While Oakland A’s Franchise Move To Vegas Gets Closer To Reality, Critics Unload On Owner And Rob Manfred

Two days after 27,759 Oakland A’s fans attended a home game at the Coliseum to protest the team’s expected move to Las Vegas — what was termed a “reverse boycott” — baseball commissioner Rob Manfred was asked during the MLB owners’ meetings in New York City if he watched that game between Oakland and Tampa Bay, and what his reaction was to the fans who aimed their ire at A’s owner John Fisher.

“I was actually at a dinner with the owners. It’s great to see what is, this year, almost an average Major League Baseball crowd in the facility for one night,” Manfred told reporters with a straight face. “That’s a great thing.”

Manfred also said during his remarks that the city of Oakland made no offer and “had no plan to build a stadium at any (Oakland) site” to keep the club in the Bay Area.

In the flurry of rebukes that preceded and followed the commissioner’s remarks, it was difficult to say who was more reviled in baseball circles: Manfred or Fisher.

The Athletic MLB called Manfred a “dud,” and former A’s pitcher Dallas Braden — who once tossed a perfect game for the club — tweeted a sarcastic response to Manfred’s admission he was dining with billionaire owners during the “reverse boycott” game.

“Mr. Manfred did you hear about the A’s deciding to walk to their next road games in a show of solidarity with their fans? Actually I was eating dinner with the owners. But hey, I love long walks too! So it’s great to see these players finally take their health seriously,” Braden, now an A’s announcer, tweeted Thursday.

It wasn’t any kinder for Fisher. A young male fan held up a poster that read, “John Fisher is a poo poo head” at the reverse boycott game, while fans inside the stadium held up myriad signs, many of which implored Fisher to sell the club.

“Look, believe me, and I hear from ‘em, I feel sorry for the fans in Oakland,” said Manfred, during his press conference at the owners’ meetings. “I do not like this outcome, I understand why they feel the way they do. I think that the real question is, what is it that Oakland was prepared to do? There is no Oakland offer, OK? They never got to a point where they had a plan to build a stadium at any site. And it’s not just John Fisher. You don’t build a stadium based on the club activity alone. The community has to provide support and you know, at some point, you come to the realization, it’s just not going to happen.”

A spokeswoman for Oakland mayor Sheng Thao blasted Manfred’s response as “just totally false” in a statement to multiple outlets.

“There was a very concrete proposal under discussion and Oakland had gone above and beyond to clear hurdles, including securing funding for infrastructure, providing an environmental review and working with other agencies to finalize approvals,” said the spokeswoman, Julie Edwards. “The reality is the A’s ownership had insisted on a multibillion-dollar, 55-acre project that included a ballpark, residential, commercial and retail space.”

All that is left for the A’s to uproot to Sin City is approval by the MLB owners on a relocation. The Nevada senate voted in favor of a bill that would establish $380 million in public financing for a proposed $1.5 billion, 30,000-seat baseball stadium located near the famed Vegas Strip. Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo signed the bill Thursday.

The Nevada IndependentLombardo signs A’s baseball stadium funding bill; relocation hurdles remain – The Nevada Independent

Oakland officials had worked for years on a proposed stadium site at Howard Terminal on the waterfront. But now the future of the club is all but certain to begin a new chapter in the desert.

One of baseball’s biggest stars, and a Las Vegas native, made a blunt assessment of his hometown getting a MLB franchise.

“I feel sorry for the fans in Oakland,’’ Phillies slugger and two-time National League MVP Bryce Harper told USA Today Sports. “It’s just not right. They have so much history in Oakland. You’re taking a team out of a city. I’m pretty sad because of all of the history and all of the greatness they’ve seen there. I see the A’s as Oakland. I don’t see them as Vegas.’’