Lewis Wolff, the managing general partner of the Oakland Athletics, was kind enough to sit down and do an interview with me last week.  The interview is long and pretty much covers all aspects of your team.  I want to just publicly thank him for giving me nearly two hours of his time and blatant honesty.

So rather than comment more on it, I'll just let you read the first part of what will be four parts that will run this week every morning on Athletics Nation.  I hope you find it as interesting to read as I did to participate in.  Enjoy Part I.

Blez:  First of all I want to thank you for sitting down with me.  It isn’t every owner of a sports franchise that will sit down with someone who runs a blog about the team.

Lewis Wolff:  It’s a very good blog and I know it’s the only one Billy (Beane) really looks at.  I look at it when I have time.  The only other one I look at is A’s new ballpark.  I think the guy is an architect or something. 

Blez:  He posts on Athletics Nation a lot.  His name is vertig0 on AN.  He’s pretty awesome and does a great job with the ballpark.  He’s obsessed with the process of the new ballpark getting done.

Wolff:  Well so am I (laughs). 

Blez:  (laughing) I can understand that.  Let me start off with a bit of a retrospective question.  You’ve owned the A’s for more than three years now and have had some serious peaks and valleys during that time.  2005 was a tough year, the team then goes to the ALCS in 2006 in a really fun and exciting year, and now a down year last year due to the record-setting injuries that led to the rebuilding which, in turn, led to a tough year this year.   How difficult has it been from an owner’s perspective to go through those peaks and valleys?

Wolff:  The difficulty comes from being a fan, which I am.  I’d rather win than lose.  Thanks to some great people here, I’ve experienced so much in the last three years that some owners who’ve owned teams for 20 years haven’t experienced.  It was a condensed experience.  We produced a winner and got to the final four which hasn’t happened with this team in a long time.  That was on my watch and it was because of Billy and all his guys.  That was a thrill but it didn’t really impact our attendance or fan interest at the ballpark as much as I had hoped.  I’m not criticizing them but we didn’t sign as many season ticket holders going into the next year as everyone in the league thought we would.  It taught me that demand in the area was inelastic.  I’m not sure if we won the World Series if we’d see a bunch of people sign up for the next year.  I mean we have 7-8,000, and I don’t even know if it’s that many, the Giants have in excess of 20,000.  What’s the difference?  The ballpark is the difference.  Barry Bonds was the difference.  In terms of record and performance, I think we’ve outclassed them since 2000.   It’s been a great learning experience.  We’ve had our ups and our downs and our payroll was over $80 million.  One year it produced a lot and the next year it didn’t produce anything.  I’ve seen the theory that Billy and his team have taught me about aging players and at my age, anyone under 60 is young (laughs).  I’ve learned a lot very quickly and I think the A’s are fortunate that we’re flexible.  We don’t have any real complicated decision making.

Blez:  What do you mean by that?

Wolff:  Well if Billy calls and says, “What do you think of this?”  I’ll ask him what he thinks of it and he’ll say it’s great and then we’ll just say, “Let’s do it.”  There’s no one else to interject.  Billy is very analytical and by the time he calls me, he’s analyzed all the potential results.  He’s got great people.  It’s a tight-knit organization and what I need to bring to it is an organization that everyone has a great time in if we can.  But still in a size that fits the market.  We’re the smallest two-team market in baseball.  I can’t go out and build a 60,000-seat facility.  In fact most of the ones that have added an extra 10,000 seats, such as Seattle, Colorado, Arizona, they’re ruing the day they did that.  We have to look at our market.  If we were by ourselves…

Blez:  It’d be different.

Wolff:  It would definitely be different.  But that isn’t the cards we’re dealt.

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