A's Owner John Fisher Changes Terminology Around Las Vegas Groundbreaking

The term groundbreaking, when it comes to new baseball ballparks, is meant to mean when shovels will be in the ground and the mult-year process of actually building the ballpark is beginning. But for those paying attention to how things have been phrased of late, A's owner John Fisher has a new definition.

He told Nick Walters of KTNV recently that, "true groundbreaking started with the implosion [of the Tropicana Hotel] that took place last, uh, November. We're moving dirt right now and we'll continue to do that with the expectation to start construction mid-year."

To be fair to Fisher, the implosion line seemed like a bit of a joke he was telling, but the implosion of the hotel that stood there was going to happen whether the A's project was moving forward or not, so it's hard to see how that was a step forward for the new ballpark in any way, other than the site being cleared for a ballpark to potentially be build on that space.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal is also setting new parameters for what constitutes groundbreaking, writing over the weekend, "The A's filed for a commercial grading permit this week with Clark County, which when issued, would allow the site preparation ahead of construction to occur. When the process begins, that is effectively the ground breaking on the project."

This past weekend, there was a chorus of people invested in this project in Las Vegas that were reassuring people that the A's are definitely coming and not to pay attention to the skeptics.

But for a project that is definitely happening, isn't it odd that two years after public money was secured that there are still people questioning whether or not they'll end up in Vegas? They can't even nail down a date, or a month, for construction to actually begin on the project just a couple of months out.

It's almost as if they're buying time and trying to subtly push back the construction start date by talking about it in vague terms because they know that if they give a date, and it's not in June, then the headlines will read that the ballpark isn't opening in 2028.

Without even saying anything about the construction timeline, the fact that Fisher has been seen in recent days could be a worrying sign. The only times he has tended to come out is when he needs something like public money or a place for his team to play in Sacramento.

The real takeaway from Fisher's comments is that he gave a broad time of "mid-year," and didn't nail down a date. He also specifically said that the "expectation" is that construction begins mid-year. These are very carefully worded answers so that they offer a range of outcomes that could happen. It's called hedging.

But for the owner of a baseball team that is traveling to a new city and hoping to create thousands of new A's fans, hedging answers aren't going to cut it. He's going to have to provide some concrete details on his plans, and the timeline for those plans, before people stop question the validity of those plans.