How Should Owners Spend Their Money?

Happy Friday! After two legitimately great, exciting, happy A's games, are you looking forward to tonight's game? I'm always torn when the A's play the Rays; of course I'm rooting for the green and gold, but the Rays are my darling of the AL East, and I always root for them over the Yankees and Red Sox. But with Texas' recent skid, the great teAse is on; with both the A's and Angels only 7 games behind at the start of play tonight. Are they really out of the race?

I heard from the Angels yesterday, and they are offering group tickets for the September A's/Angels series in Los Angeles for as low as $10. Does anyone want an AN Day: Anaheim II?

In case you missed the picture in the thread Wednesday, I got to grill Dodger Dogs with Andre Ethier on Wednesday; feeding a good part of the homeless population in Skid Row in Los Angeles at the Union Rescue Mission. Thanks to AN, we'll be taking 40-50 of the kids there to Dodger Stadium on Sunday afternoon; we'll have Dodger Dogs at the park and thanks to another SoCal ANer, we have packets of baseball cards for each child as well.

baseballdad called last night after reading this article in Santa Rosa's Press Democrat and I was curious what you all thought. Titled "A's owner spends on art, not baseball", Lowell Cohn asserts that a public team is more important than a private gallery, and if Fisher isn't going to spend money on his baseball team, than he has no right to spend it on art. Or perhaps more accurately; he shouldn't spend money on art until he has spent money on his baseball team.

And apparently, if Fisher cares about art more than he cares about baseball, he's in the wrong line of work.

Team owners should be sportspeople. They should love the game and have passion for the game like George Steinbrenner did, and they need to spend money to make money.

Do you want an owner who puts baseball as his highest priority, and spends the money accordingly? Or is the money his to spend any way he chooses, and that choice can be the bare minimum for his team? Are the A's a "poor" team, or do their owners just not spend the necessary money? What do you think?

And do you agree with this?

If the A's had to write their personal philosophy, it would go something like this: "We are committed to producing a below-average product and blaming it on Oakland and the Giants. We plan to suck until they let us move to San Jose. Then we'll be a real work of art. Just wait and see."