The Sport of the One Percent

For the fifth time in the last thirteen years or so, the A’s have announced plans for a new stadium, this one to be privately-financed along the shores of Oakland proper.  Did I mention it will be privately financed?

Well, put an asterisk on that because the A’s have to buy the 55-acre site from the Oakland Port Authority and are also interested in buying the site of the Oakland Coliseum, their publicly owned home since 1968, in order to redevelop it.  If past is prelude, the public bodies involved can be expected to accept ridiculous, low-ball figures for their land.  In my book, that would constitute a public subsidy.

As to the design, I’d call it a high-Lego concept, with a huge terraced V-shaped structure down the far end of each of the lines and what looks to be some recycled cranes from the port authority.  But, hey, it ain’t my money, and it ain’t my team.

If I were an A’s fan, though, I wouldn’t exactly be feeling the love here.  How else to explain the projected 34,000-seat capacity if not as a slap in the face of those eccentric, blue-collar denizens of the Coliseum, which seats just over 47,000 for baseball?  Talk about wanting to leave the old neighborhood behind.

Baseball likes to bill itself as the national pastime, and maybe it was back in the days of New York’s old Yankee Stadium (with a peak capacity of 82,000) and Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium (79,000), but that was long ago.  If the A’s figure they can make money drawing only 34,000 fans, that means they consider the various other revenue streams—from cable contracts to merchandizing—to be the real money makers.  Fans like the Oakland diehards represent little more than chump change.   

  If and when this design goes up, baseball may as well call itself the sport of the one percent.