Oakland A’s owner Lew Wolff says a new San Jose ballpark “not worth a nasty battle” with the San Francisco Giants over the territory, as ownership looks to pursue a new Oakland facility.
As you probably know, Wolff spent years working on a plan for a new downtown San Jose ballpark, only to see those efforts blocked by the San Francisco Giants over territorial issues. Under MLB rules, San Francisco controls most of Silicon Valley, including San Jose, as its territory. MLB owners take territorial issues very seriously, and it’s hard to say whether Wolff has much support among his fellow owners in forcing another owner to give up some valuable territory. Efforts to broker a deal with the Giants fell short, and in recent months Wolff and John Fisher have been exploring a new ballpark at the Coliseum site.
In an interview with KPIX 5’s Phil Matier, Wolff had this to say:
“Every article I read says I can’t wait to move to San Jose, and that’s not true,” Wolff said….
Wolff was confident in the team’s prospects.
“We are going to have an interesting team, and we are going to be here for a lot longer than anyone thinks.”
Now, there’s a lot of up in the air regarding the future of the A’s in Oakland and what a new ballpark at the Coliseum site — as part of Coliseum City or part of a smaller-scale development — would look like. And some of this will hinge on what happens with the Oakland Raiders and any potential move to Los Angeles or St. Louis. But if you’ve been following what Wolff has been saying in recent month, this concession should not be a surprise: he’s spoken well of Oakland and new mayor Libby Schaaf, and he’s clearly indicated staying in Oakland was a viable plan.
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