Raiders, Warriors, Now A’s Bolt Oakland. Sad, But Makes Dollars And Cents

Poor Oakland. When it comes to the fortunes of that Northern California city regarding professional sports franchises, you should take such a phrase literally for so many reasons.

Let’s start with “poor,” as in sadness over Oakland losing all of its major professional sports teams in a flash. This is despite its history with the likes of Reggie Jackson, Al Davis, BillyBall (or Billy Martin, if you prefer), Ken Stabler, Rickey Henderson, the Heidi Game, The Bash Brothers, Rollie Fingers, Silver and Black dominance, Charlie Finley with his kelly green uniforms and orange baseballs, Rick Barry before some guy named Stephon Curry.

I witnessed a combination of the above up close and personal while working during the 1980s at the San Francisco Examiner. There was nothing like that view of the sun-splattered Oakland hills beyond the outfield walls of Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum during football or baseball seasons.

Then Mount Davis came along in 1995.

It was the 20,000-seat addition to the stadium that torched those sights when former Raiders owner Al Davis demanded an upper deck as a stipulation to bring his team back to Oakland from Los Angeles after he departed the San Francisco Bay Area following the 1982 season.

So, the beginning of the end of Oakland’s feel-good stories involving pro sports started a while ago. The same went for the epidemic of plunging attendance at games, especially for the Raiders (who own just four playoff victories during the past 30 years) and the A’s (who continue to waste little time after seasons shipping their best players to the highest bidders).

The whole thing is sad, but it makes sense.

There also is “poor,” as in finances for Oakland and its roughly 434,000 citizens with blue-collar leanings not having the billions to compete with places noted for generating billions and more billions.

Here’s an example: The Warriors owned 48 NBA seasons worth of memories dribbling in Oakland. Well, that was until the fall of 2019 when they jumped across San Francisco Bay into Chase Center. It’s a $1.4 billion basketball arena located near the heart of a region that ScOp Venture Capital ranked near the top in the nation last year for most incoming venture capital.

During the fall of 2020, the Raiders left Oakland for the second time since they began playing home games in that city in 1962. The first time was when they bolted for Los Angeles in 1982, but they returned to Oakland 13 years later. Now they’re in Allegiant Stadium and its $1.9 billion worth of stuff in Las Vegas, where just a stroll around Sin City will tell you that it’s bit more financially advanced than the place the Raiders departed — you know, twice.

Oakland still has the A’s, though.

For the moment.

They’re going, going, almost gone.

They’ve been in Oakland since 1968, but they signed a binding contract this week to buy land near that Las Vegas strip to build a $1.5 billion ballpark. They expect to christen their new home by 2027.

Which brings us to another “poor” regarding Oakland.

Poor negotiations involving everybody.

In the Raiders’ situation (both of them), team officials blamed Oakland city officials for the relocation, but Oakland city officials said something else. Or was that A’s team officials and Oakland city officials ripping each other?

“I am deeply disappointed that the A’s have chosen not to negotiate with the City of Oakland as a true partner in a way that respects the long relationship between the fans, the City and the team,” Oakland mayor Sheng Thao said in a statement this week after the A’s announced their choice. “Yet, it is clear to me that the A’s have no intention of staying in Oakland and have simply been using this process to try to extract a better deal out of Las Vegas. I am not interested in continuing to play that game. The fans and our residents deserve better.”

That sounded like Mark Davis discussing Oakland city officials in April 2017 during a San Francisco radio show, and Mark became the Raiders’ owner six years before that after the death of his father Al.

“It came down to a meeting with the National Football League and the city of Oakland, and we were in the meeting,” Davis told the radio host. “The city of Oakland didn’t bring a proposal to the meeting, they brought a 5-page letter that just basically spelled out the nice things about Oakland but didn’t make us a proposal. At that time we decided that we would file for relocation officially.”

Mark Davis also blamed the A’s for the Raiders landing in Las Vegas. He told the Las Vegas Review-Journal this week: “I won’t forget what they did to us in Oakland. They squatted on a lease for 10 years and made it impossible for us to build on that stadium. They were looking for a stadium. We were looking for a stadium. They didn’t want to build a stadium, and then went ahead and signed a 10-year lease with the city of Oakland and said, ‘We’re the base team.’”

As for the Warriors, they were in San Francisco for a decade before they went to Oakland, so nothing to see here.

Except for that $1.4 billion arena.