Manfred Spin cannot lay the responsibility for the approximate situation of A on the owner

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Is it the nepo-baby billionaire who buys a team, profits from it and oversees its destruction?

Or is it the hundreds of thousands of fans who own the memories and experiences? Those who went through the turnstiles, bought the tickets and the hot dogs and the jerseys, who can tell you what they were doing when Rickey Henderson stole #939, when Reggie Jackson homered in Game 7 against the Mets, when Jeremy Giambi didn’t slip.

Those who brought their babies to the games and whose babies grew to bring their babies, who banged drums and rang bells and clapped Hendu and booed Roger Clemens and bumped their forearms and heeled in the huge parking lot and sat in the sun and made friends for life and stayed true to their allegiance no matter how the property treated them which except for the golden years of the Haas family , was lamentable.

John Fisher owns none of that as steward of the Oakland Athletics. He is a once failed real estate developer who used his inherited wealth and his former partners’ college fraternity connection to buy a baseball team.

This is the tricky part of ownership in sports. Someone can buy a team if they have enough money, but a sports team is also a cultural and community institution. Owners trying to make a profit are just gatekeepers. And the inexplicable Fisher and his carnival barking sidekick, Dave Kaval, have done a terrible job of taking care of the Aces.

Fisher paid $180 million for the team in 2016. The franchise’s valuation is now $1.8 billion, and Fishers’ gigantic raise, not to mention the team’s annual profits, comes mostly from the causes him to sit on his hands. His only real interest seems to be leveraging the team to secure a massive real estate development deal.

So, congratulations to Las Vegas, if this deal comes to fruition. With Dan Snyders’ decision to sell the Washington Commanders, Vegas would become the home of the sport’s worst owner.

Monday brought another round of nonsense and insults to Oakland in the Aces saga. Deaf and dishonest baseball commissioner Rob Manfred spoke to Associated Press sportswriters and said: I’m sorry for Oakland fans. I do, I really do. But for the city of Oakland to point the finger at John Fisher, that’s just not fair.

Fair? Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao said she was taken aback by last week’s announcement and called Fisher and Kaval bad partners. In her initial response, the mayor said she was setting aside negotiations so as not to be used as leverage.

Manfred tried to spin the circumstances of the Ace’s late announcement that they were committing to Las Vegas as a last resort scenario, even though the MLB-imposed deadline for a stadium deal is still eight years away. month.

I don’t know how you negotiate (with) someone exclusively for seven years and then get accused of using them as leverage, Manfred said. Look, we’ve shown incredible commitment to Oakland fans by exhausting every opportunity possible to try and get something done in Oakland. And, unfortunately, the government does not seem to have the will to do so.

Exhausted all possible opportunities? What is not included in Manfreds’ version of events is that the Howard Terminal site is much more than a ballpark stadium, that it is a massive and complicated real estate transaction and that the project has actually cleared the hurdles and made progress and that negotiations were underway.

The fact that under Fishers ownership, the Aces came up with many flimsy plans for a stadium not included in Manfreds’ rotation: Fremont, San Jose, the Coliseum itself, the unavailable Laney College site, and now a very complicated Howard Terminal location. Calling this a seven-year process at one site is absurd.

Manfred said the Las Vegas plan has momentum, but who knows if this deal is really done. Saying you have a binding agreement to buy land is a far cry from building a stadium. There’s the delicate issue of half a billion dollars in public funding that has yet to be accounted for, and the rumblings from Nevada are that politicians and taxpayers are figuring out what Californians learned a long time ago. : Subsidizing billionaires who own sports teams is bad business practice.

There’s also the matter of getting 75% approval from the rest of MLB team owners, 22 of 29, to move the Aces. Those owners will be asked to offer a potential expansion market to Fisher because , according to Manfred, no relocation costs. They are asked to approve a deal that gives the Giants all of Northern California, while three teams split the Southern California market. And the other five teams that have broadcast the territorial rights in Las Vegas, the Giants, Dodgers, Angels, Padres and Diamondbacks, will be asked to sign over those rights.

Exhausted all possible opportunities? Kaval sings that he plans to build an entertainment area with not only a baseball stadium, but also bars, restaurants and retail businesses. Exactly what could have been built on the site of the Colosseum, a complex that could have been opened by now.

Kaval also said the team may play at its minor league-affiliated home, Las Vegas Ballpark, until a new facility is ready. A 10,000-seat outdoor stadium, at 107 degrees? Great. But the Aces, as they are set up right now, look like a minor league team. They have the worst record (4-18) in the majors and the lowest payroll, by far. Anglers’ destruction of his own product makes the Ace better suited for a minor league setup.

It’s a mess. It’s ugly. And it’s heartbreaking for the fans. They are the ones who own the legacy, the memories and the experience of As.

Contact Ann Killion: [email protected]; Twitter: @annkillion

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