A modest proposal

by gmhyman on Nov 9, 2006 8:56 PM PST Comment 6 comments

What if the Raiders get kicked out of Oakland (OK, move to a great new stadium in say, Vacaville), and the A's get a new place?

Today's trend is that baseball teams, i.e. those that play essentially every day, 81 home games, play in urban areas, preferably downtown, and football teams who play 8 (actually 10 including exhibitions) home games play in the 'burbs. See: Washington Redskins in Landover MD, NY Giants/Jets in Joisey, New England (nee Boston) Patriots in some goshawful suburb who's name I forget, etc. etc. The only downtown football team is the Steelers.

But - Baseball is a city game - St. Louis, SF Giants,
Red Sox, both Chicago teams, etc., etc.

So - why not move the Raiders to some 'burb - say Pleasonton (on the CC fairgrounds site) or Vacaville, or Fremont or just about anyplace else, build a nice football only 60k seat stadium, and tear down the colliseum and build a 35k or so baseball only park there - Good parking, good BART, etc.

If need be, work out a deal so the A's share AT&T park for a year or 2 - the Yankees played in Shea while the Stadium got it's 70's rebuild (which, IMHO, ruined the place).

This makes much more sense than either trying to share the colliseum - I think it's the last place that even tries to be both a football and baseball park, and much more sense than Fremont where they'll be 5+ miles from transit, with no parking.

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Why Write this Diary?

None of it really makes any sense.

* An NFL franchise moving to Pleasanton or Vacaville?

Makes no sense and the cities are way too small to even consider it.

*Share AT&T Park with the Giants?

Yeah, THAT'S going to happen (see Giants/A's relations with each other) and the logistics are impossible anyway

No offense, but it seems there's an awful lot of postings like this lately with some pretty off the wall if not ill informed ideas about how this stuff actually happens.

Here's some facts to bite on:

The city of Oakland doesn't care of they lose the A's. They won't contribute any land or money to the concept.
The A's are a business and need to move to a new facility and can't worry about Oakland, cheap seats for walkup fans, and the way business has been done in the past anymore.
Fremont will be the new home of the A's.

Move on fans and follow your team in their new home when it opens. why cry about it at this point. It's 20 friggin miles down the freeway and might even have a BART line closer to it when it's all said and done.

~This is a simple game...You throw the ball, you hit the ball, you catch the ball. YOU GOT IT!?!

by BornInOakland on Nov 9, 2006 9:51 PM PST reply actions