportedly going to be a vote from the owners on the upheaval of the A's from Oakland in November without any of those answers.
If this was an actual process, those questions would have answers. John Fisher and team president Dave Kaval would be fielding questions regularly from the local media in the Bay Area to explain why they're moving. Instead, this is being treated as a business transaction. There are no repercussions because the man that leads the way, Manfred, is just going through the motions and saying whatever he has been told by the only side of the story he's cared to listen to.
Manfred also mentions in the Chronicle piece that Thao left the negotiating table after the A's announced the Vegas plans, saying, "Do you think that was a productive step?” This sure reads like the A's and Manfred were expecting to get a better deal from Oakland once they announced the Vegas plans, but instead Thao called their bluff so that the city couldn't be used as leverage in their talks with another city. That being the case, it would make sense that the team would move on from the Wild Wild West site, which was comparable in size to Howard Terminal. Then when they realized their bluff had backfired, they switched to the rented parking lot at The Tropicana site.
"A productive step" would insinuate that there were more steps to be taken. We could also point to Manfred's own comments about A's fans after the "reverse boycott" as not being a "productive step" too. Every step of the way the A's and Rob Manfred have shouted from the rooftops that they are done with Oakland and A's fans, and yet they still try to blame those two groups for the team's relocation.
Meanwhile, John Fisher gets to sit in his mansion and complain about how much it costs to sign a top draft pick after he has gutted the franchise of all its talent because they were going to cost too much.