This is exciting news.

Though the comments about not raising payroll but expecting a large jump in revenue makes me raise an eyebrow -- if the words 'raising ticket prices, beer prices and/or parking costs' is associated with this extra revenue, that ain't cool. The comments about a 35,000 seat stadium to "raise demand" gets a similar look. Yeah, it'll be nice to have a stadium small enough that a 25,000 person crowd doesn't get dwarfed, but if demand equals eye-gouging prices... ugh. I don't want BOTH sides of the Bay to price out their fanbase.

If Wolff can attach a few more 'when's instead of 'if's about staying in Oakland, I think I'll be less cranky and cautious. :)

50 million more in annual revenue should be enough to keep a competitive team on the field year after year

This is great news for the A's organization. That means 7 more years with Billy.

Billy Beane until 2012.

Owner's worth: $1.5 billion.

New stadium in Oakland.

Yankees, there's a new sheriff in town.

this is awesome news, it's like a big weight has been lifted off my chest.

The thing that really jumped out at me was the get-this-new-stadium-done-in-a-year-or-bust approach that the Times suggested Wolff is takinkg. That, of course, is the classic precurser to moving a team. ("See, I gave you a shot and you couldn't get it done; I have no choice now but to take the Mongolian dollars and move to Ulan Bator.") I thought it was a profoundly ominous note.

Also, I found it discouraging that Wolff seems to be saying with the Beane signing that he's committed to the Schott/Hoffman financial model, the one in which making a profit using revenue sharing dollars, rather than winning, is the main goal of management.

(To clarify, I'm not saying that Beane and Co. don't want to win; they do. I'm just saying that it's not the top goal.)

I was also discouraged by the notion of a 35,000 seat stadium with expensive tickets; it means a way of life for Oakland fans, a ballpark open to the elderly, poor people, working families, people on fixed incomes, people making a spur-of-the-moment decision to attend, etc., will be a thing of the past. It's one of the things that gives Oakland ballgames an Oakland flavor.

It's less and less clear to me that the A's need a new ballpark to compete financially, or that building one, publicly or privately, is a good idea.

Finally, the more I learn about Fisher, the actually money behind all this, the more discouraged I am. Besides that he's a troglodyte Republican involved in shady first-growth harvesting land deals on the North Coast, he's apparently famous in the various industries in which he partakes for squeezing every last dime he can out of them.

Past is not always prologue; Wolff could turn out to be a Haas-like community benefactor. Or he could simply be in sheep's clothing, the teeth concealed until sometime next winter.

It's no accident, by the way, that Haas is so revered. He is the one, single owner in A's history who could be trusted not to move the team, the one, single owner who made these endless, depressing debates about the A's future pointless. If Wolff can accomplish that, he will take his place with Haas. If he can't, he'll rot with Schott and Hoffman. It's up to him.

"Until we've assured ourselves of greater revenues, we're going to have to continue to manage as we have in the past," Beane said. "There may be one player or one independent decision where it makes a change. Are we going to radically change? No. Are there some things that may change? Yes."

I don't have a "glass is empty" approach to the new ownership, but nor is there a "glass is full" approach. I don't know what they're going to do. They might not either. But I don't see anything in them that makes me say, "Hey these guys should be trusted." Do you? If you do, I'd like to see what it is.

On a related note, I got my first "Who's Billy?" question today while wearing my AN shirt.  You'd be surprised how hard it is for a college freshman in Ohio to explain why the simple mention of the name of a California baseball team's GM can make said college kid giddy, but alas.  Some people just don't understand :)

And making firm statements that he wouldn't move the team to San Jose...

And for wanting to explore keeping the A's in Oakland...

I'm conflicted about having a new stadium and how that would affect my ticket prices and my personal experience at games, but for now I'm going to enjoy all the good news.

But it doesn't matter until the future of the franchise is clarified.  I've put up with the team's current state of limbo, and will continue to do so, but it's really a drag.

We don't know much, really, about the new owners.  I like what I see thus far, but am too much of a skeptic to be too excited.  

And, honestly, I wouldn't give Jesus himself the benefit of the doubt when it comes to owning the A's. The people who own major league baseball teams have thoroughly and completely trashed any expectation of a benefit of a doubt. I assume they're somewhere in the range from mediocre to malevolent until proven otherwise.

In this particular case, I maintain, and will continue to maintain, that it may well be an important issue for the A's future.

Say, for example, that Fisher gets deeply involved in the first-growth cutting controversy on the north coast, and various environmental groups decide that boycotting the A's, or picketing the Coliseum, is a great way to get press for their cause. In the environmentally sensitive, leftist East Bay, that could have a profound effect on A's attendance, the public perception of the team and the willingness of East Bay politicians to work on a package to keep the team.