This is the fourth year of Lew Wolff’s tenure as owner and managing partner of the A’s.  It’s pretty clear that the results are bad, very bad.  Lew inherited a franchise that was performing well on the field.  The previous four years showed two first place finishes, and two second place finishes—two 100+ game winning seasons, a 96 and 91 win season.  And of course the setting of a major league record for winning streaks, at 21 games.  Attendance had grown to 27,000+ per game, not great but improving.  Oakland was a little less than average in the major leagues—19th out of 31 teams.  Playoff results had been disappointing, and there had been fan disappointment with the loss of some high performing and loved players—Giambi and Tejada for example.  But in my view, and I believe many fans at the time, we were excited about the teams prospects.

And in fact, the team continued to win in the first two seasons of Lew’s reign, as the momentum on the field continued from the cadre of players in place—a second place finish, first place finish, and an advancement to the American League playoffs.  Unfortunately in Lew’s first year attendance began to slip, and has continued to slip each year.  In 2005 where the A’s finished 2nd behind the A’s, just as in 2004, attendance fell 4.2%--disturbing since the team had such a similar year as the one before.  Then in 2006 the A’s had a fantastic year, but attendance again slipped, this time 6.3%--even more disturbing.  Results on the field have slipped in 2007 and 2008, and attendance has continued to drop—running 10.4% behind last year so far this season.  If the current attendance rate holds even for the remainder of this year, which it won’t, attendance will have slipped an incredible 21.8%. 

Clearly on the field performance has a lot to do with this slippage, and that can’t be put at the feet of the owner.  But attendance began to slip immediately as Lew came in, even as the team was performing well, and in fact, performance climbing to an exciting trip to the League playoffs in 2006.  My view is that Lew has been a major cause of this attendance slippage.  One of his earliest and strongest themes upon coming to the A’s was that the A’s had to have a new ballpark.  He even brought in the Commissioner of Baseball, and his college frat bro, to emphasize how important this was for the A’s.  Bud Selig basically  said the A’s could not survive without a new ballpark.  Lew did say that Oakland was his first choice, but the A’s fans are not total idiots, and knew that while Oakland was a possibility, the odds against that happening had to be at 3 to 1 or worse given the financial straits of the city of Oakland and the lukewarm attitude to the A’s by Mayor Jerry Brown and most of the politicians--at least that was my guess.

The Oakland scenario of course did not play out, and in November of 2006 Lew announced that the A’s were moving to Fremont.  He of course hoped that current A’s fans would drive 30 miles down the car packed 880, or take Bart—wait, not Bart, to see their beloved A’s.  In my opinion, this was an incredibly reckless decision.  The availability of the new stadium date was a little up in the error, but for purposes of discussion let’s assume a target date of 2011.  That meant that Lew announced the move of his team 5 years in advance of the move!!  What in the world did he think was going to happen to the fan base?  Obviously some fans would begin to drop out.  And just as obviously new fans living, let’s say, north of the Coliseum would have second thoughts about becoming A’s fans.  Then again, most A’s fans new when Lew came in before the 2005 season that it would play out with a move.  So in reality, current fans and potential new fans knew from before the beginning of the ’05 season until the projected 2011 season that the team would be in Fremont.  So actually the fan base and potential fan base has been in limbo for 7 years!!  But of course there could be slippage on the move in date—and the current A’s website says "Estimated to open sometime before the 2013 season, Cisco Field", so maybe there is at least one more year to add to all of those estimates.

So how about the new fans from Fremont and San Jose?  It was certainly not realist to think they would buy tickets in Oakland prior to the move.

But as I wrote in a January diary, it’s more than possible that the Fremont stadium will never open.  And that possibility came out in some of Lew’s recent comments—thanks to New A’s Ballpark for identifying the following stories and links. 

But where that future will take place remains in as much question as ever, especially after managing partner Lew Wolff told Bay Area News Group he's unsure if the team's attempt to build a new state-of-the-art ballpark in Fremont will succeed.

"I don't know. I honestly don't," Wolff said Wednesday when asked if Cisco Field will come to fruition. "But say it doesn't. We're still under a lot of pressure to get a park that is our own. That isn't going to go away. So my hope is that we'll find a way to make it happen. It has not been as easy as I thought it would be."

One day after these comments Lew put a more positive spin on them,  

A day after Oakland A's owner Lew Wolff publicly stated he wasn't sure if he would succeed in building a new baseball stadium in Fremont, he told the Mercury News that he's frustrated at the lingering pace, but ultimately thinks "Ballpark Village" will rise in the Bay Area's fourth largest city.

Wolff is troubled about the length of time it's taking to satisfy major property owners near the proposed 32,000-seat Cisco Field and to complete an environmental review.

"I still think it's going to happen," Wolff, a major South Bay developer, said today from his office in Los Angeles. "Otherwise I wouldn't be doing this."

But clearly the possibility of the deal falling through is on his mind.

While Lew talks mainly about the delays with the Environmental Impact studies, I continue to think the main problem will be that the project will not make sense because of its dependence on both residential and commercial real estate.  I said then,

The 2007 debacle with subprime mortages and plummeting housing prices will kill the new ballpark in Fremont.  The A's will have to rethink their planned move, and likely remain in Oakland………But the dramatic changes in our economy are causing Lou Wolff and his investors to rethink this project.  It would not be in their interests to let this out to the news media.  But Lou and his investors are pretty savvy investors, and they are not about to invest huge dollars into a project that depends upon new homes and a thriving economy.  There is no need for them to announce today that the project is dead.  They don't have to put their money down today.  But no one would invest in this project today.  So you will see this drama play out, Fremot and the other players going through the motions, but this project doesn't make sense now, and when the time comes for everyone to pony up--they will not. 

I basically think the same today.  There is some chance of a "bear market" housing rally, imo, in the next 12 to 18 months, but demographic trends are very negative.  I would guess there is an 80% chance the management group pulls out of the deal.  And a 20% chance they read the economy differently and move ahead—and imho it would turn into a financial disaster.

The problem for Lew, the A’s, and for hardcore A’s fans is that this strategy will have long term negative impact on the franchise.  This huge loss of attendance is a major problem financially, and will impact decision making in the business.  And the momentum right now is going the wrong way.  I believe attendance will continue to fall this year and next.  And a combination of ego and uncertainty on the part of Lew and his partners will prevent them from making a quick decision and turning this situation around.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see this linger on into 2010, when reality just forces a decision to stay in Oakland.  But attendance and the franchise will have suffered greatly by then.

So I would have to give Lew a failing grade for his performance in his first four baseball years, the 2005-2008 seasons.  He made, or accepted, an assumption that the most important objective of the franchise was a new ballpark—I don’t think that was true.  Since he accepted that assumption, he chose a very high risk strategy which clearly was going to tell the fans the team was moving 5-7 years before the move date—incredibly demoralizing to fans. I can’t totally blame him for this one, but he clearly misread the economic environment when he pulled the trigger on the move to Fremont.  But I can blame him for this one, he didn’t, doesn’t, have a fallback strategy if his plan failed.  And it is failing.