Could New Jersey get the Tampa Bay Rays?
WEDNESDAY, 06 APRIL 2011 11:03
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/could-new-jersey-get-the-tampa-bay-rays
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
The drumbeats have been sounding about the need for a new Tampa Bay Rays baseball park for a while. The Rays franchise ownership group wants a new stadium because the American League East team needs extra revenues to keep up with the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox in the division and sign players to long term big money contracts.
With no new Tampa or St. Petersburg stadium plan on the horizon, there has been a suggestion that Major League Baseball will eliminate the Rays and possibly the Oakland A's (a franchise that has wandered across the country from Philadelphia to Kansas City to Oakland and never has found financial success). The contraction threat seems to coincide with the ending of the 2006 Collective Bargaining Agreement, which will happen in December. There is nothing like using contraction as a negotiating tactic to gain some leverage over the players although there is a little problem baseball will need to overcome.
The Rays iron clad stadium lease.
The Rays ownership is saddled with a lease that former owner Vince Naimoli signed prior to the team's first season in 1998. It was a 30-year-deal with St. Petersburg and the contract ends in 2027. Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter Uerberroth told St. Petersburg and Florida officials in the late 1980s don't bother building the stadium as MLB was not interested in St. Petersburg. MLB expanded to St. Petersburg and Phoenix in 1995
The latest salvo about the Rays dire financial situation comes from a writer and a magazine that Major League Baseball has constantly discredited over the years. Mike Ozanian in his Forbes Sportsmoney blog of April 4 contends there will be no baseball or Tampa Bay Rays in 2015 although it isn't clear from Ozanian's blog just how that is going to happen. MLB has always been rather condescending towards Forbes' annual market evaluation of Major League Baseball teams.
There is one thing for certain. Major League Baseball needs an even amount of franchises so cutting ties with Stu Sternberg and his Rays without knocking out another franchise is not going to happen. Only two MLB franchises need new stadiums, Tampa Bay and Oakland. It appears San Jose would like the opportunity to build a baseball park for Lew Wolff's A's but a funny thing has happened on the way to San Jose.
The former New York Giants baseball franchise, whose owner Horace Stoneham fled to San Francisco in 1957, seems to think they have control over the San Jose territory even though voters twice turned down referendums for Giants baseball parks in the area. Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig appointed a committee two years ago to study the San Jose situation. That committee is still fact finder although it seems an engine search on the Internet would produce whatever results Selig wants inside of 12 seconds. San Jose is farther away from San Francisco than Oakland (San Francisco and Oakland are connected by a bridge and the Bay Area Rapid Transit) and San Jose is part of the Bay Area media market.
The only reason San Jose cannot go after Wolff is the 1922 Supreme Court of the United States decision that gave the National and American Leagues of baseball an antitrust exemption because the court ruled baseball was a game and not an interstate business. The exemption gave baseball owners the right to do whatever they wanted to do. Most of the exemption has eroded over the years but the owners still control territories, which is why San Jose and New Jersey have been shut out of Major League Baseball.
There is no proposal at the present time to attract a Major League team to New Jersey although when then Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth opened the door to possible expansion in 1987, New Jersey had a presentation ready. New Jersey also tried to attract George Steinbrenner's interest and get him to move the Yankees across the Hudson in the 1990s.
Wolff has failed in getting a "stadium-village" for his A's and real estate in Oakland and in Fremont, which is about 20 miles south on the I-880 of the team's present home at the Oakland Coliseum. In St. Petersburg, Tampa Rays ownership, which includes Managing General Partner Stuart Sternberg of Rye, New York, is looking for a new stadium in either St. Petersburg or Tampa.
There was a rumor, which was just a rumor, that the Rays ownership thought about moving the Rays to Connecticut.
Wolff can get out of his lease within a few years in Oakland as he signed a short-term agreement to keep his team at the Coliseum through 2013.
The San Francisco Giants ownership has the San Jose/Santa Clara County territory which is more than 40 miles south of the Giants China Basin ballpark. The Oakland Coliseum is considerably closer to San Francisco and is accessible by the Bay Area Rapid Transit and is not far down the I-880 from the Bay Area Bridge. San Jose became Giants territory in the 1990s when the team attempted to get a stadium built in the South Bay's most populous city. Neither San Jose nor Santa Clara voters had any interest in paying for a Giants stadium and turned down ballpark referendums. Despite the no votes, MLB has not changed the Giants' territorial claim.
Major League Baseball does not live by the same antitrust laws as normal businesses. Wolff is blocked from even thinking about crossing the Santa Clara County line because that would be crossing his baseball brothers. Wolff tried to get as close as he could to San Jose and Santa Clara and not upsetting the Giants ownership by trying to relocate to Fremont.
Oakland does not have the corporate crowd that fills the Giants China Basin stadium. San Jose is the Silicone Valley and somehow both MLB and the Giants are convinced that money headed up the 101 Freeway to San Francisco will shift to a San Jose baseball team, which would have a crippling affect on the Giants. The San Francisco baseball team is one hour away from San Jose; Oakland is across the Bay and is accessible by mass transit.
Wolff doesn't seem to want to sue Major League Baseball and challenge the antitrust exemption. Wolff shares the Oakland Coliseum with the NFL's Raiders and Raiders owner Al Davis did sue the NFL in the 1980s when the league interfered with his negotiations with the Coliseum for a lease extension and then tried to block the Raiders' move to Los Angeles.
Davis won.
In 1984, San Diego Clippers owner Donald Sterling thumbed his nose at NBA officials and moved his franchise to Los Angeles without league consent. He was fined $100 million for the move. Sterling sued the league. The two parties settled. Sterling stayed in LA and paid the NBA a $6 million fine.
That settlement may come back to bite Sterling later this month should the NBA Sacramento Kings owners, the Maloofs brothers, pick up and move into the Los Angeles market in Anaheim and share the area with the Los Angeles Lakers and Sterling's Clippers. The Maloofs, using the Sterling precedent, could end up paying no compensation for entering the LA market.
Major League Baseball did not move a team between 1971 and 2004. The Washington Senators left the nation's capital for Arlington, Texas in 1972. A number of attempted franchise shifts failed for various reasons including San Diego going to Washington in 1974, the Giants to Toronto in 1976, Oakland to Denver in 1979. A number of teams looked at moving to Tampa including the Giants, Seattle Mariners, George W. Bush's Texas Rangers and the Minnesota Twins. Minnesota ownership nearly sold the team to Greensboro, North Carolina interests in the late 1990s if a stadium became available in that North Carolina city. Voters turned down a Greensboro stadium in 1998.
It is not easy to move a team to open markets like Tampa was before 1995, like Denver before 1991, like Washington between 1972 and 2004. What chance does San Jose have? What chance does New Jersey or Connecticut have?
New Jersey may have the right stuff for a Major League Baseball team. In 2000, Major League Baseball had big names like Paul Volcker, the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Richard C. Levin, the Yale University President, the former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and media personality George Will, a former political operative and college professor who won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1977, analyze baseball's financial condition.
The "Blue Ribbon Panel" on baseball economics left the door open for franchise relocation to places like northern New Jersey and Washington despite the presence of teams in the vicinity. New Jersey or Connecticut have a major revenue stream that is currently untapped. Cablevision's Madison Square Garden network has little summer programming of note that would draw in potential viewers since the Yankees formed the YES Network and the Mets, along with Time Warner and Comcast, started SNY. There probably is more than $60 million on the table waiting for a third New York City area team.
New York City is still the financial capital of the United States. The city once had three baseball teams — the Yankees, the Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Walter O'Malley took his Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1957 although he kicked the tires and his Dodgers played seven games at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, N.J. in 1956 and 1957. O'Malley used Jersey City as leverage in his bid to get New York to spring for a new stadium for his Dodgers. Giants owner Horace Stoneham seemed more determined to move his team from upper Manhattan out of the New York area than O'Malley ... with Minneapolis one of his choices.
With the population, the corporate wealth and television monies available, New York City or northern New Jersey would be ripe for a failing franchise. But New Jersey is blocked (as Connecticut would be) because both the Yankees and Mets would nix any move into their territories and the Philadelphia Phillies ownership would probably object to a third New York area team if it was placed in New Jersey. (The Philadelphia Flyers got a million dollars from John McMullen when he bought the Colorado Rockies NHL team and move his newly acquired team into the Meadowlands in 1982).
In Oakland, Wolff has Comcast's TV money, but he lacks corporate support. San Jose wants to build a stadium and Oakland is back in the game.
There are three essentials to running a successful franchise whether it is in Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League or the National Basketball Association or even Major League Soccer. Government support is an absolute necessity in terms of building a facility. Government can build the place with taxpayers' dollars or give substantial tax breaks and incentives (as the Giants/Jets stadium entity is receiving at the Meadowlands) to owners to build their own plants. The federal government regulates Cable TV where billions are made by sports franchises and separates the Yankees, Mets, Angels, Red Sox, Phillies and Mariners from the rest of baseball and corporate support. Corporates can take 50 cents off the dollar in buying luxury boxes, club seats for business purposes.
Wolff already shares the market with the Giants in the Bay Area and cannot get his foot in the door in San Jose. If Sternberg was looking at the New York City area, he would get a door slammed in his face. Sternberg is not seeking a New York area facility and is concentrating on getting a place built in Tampa. The lease in St. Pete has a long way to go but as the late John McMullen once said, a contract is just a piece of paper.
Major League Baseball moved the financially troubled and ownerless Montreal Expos into Washington after the 2004 season once MLB secured a commitment from the city that it would build a state-of-the-art baseball facility. Remember McMullen's comment.
A contract is just a piece of paper.
Washington is about 40 miles from Baltimore and was a part of the Peter Angelos' Baltimore Orioles territory. MLB worked out a deal with Angelos, which gave him a regional cable TV network, the Mid Atlantic Sports Network, as a partial payment for the Washington team which "invaded" his territory. That agreement might work in Wolff's favor and could be used by someone in New Jersey if that someone decided that New Jersey and Major League Baseball are perfect together.
The owners of the Seattle SuperSonics took their NBA team to Oklahoma City with two years left on their contract in Seattle to use the publicly financed and refinanced facility for their basketball team. Clayton Bennett reached a financial agreement with Seattle and left. But Bennett had the NBA Commissioner David Stern's blessing. Bruce Ratner (when he still owned the majority of the New Jersey Nets) took the Nets from the Meadowlands to Newark for two years with New Jersey's approval along with Stern.
New Jersey had the "right stuff" for Major League Baseball in 2000 according to Volcker, Levin, Mitchell and Will. The state could not go after the Montreal Expos franchise when it was up for sale in 2002, 2003 and 2004 because of the antitrust exemption.
There are 30 Major League Baseball teams. New York City has two teams, Los Angeles has two teams, Chicago has two teams and San Francisco-Oakland has two teams. It is hard to imagine California Senators Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer sitting by idly if MLB pulls the plug on the Oakland A’s. The same would probably hold true in Florida after all it was Florida Senator Connie Mack III (the grandson of the Philadelphia A’s manager-owner Connie Mack) that threatened MLB’s antitrust exemption (along with Colorado’s Tim Wirth) in the late 1980s and 1990s and forced MLB to consider expanding to either Miami or the Tampa Bay market or both.
Congress is pretty good at saber rattling and persuasion in the sports industry.
There have been some rumors that have appeared that MLB would mollify Sternberg by giving him a crack at owning the Mets after the Wilpon's fall from grace and that Wolff could take over the Los Angeles Dodgers once the McCourt divorce becomes final. Both seem scenarios seem farfetched. Contracting means the elimination of 50 players which will not please the Major League Baseball Players Association particularly when there are alternatives available — San Jose and maybe New Jersey or Tampa-St. Petersburg — but there is more than just the contraction of two teams. There are minor league cities who will lose clubs and that is sure to draw the attention of Congress. The last thing Selig and company want to do is go to Congress and risk losing the remaining portions of the 1922 SCOTUS decision because that could impact business operations.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.
Showing posts with label MLB. Oakland A's. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MLB. Oakland A's. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Why N.J. cannot get a Major League Baseball team
WEDNESDAY, 05 MAY 2010 12:45
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/why-nj-cannot-get-a-major-league-baseball-team
Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig has a committee trying to figure out whether Oakland A's owner Lew Wolff can move his team from Oakland to San Jose, if San Jose can find the money and is able to build a mostly publicly-financed baseball stadium. The committee has not figured out, as of yet, if they know the way to San Jose but there will be an answer some day. What happens in Northern California should have no immediate impact on New Jersey. But as it stands now, neither San Jose nor northern New Jersey can be the home of a major league baseball team.
The areas are in other team's territories and Major League Baseball, thanks to an antitrust exemption, can just say no to anyone who wants to put a team in San Jose or East Rutherford, New Jersey. There is no proposal at the present time to attract a Major League team to New Jersey although when then Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth opened the door to possible expansion in 1987, New Jersey had a presentation ready. New Jersey also tried to attract George Steinbrenner's interest and get him to move the Yankees across the Hudson in the 1990s.
There are two owners of Major League Baseball teams who have serious doubts about the revenue production capabilities of their present stadiums. Wolff in Oakland and Stuart Sternberg in St. Petersburg.
Wolff has failed in getting a "stadium-village" for his A's and a real estate in Oakland and in Fremont, which is about 20 miles south on the I-880 of the team's present home at the Oakland Coliseum. In St. Petersburg, Tampa Rays ownership, which includes Managing General Partner Stuart Sternberg of Rye, New York is looking for a new stadium in either St. Petersburg or Tampa.
There was a rumor, which was just a rumor, that Rays ownership thought about moving the Rays to Connecticut. There is one other major fly in the ointment though. The Rays' lease with the St. Petersburg stadium ends in 2027.
Both Wolff and Sternberg are trying to work out an arrangement to remain in their present markets. Wolff can get out of his lease within a few years in Oakland as he signed a short-term agreement to keep his team at the Coliseum through 2013. Here is the problem that Wolff faces and a problem that New Jersey would face if someone in the state decided to go after a Major League Baseball team.
Major League Baseball assigns territories to teams. The San Francisco Giants ownership has the San Jose/Santa Clara County territory which is more than 40 miles south of the Giants China Basin ballpark. The Oakland Coliseum is considerably closer to San Francisco and is accessible by the Bay Area Rapid Transit and is not far down the I-880 from the Bay Area Bridge. San Jose became Giants territory in the 1990s when the team attempted to get a stadium built in the South Bay's most populous city. Neither San Jose nor Santa Clara voters had any interest in paying for a Giants stadium and turned down ballpark referendums. Despite the no votes, MLB has not changed the Giants' territorial claim.
Major League Baseball does not live by the same antitrust laws as normal businesses because the Supreme Court of the United States in 1922 ruled that baseball was a game and not a business and gave the "game" an antitrust exemption which still applies to areas like territories and television. Wolff is blocked from even thinking about crossing the Santa Clara County line because that would be crossing his baseball brothers. Wolff tried to get as close as he could to San Jose and Santa Clara and not upsetting the Giants ownership by trying to relocate to Fremont.
Now Wolff is openly talking to San Jose despite the fact that Giants ownership will not cede the territory and Giants ownership through a subsidiary, the San Jose Giants — the California League Class A Giants affiliate — is trying to block San Jose from building a stadium. Giants ownership has a one-quarter interest in the San Jose Giants.
Wolff's Oakland A's are struggling drawing people this year. Oakland does not have the corporate crowd that fills the Giants China Basin stadium. Santa Clara residents might send Major League Baseball is big wakeup call on June 8 by going against national trends and voting to spend public money to build a football stadium for the San Francisco 49ers to show the Giants, MLB and the city of San Francisco that they are fed up with the Giants territorial claims and to stick it to San Francisco city officials and San Francisco Giants ownership by "stealing" or "poaching" the 49ers. Santa Clara is willing to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the stadium.
San Jose is the Silicone Valley and somehow both MLB and the Giants are convinced that money headed up the 101 Freeway to San Francisco will shift to a San Jose baseball team which would have a crippling affect on the Giants. The San Francisco baseball team is one hour away from San Jose; Oakland is across the Bay and is accessible by mass transit.
Wolff doesn't seem to want to sue Major League Baseball and challenge the antitrust exemption. Wolff shares the Oakland Coliseum with the NFL's Raiders and Raiders owner Al Davis did sue the NFL in the 1980s when the league interfered with his negotiations with the Coliseum for a lease extension and then tried to block the Raiders' move to Los Angeles.
Davis won.
In 1984, San Diego Clippers owner Donald Sterling thumbed his nose at NBA officials and moved his franchise to Los Angeles without league consent. He was fined $100 million for the move. Sterling sued the league. The two parties settled. Sterling stayed in LA and paid the NBA a $6 million fine.
Major League Baseball did not move a team between 1971 and 2004. The Washington Senators left the nation's capital for Arlington, Texas in 1972. A number of attempted franchise shifts failed for various reasons including San Diego going to Washington in 1974, the Giants to Toronto in 1976, Oakland to Denver in 1979. A number of teams looked at moving to Tampa including the Giants, Seattle Mariners, George W. Bush's Texas Rangers and the Minnesota Twins. Minnesota ownership nearly sold the team to Greensboro, North Carolina interests in the late 1990s if a stadium became available in that North Carolina city. Voters turned down a Greensboro stadium in 1998.
It is not easy to move a team to open markets like Tampa was before 1995, like Denver before 1991, like Washington between 1972 and 2004. What chance does San Jose have? What chance does New Jersey or Connecticut have?
New Jersey may have the right stuff for a Major League Baseball team. In 2000, Major League Baseball had big names like Paul Volcker, the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Richard C. Levin, the Yale University President, the former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and media personality George Will, a former political operative and college professor who won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1977, analyze baseball's financial condition.
The "Blue Ribbon Panel" on baseball economics left the door open for franchise relocation to places like northern New Jersey and Washington despite the presence of teams in the vicinity. New Jersey or Connecticut have a major revenue stream that is currently untapped. Cablevision's Madison Square Garden network has little summer programming of note that would draw in potential viewers since the Yankees formed the YES Network and the Mets, along with Time Warner and Comcast, started SNY. There probably is more than $60 million on the table waiting for a third New York City area team.
New York City is still the financial capital of the United States. The city once had three baseball teams - the Yankees, the Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Walter O'Malley took his Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1957 although he kicked the tires and his Dodgers played seven games at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, N.J. in 1956 and 1957. O'Malley used Jersey City as leverage in his bid to get New York to spring for a new stadium for his Dodgers. Giants owner Horace Stoneham seemed more determined to move his team from upper Manhattan out of the New York area than O'Malley ... with Minneapolis one of his choices.
With the population, the corporate wealth and television monies available, New York City or northern New Jersey would be ripe for a failing franchise. But New Jersey is blocked (as Connecticut would be) because both the Yankees and Mets would nix any move into their territories and the Philadelphia Phillies ownership would probably object to a third New York area team if it was placed in New Jersey. (The Philadelphia Flyers got a million dollars from John McMullen when he bought the Colorado Rockies NHL team and move his newly acquired team into the Meadowlands in 1982).
In Oakland, Wolff has Comcast's TV money, but he lacks corporate support. San Jose wants to build a stadium and Oakland is back in the game.
There are three essentials to running a successful franchise whether it is in Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League or the National Basketball Association or even Major League Soccer. Government support is an absolute necessity in terms of building a facility. Government can build the place with taxpayers' dollars or give substantial tax breaks and incentives (as the Giants/Jets stadium entity is receiving at the Meadowlands) to owners to build their own plants. The federal government regulates Cable TV where billions are made by sports franchises and separates the Yankees, Mets, Angels, Red Sox, Phillies and Mariners from the rest of baseball and corporate support. Corporates can take 50 cents off the dollar in buying luxury boxes, club seats for business purposes.
Wolff already shares the market with the Giants in the Bay Area and cannot get his foot in the door in San Jose. If Sternberg was looking at the New York City area, he would get a door slammed in his face. Sternberg is not seeking a New York area facility and is concentrating on getting a place built in Tampa. The lease in St. Pete has a long way to go but as the late John McMullen once said, a contract is just a piece of paper.
Major League Baseball moved the financially troubled and ownerless Montreal Expos into Washington after the 2004 season once MLB secured a commitment from the city that it would build a state-of-the-art baseball facility. Remember McMullen's comment.
A contract is just a piece of paper.
Washington is about 40 miles from Baltimore and was a part of the Peter Angelos' Baltimore Orioles territory. MLB worked out a deal with Angelos which gave him a regional cable TV network, the Mid Atlantic Sports Network, as a partial payment for the Washington team which "invaded" his territory. That agreement might work in Wolff's favor and could be used by someone in New Jersey if that someone decided that New Jersey and Major League Baseball are perfect together.
The owners of the Seattle SuperSonics took their NBA team to Oklahoma City with two years left on their contract in Seattle to use the publicly financed and refinanced facility for their basketball team. Clayton Bennett reached a financial agreement with Seattle and left. But Bennett had the NBA Commissioner David Stern's blessing. Bruce Ratner is taking the Nets from the Meadowlands to Newark for the next two years with New Jersey's approval along with Stern.
New Jersey had the right stuff for Major League Baseball in 2000 according to Volcker, Levin, Mitchell and Will. The state could not go after the Montreal Expos franchise when it was up for sale in 2002, 2003 and 2004 because of the antitrust exemption. That is why people who want a Major League Baseball team in New Jersey should be paying close attention to Wolff's actions in Oakland and San Jose and what Selig's committee rules.
The door to Major League Baseball in New Jersey could all of a sudden open.
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/why-nj-cannot-get-a-major-league-baseball-team
Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig has a committee trying to figure out whether Oakland A's owner Lew Wolff can move his team from Oakland to San Jose, if San Jose can find the money and is able to build a mostly publicly-financed baseball stadium. The committee has not figured out, as of yet, if they know the way to San Jose but there will be an answer some day. What happens in Northern California should have no immediate impact on New Jersey. But as it stands now, neither San Jose nor northern New Jersey can be the home of a major league baseball team.
The areas are in other team's territories and Major League Baseball, thanks to an antitrust exemption, can just say no to anyone who wants to put a team in San Jose or East Rutherford, New Jersey. There is no proposal at the present time to attract a Major League team to New Jersey although when then Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth opened the door to possible expansion in 1987, New Jersey had a presentation ready. New Jersey also tried to attract George Steinbrenner's interest and get him to move the Yankees across the Hudson in the 1990s.
There are two owners of Major League Baseball teams who have serious doubts about the revenue production capabilities of their present stadiums. Wolff in Oakland and Stuart Sternberg in St. Petersburg.
Wolff has failed in getting a "stadium-village" for his A's and a real estate in Oakland and in Fremont, which is about 20 miles south on the I-880 of the team's present home at the Oakland Coliseum. In St. Petersburg, Tampa Rays ownership, which includes Managing General Partner Stuart Sternberg of Rye, New York is looking for a new stadium in either St. Petersburg or Tampa.
There was a rumor, which was just a rumor, that Rays ownership thought about moving the Rays to Connecticut. There is one other major fly in the ointment though. The Rays' lease with the St. Petersburg stadium ends in 2027.
Both Wolff and Sternberg are trying to work out an arrangement to remain in their present markets. Wolff can get out of his lease within a few years in Oakland as he signed a short-term agreement to keep his team at the Coliseum through 2013. Here is the problem that Wolff faces and a problem that New Jersey would face if someone in the state decided to go after a Major League Baseball team.
Major League Baseball assigns territories to teams. The San Francisco Giants ownership has the San Jose/Santa Clara County territory which is more than 40 miles south of the Giants China Basin ballpark. The Oakland Coliseum is considerably closer to San Francisco and is accessible by the Bay Area Rapid Transit and is not far down the I-880 from the Bay Area Bridge. San Jose became Giants territory in the 1990s when the team attempted to get a stadium built in the South Bay's most populous city. Neither San Jose nor Santa Clara voters had any interest in paying for a Giants stadium and turned down ballpark referendums. Despite the no votes, MLB has not changed the Giants' territorial claim.
Major League Baseball does not live by the same antitrust laws as normal businesses because the Supreme Court of the United States in 1922 ruled that baseball was a game and not a business and gave the "game" an antitrust exemption which still applies to areas like territories and television. Wolff is blocked from even thinking about crossing the Santa Clara County line because that would be crossing his baseball brothers. Wolff tried to get as close as he could to San Jose and Santa Clara and not upsetting the Giants ownership by trying to relocate to Fremont.
Now Wolff is openly talking to San Jose despite the fact that Giants ownership will not cede the territory and Giants ownership through a subsidiary, the San Jose Giants — the California League Class A Giants affiliate — is trying to block San Jose from building a stadium. Giants ownership has a one-quarter interest in the San Jose Giants.
Wolff's Oakland A's are struggling drawing people this year. Oakland does not have the corporate crowd that fills the Giants China Basin stadium. Santa Clara residents might send Major League Baseball is big wakeup call on June 8 by going against national trends and voting to spend public money to build a football stadium for the San Francisco 49ers to show the Giants, MLB and the city of San Francisco that they are fed up with the Giants territorial claims and to stick it to San Francisco city officials and San Francisco Giants ownership by "stealing" or "poaching" the 49ers. Santa Clara is willing to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the stadium.
San Jose is the Silicone Valley and somehow both MLB and the Giants are convinced that money headed up the 101 Freeway to San Francisco will shift to a San Jose baseball team which would have a crippling affect on the Giants. The San Francisco baseball team is one hour away from San Jose; Oakland is across the Bay and is accessible by mass transit.
Wolff doesn't seem to want to sue Major League Baseball and challenge the antitrust exemption. Wolff shares the Oakland Coliseum with the NFL's Raiders and Raiders owner Al Davis did sue the NFL in the 1980s when the league interfered with his negotiations with the Coliseum for a lease extension and then tried to block the Raiders' move to Los Angeles.
Davis won.
In 1984, San Diego Clippers owner Donald Sterling thumbed his nose at NBA officials and moved his franchise to Los Angeles without league consent. He was fined $100 million for the move. Sterling sued the league. The two parties settled. Sterling stayed in LA and paid the NBA a $6 million fine.
Major League Baseball did not move a team between 1971 and 2004. The Washington Senators left the nation's capital for Arlington, Texas in 1972. A number of attempted franchise shifts failed for various reasons including San Diego going to Washington in 1974, the Giants to Toronto in 1976, Oakland to Denver in 1979. A number of teams looked at moving to Tampa including the Giants, Seattle Mariners, George W. Bush's Texas Rangers and the Minnesota Twins. Minnesota ownership nearly sold the team to Greensboro, North Carolina interests in the late 1990s if a stadium became available in that North Carolina city. Voters turned down a Greensboro stadium in 1998.
It is not easy to move a team to open markets like Tampa was before 1995, like Denver before 1991, like Washington between 1972 and 2004. What chance does San Jose have? What chance does New Jersey or Connecticut have?
New Jersey may have the right stuff for a Major League Baseball team. In 2000, Major League Baseball had big names like Paul Volcker, the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Richard C. Levin, the Yale University President, the former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and media personality George Will, a former political operative and college professor who won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1977, analyze baseball's financial condition.
The "Blue Ribbon Panel" on baseball economics left the door open for franchise relocation to places like northern New Jersey and Washington despite the presence of teams in the vicinity. New Jersey or Connecticut have a major revenue stream that is currently untapped. Cablevision's Madison Square Garden network has little summer programming of note that would draw in potential viewers since the Yankees formed the YES Network and the Mets, along with Time Warner and Comcast, started SNY. There probably is more than $60 million on the table waiting for a third New York City area team.
New York City is still the financial capital of the United States. The city once had three baseball teams - the Yankees, the Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Walter O'Malley took his Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1957 although he kicked the tires and his Dodgers played seven games at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, N.J. in 1956 and 1957. O'Malley used Jersey City as leverage in his bid to get New York to spring for a new stadium for his Dodgers. Giants owner Horace Stoneham seemed more determined to move his team from upper Manhattan out of the New York area than O'Malley ... with Minneapolis one of his choices.
With the population, the corporate wealth and television monies available, New York City or northern New Jersey would be ripe for a failing franchise. But New Jersey is blocked (as Connecticut would be) because both the Yankees and Mets would nix any move into their territories and the Philadelphia Phillies ownership would probably object to a third New York area team if it was placed in New Jersey. (The Philadelphia Flyers got a million dollars from John McMullen when he bought the Colorado Rockies NHL team and move his newly acquired team into the Meadowlands in 1982).
In Oakland, Wolff has Comcast's TV money, but he lacks corporate support. San Jose wants to build a stadium and Oakland is back in the game.
There are three essentials to running a successful franchise whether it is in Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League or the National Basketball Association or even Major League Soccer. Government support is an absolute necessity in terms of building a facility. Government can build the place with taxpayers' dollars or give substantial tax breaks and incentives (as the Giants/Jets stadium entity is receiving at the Meadowlands) to owners to build their own plants. The federal government regulates Cable TV where billions are made by sports franchises and separates the Yankees, Mets, Angels, Red Sox, Phillies and Mariners from the rest of baseball and corporate support. Corporates can take 50 cents off the dollar in buying luxury boxes, club seats for business purposes.
Wolff already shares the market with the Giants in the Bay Area and cannot get his foot in the door in San Jose. If Sternberg was looking at the New York City area, he would get a door slammed in his face. Sternberg is not seeking a New York area facility and is concentrating on getting a place built in Tampa. The lease in St. Pete has a long way to go but as the late John McMullen once said, a contract is just a piece of paper.
Major League Baseball moved the financially troubled and ownerless Montreal Expos into Washington after the 2004 season once MLB secured a commitment from the city that it would build a state-of-the-art baseball facility. Remember McMullen's comment.
A contract is just a piece of paper.
Washington is about 40 miles from Baltimore and was a part of the Peter Angelos' Baltimore Orioles territory. MLB worked out a deal with Angelos which gave him a regional cable TV network, the Mid Atlantic Sports Network, as a partial payment for the Washington team which "invaded" his territory. That agreement might work in Wolff's favor and could be used by someone in New Jersey if that someone decided that New Jersey and Major League Baseball are perfect together.
The owners of the Seattle SuperSonics took their NBA team to Oklahoma City with two years left on their contract in Seattle to use the publicly financed and refinanced facility for their basketball team. Clayton Bennett reached a financial agreement with Seattle and left. But Bennett had the NBA Commissioner David Stern's blessing. Bruce Ratner is taking the Nets from the Meadowlands to Newark for the next two years with New Jersey's approval along with Stern.
New Jersey had the right stuff for Major League Baseball in 2000 according to Volcker, Levin, Mitchell and Will. The state could not go after the Montreal Expos franchise when it was up for sale in 2002, 2003 and 2004 because of the antitrust exemption. That is why people who want a Major League Baseball team in New Jersey should be paying close attention to Wolff's actions in Oakland and San Jose and what Selig's committee rules.
The door to Major League Baseball in New Jersey could all of a sudden open.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Do you know the way to San Jose?
Do you know the way to San Jose?
http://www.examiner.com/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m1d1-Do-you-know-the-way-to-San-Jose#
By Evan Weiner
January 1, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) --- To all those prognosticators, and you know who you are, who are trying to predict the top business sports stories of 2010, you have missed what is going to be the biggest fight. Oakland Athletics owner Lewis Wolff and the city of San Jose against the San Francisco Giants, the San Jose Giants, the city of San Francisco and Major League Baseball and the battle will center on the 1922 United States Supreme Court decision that gave the National League and the American League of baseball an antitrust exemption.
Wolff, whose lease with the Oakland Coliseum ends in 2013, would like to locate his baseball business in San Jose. Because of the 1922 Supreme Court decision that baseball was a game not a business, he has many hurdles to climb in his quest, hurdles that would not be there without the SCOTUS ruling.
A little background on this upcoming battle is necessary. In 1967, Kansas City Athletics owner Charles O. Finley decided that Oakland was his best destination after deciding that Kansas City would not support his baseball team and moved his franchise to the city that the writer Gertrude Stein once commented that “The trouble with Oakland is that when you get there, there isn’t any there there.”
Finley moved his team to an area that already had a major league baseball team, the San Francisco Giants, and agreed to an unwieldy deal that limited his ability to truly be a San Francisco Bay Area franchise as he agreed that the A’s territory was Oakland, Alameda County and Contra Costa County which is a relatively small area when examining the entire market. In 1967 neither San Jose nor Santa Clara County, California were considered major league areas but Santa Clara County became the headquarters of National Semiconductor that year and Intel moved there in 1970.
The Silicone Valley was born and all of a sudden a lot of people were not just singing “Do You Know Your Way to San Jose” because it was a hit song in 1968.
The Silicone Valley became a major money area.
Finley apparently was never enamored by Oakland and looked at moving his team to New Orleans in 1978 but he could not break his lease and actually sold the team to Marvin Davis who planned to take the team to Denver but again he could not break the lease. Finley subsequently sold his team to the Haas family in 1980. The Haas family sold the team to Stephen Schott and Ken Hoffman in 1995 and Wolff bought the team in 2005.
Wolff has been looking for a new facility virtually since his first days as A’s owner. He floated an idea of building a “Ballpark village” in a parcel of land next to the Oakland Coliseum and Arena parking lot but could not get Oakland officials to go along with the plan. He then went down I-880 and decided that Fremont, an area as close as he could get to San Jose without infringing on San Francisco Giants territory would be a perfect solution. That deal fell though.
Oakland would like to maintain the franchise, which at the present location is much closer to the San Francisco Giants corporate multi-named home field in China Basin than it would be in San Jose, but so far it appears that Wolff would like to travel into Giants territory and attempt to get a San Jose stadium.
Wolff has some options if he wants to go to San Jose. He can somehow convince the 75 percent of the other 29 baseball owners that it would be in their best interests if he could move to San Jose or he can challenge Major League Baseball’s antitrust exemption.
The San Francisco Giants ownership has territorial rights to an area where voters twice rejected the team’s request for public money to build a baseball park. Yet the Giants ownership has exclusive rights to the territory and will not cede anything to Wolff.
A San Jose group, with ties to the Single A level baseball team, the San Jose Giants of the California League – which is partially owned by the San Francisco Giants ownership—plans to fight any attempts to Wolff and San Jose officials to build a Major League state of the art baseball park in the city if taxpayers funding is used. That, of course, is a bit hypocritical by the San Francisco Giants ownership group because they know that San Francisco has provided every sort of tax break imaginable for their “privately” funded China Basin stadium.
The city of San Francisco is now getting into the fray as City Attorney Dennis Herrera has sent a threatening letter to Major League Baseball and Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig that urges baseball not to invade the Giants San Jose territory.
San Francisco has a privately funded baseball park, why is the city fighting a battle for a private business, the San Francisco Giants? That is rather easy to explain, the city of San Francisco has a major investment in the “privately” funded park. A 2008 Port of San Francisco Economic Impact Study will point this out immediately.
The Giants ballpark, which transferred monies spent at Candlestick Point when the Giants hosted 81 baseball games annually to China Basin, revitalized the area although the report did not point out the financial redistribution of money that left another part of the city, Candlestick Point behind.
“AT&T Park serves as an anchor use for the neighborhood, drawing visitors from throughout the City, region, and nation to shop and dine in South Beach. During its seven years of operation,
AT&T Park has had more than 25.4 million visitors. In 2007, attendance at Giants home games totaled 3.2 million people. AT&T Park held one of its largest events in 2007 when it hosted the Major League Baseball All-Star Game. Giants officials counted 128,322 attendees at official events, while the San Francisco Visitors & Convention Bureau estimated that 250,000 visitors came to the City for the event, contributing $60 to $65 million to the local economy.
In 2006, paid attendance to events other than Giants games totaled 153,434.
This increased activity has established a sense of vitality and a positive neighborhood identity in South Beach, contributing to strong real estate values in the area. In any given year between 2000 and 2006, the median price of condominium units in South Beach was 15 to 44 percent greater than
comparable units in San Francisco. In addition, residential rents in South Beach have consistently exceeded citywide rents since 2002. The difference in average rents between the two areas ranged from one to 11 percent between 2002 and 2006, with the gap growing every year since 2002.
Before 2002, South Beach and San Francisco apartments showed similar average rents, with a difference of only 1.2 to 1.7 percent.”
San Francisco is worried that the city would lose revenues generated by people coming up the 101 from San Jose and Santa Clara, which is why the city is joining the melee.
But there is something striking in the Port of San Francisco’s report, which covered the years between 2000 and 2007.
Fisherman’s Wharf blows away the economic engine that the baseball park allegedly generated.
“Fisherman’s Wharf consistently remains one of San Francisco’s primary tourist attractions. Approximately 12 million visitors come to Fisherman’s Wharf annually, with an average visitor age of 42 and household income of $80,000. The Fisherman’s Wharf Community Benefit District reports that 71 percent of visitors in 2006 were from outside of the Bay Area.
Pier 39, located in Fisherman’s Wharf on Port property has offered a wide variety of specialty retail and restaurants since 1978. Pier 39 now contains approximately 110 stores, 14 restaurants, and the Aquarium of the Bay. The average household income of visitors is roughly $100,000, which is 25 percent more than the average Fisherman’s Wharf visitor and 6.5 percent more than the average San Francisco visitor.
At the end of calendar year 2006, Pier 39 retail and attractions grossed $181 million, representing a $2 million increase from the previous year. Visitors tend to
spend $79 during their average 3.3 hours visit.”
Would San Francisco stop San Jose is somehow that city could replicate Fisherman’s Wharf?
Of course not.
San Francisco never stopped Monterey, California’s development and the city does compete with Lake Tahoe, which is about three and a half hours away by car.
Why is baseball such a treasured business? Why should the Giants business get preferential treatment?
Baseball is a complex business and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes had it wrong in 1922 even by 1922 baseball business standards.
The stage is being set right now and a fierce territorial battle may shape the future of baseball and determine whether or not San Jose can become the home of Lewis Wolff’s baseball team. Wolff has to decide whether he really wants to fight this war and the implications may be felt far beyond the Bay Area.
Selig and his Major League Baseball owners did allow Washington to house a franchise in 2005 despite the fact that it was Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos’ territory. Selig and MLB played around with cable TV rights to satisfy Angelos. The cable TV set up is different in the Bay Area with Comcast (and one of sports major movers in the United States Brian Roberts) fully in control of cable TV sports rights. The distance between Washington and Baltimore is nearly identical to San Francisco and San Jose.
This could be a battle that extends to Congress but would the former San Francisco Mayor, Senator Diane Feinstein along with her colleague Barbara Boxer and the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco want to get involved in the issue? Congress squawks about antitrust issues in sports but does nothing to correct inequities.
If Wolff wins his battle, what is to stop another owner from pursuing a team in the New York City market? Once upon a time there were three New York teams, the Yankees, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Giants. There is still a huge, huge cable TV contract that is available in New York, which is bigger than a number of markets put together, and New Jersey has had eyes on a Major League Baseball team for years.
The antitrust exemption has kept a third team out of the New York marketplace and is preventing San Jose from making an offer to Wolff.
Wolff isn’t the only one who is asking do you know the way to San Jose? The San Francisco 49ers ownership is looking at Santa Clara as a new home and if that fails, the York family may disregard Gertrude Stein’s warning about Oakland. Oakland is a fallback for the Yorks if Santa Clara doesn’t materialize for them.
That story may be the second biggest in sports in 2010 but that is an issue for another day.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
http://www.examiner.com/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m1d1-Do-you-know-the-way-to-San-Jose#
By Evan Weiner
January 1, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) --- To all those prognosticators, and you know who you are, who are trying to predict the top business sports stories of 2010, you have missed what is going to be the biggest fight. Oakland Athletics owner Lewis Wolff and the city of San Jose against the San Francisco Giants, the San Jose Giants, the city of San Francisco and Major League Baseball and the battle will center on the 1922 United States Supreme Court decision that gave the National League and the American League of baseball an antitrust exemption.
Wolff, whose lease with the Oakland Coliseum ends in 2013, would like to locate his baseball business in San Jose. Because of the 1922 Supreme Court decision that baseball was a game not a business, he has many hurdles to climb in his quest, hurdles that would not be there without the SCOTUS ruling.
A little background on this upcoming battle is necessary. In 1967, Kansas City Athletics owner Charles O. Finley decided that Oakland was his best destination after deciding that Kansas City would not support his baseball team and moved his franchise to the city that the writer Gertrude Stein once commented that “The trouble with Oakland is that when you get there, there isn’t any there there.”
Finley moved his team to an area that already had a major league baseball team, the San Francisco Giants, and agreed to an unwieldy deal that limited his ability to truly be a San Francisco Bay Area franchise as he agreed that the A’s territory was Oakland, Alameda County and Contra Costa County which is a relatively small area when examining the entire market. In 1967 neither San Jose nor Santa Clara County, California were considered major league areas but Santa Clara County became the headquarters of National Semiconductor that year and Intel moved there in 1970.
The Silicone Valley was born and all of a sudden a lot of people were not just singing “Do You Know Your Way to San Jose” because it was a hit song in 1968.
The Silicone Valley became a major money area.
Finley apparently was never enamored by Oakland and looked at moving his team to New Orleans in 1978 but he could not break his lease and actually sold the team to Marvin Davis who planned to take the team to Denver but again he could not break the lease. Finley subsequently sold his team to the Haas family in 1980. The Haas family sold the team to Stephen Schott and Ken Hoffman in 1995 and Wolff bought the team in 2005.
Wolff has been looking for a new facility virtually since his first days as A’s owner. He floated an idea of building a “Ballpark village” in a parcel of land next to the Oakland Coliseum and Arena parking lot but could not get Oakland officials to go along with the plan. He then went down I-880 and decided that Fremont, an area as close as he could get to San Jose without infringing on San Francisco Giants territory would be a perfect solution. That deal fell though.
Oakland would like to maintain the franchise, which at the present location is much closer to the San Francisco Giants corporate multi-named home field in China Basin than it would be in San Jose, but so far it appears that Wolff would like to travel into Giants territory and attempt to get a San Jose stadium.
Wolff has some options if he wants to go to San Jose. He can somehow convince the 75 percent of the other 29 baseball owners that it would be in their best interests if he could move to San Jose or he can challenge Major League Baseball’s antitrust exemption.
The San Francisco Giants ownership has territorial rights to an area where voters twice rejected the team’s request for public money to build a baseball park. Yet the Giants ownership has exclusive rights to the territory and will not cede anything to Wolff.
A San Jose group, with ties to the Single A level baseball team, the San Jose Giants of the California League – which is partially owned by the San Francisco Giants ownership—plans to fight any attempts to Wolff and San Jose officials to build a Major League state of the art baseball park in the city if taxpayers funding is used. That, of course, is a bit hypocritical by the San Francisco Giants ownership group because they know that San Francisco has provided every sort of tax break imaginable for their “privately” funded China Basin stadium.
The city of San Francisco is now getting into the fray as City Attorney Dennis Herrera has sent a threatening letter to Major League Baseball and Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig that urges baseball not to invade the Giants San Jose territory.
San Francisco has a privately funded baseball park, why is the city fighting a battle for a private business, the San Francisco Giants? That is rather easy to explain, the city of San Francisco has a major investment in the “privately” funded park. A 2008 Port of San Francisco Economic Impact Study will point this out immediately.
The Giants ballpark, which transferred monies spent at Candlestick Point when the Giants hosted 81 baseball games annually to China Basin, revitalized the area although the report did not point out the financial redistribution of money that left another part of the city, Candlestick Point behind.
“AT&T Park serves as an anchor use for the neighborhood, drawing visitors from throughout the City, region, and nation to shop and dine in South Beach. During its seven years of operation,
AT&T Park has had more than 25.4 million visitors. In 2007, attendance at Giants home games totaled 3.2 million people. AT&T Park held one of its largest events in 2007 when it hosted the Major League Baseball All-Star Game. Giants officials counted 128,322 attendees at official events, while the San Francisco Visitors & Convention Bureau estimated that 250,000 visitors came to the City for the event, contributing $60 to $65 million to the local economy.
In 2006, paid attendance to events other than Giants games totaled 153,434.
This increased activity has established a sense of vitality and a positive neighborhood identity in South Beach, contributing to strong real estate values in the area. In any given year between 2000 and 2006, the median price of condominium units in South Beach was 15 to 44 percent greater than
comparable units in San Francisco. In addition, residential rents in South Beach have consistently exceeded citywide rents since 2002. The difference in average rents between the two areas ranged from one to 11 percent between 2002 and 2006, with the gap growing every year since 2002.
Before 2002, South Beach and San Francisco apartments showed similar average rents, with a difference of only 1.2 to 1.7 percent.”
San Francisco is worried that the city would lose revenues generated by people coming up the 101 from San Jose and Santa Clara, which is why the city is joining the melee.
But there is something striking in the Port of San Francisco’s report, which covered the years between 2000 and 2007.
Fisherman’s Wharf blows away the economic engine that the baseball park allegedly generated.
“Fisherman’s Wharf consistently remains one of San Francisco’s primary tourist attractions. Approximately 12 million visitors come to Fisherman’s Wharf annually, with an average visitor age of 42 and household income of $80,000. The Fisherman’s Wharf Community Benefit District reports that 71 percent of visitors in 2006 were from outside of the Bay Area.
Pier 39, located in Fisherman’s Wharf on Port property has offered a wide variety of specialty retail and restaurants since 1978. Pier 39 now contains approximately 110 stores, 14 restaurants, and the Aquarium of the Bay. The average household income of visitors is roughly $100,000, which is 25 percent more than the average Fisherman’s Wharf visitor and 6.5 percent more than the average San Francisco visitor.
At the end of calendar year 2006, Pier 39 retail and attractions grossed $181 million, representing a $2 million increase from the previous year. Visitors tend to
spend $79 during their average 3.3 hours visit.”
Would San Francisco stop San Jose is somehow that city could replicate Fisherman’s Wharf?
Of course not.
San Francisco never stopped Monterey, California’s development and the city does compete with Lake Tahoe, which is about three and a half hours away by car.
Why is baseball such a treasured business? Why should the Giants business get preferential treatment?
Baseball is a complex business and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes had it wrong in 1922 even by 1922 baseball business standards.
The stage is being set right now and a fierce territorial battle may shape the future of baseball and determine whether or not San Jose can become the home of Lewis Wolff’s baseball team. Wolff has to decide whether he really wants to fight this war and the implications may be felt far beyond the Bay Area.
Selig and his Major League Baseball owners did allow Washington to house a franchise in 2005 despite the fact that it was Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos’ territory. Selig and MLB played around with cable TV rights to satisfy Angelos. The cable TV set up is different in the Bay Area with Comcast (and one of sports major movers in the United States Brian Roberts) fully in control of cable TV sports rights. The distance between Washington and Baltimore is nearly identical to San Francisco and San Jose.
This could be a battle that extends to Congress but would the former San Francisco Mayor, Senator Diane Feinstein along with her colleague Barbara Boxer and the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco want to get involved in the issue? Congress squawks about antitrust issues in sports but does nothing to correct inequities.
If Wolff wins his battle, what is to stop another owner from pursuing a team in the New York City market? Once upon a time there were three New York teams, the Yankees, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Giants. There is still a huge, huge cable TV contract that is available in New York, which is bigger than a number of markets put together, and New Jersey has had eyes on a Major League Baseball team for years.
The antitrust exemption has kept a third team out of the New York marketplace and is preventing San Jose from making an offer to Wolff.
Wolff isn’t the only one who is asking do you know the way to San Jose? The San Francisco 49ers ownership is looking at Santa Clara as a new home and if that fails, the York family may disregard Gertrude Stein’s warning about Oakland. Oakland is a fallback for the Yorks if Santa Clara doesn’t materialize for them.
That story may be the second biggest in sports in 2010 but that is an issue for another day.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
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