Wolff wasn\u2019t alone in his view on territorial rights. Steve Schott \u2014\u00a0who, along with Ken Hofman, bought the team from the Haas family in 1995 \u2014 tried to move the A\u2019s to Santa Clara County during their 10 years of ownership.<\/p>\n
In a recent interview with The Athletic\u2019s Andrew Baggarly<\/a>, Giants chairman Greg Johnson, whose family has been the largest shareholder in the club since 1993, said his responsibility is to protect his franchise.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a guy from the mid-Peninsula, a diehard Giants fan my whole life, and San Jose is just as close for me to drive to,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cWe have a huge fan base there. The overlap would be large, and it would have been detrimental to the strength of this organization. And if you go back \u2014 remember when (the Giants\u2019 Oracle Park) was built \u2014 the ownership group personally guaranteed debt on it to get it built. And a part of that was, \u2018You\u2019re not going to put a team next to us after we\u2019re taking all the risk.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Wolff also directed some of his ire to a blue-ribbon panel Selig convened to study the territorial rights issue, a process that dragged on for years and that Wolff wrote was \u201ca cruel joke.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I did not realize was that the amazing individuals comprising MLB \u2026 attract, employ or have around deceitful and dangerous sycophants,\u201d Wolff wrote. \u201cNot all, but some. And these sycophants assassinated the A\u2019s!\u201d<\/p>\n But should Selig, whom Wolff lauds in the book, take some of the blame, considering he formed the panel?<\/p>\n \u201cWe were in baseball because of Bud Selig,\u201d Wolff said. \u201cI think Bud would admit that he might have re-looked at that situation. But he also has to balance 29 other teams and egos. But your question is right. It would have been helpful if he had understood our problem in a little more depth.\u201d<\/p>\n Wolff supports the possibility of a second team returning to the Bay Area via expansion. Other cities, however, seem more probable destinations, although MLB\u2019s process is likely years away from completion.<\/p>\n \u201cEven today, for some reason, they still control the area,\u201d Wolff said of the Giants and Santa Clara County. \u201cSo when I read about expansion \u2014 you know, Nashville and Portland and Salt Lake (City) \u2014 why isn\u2019t the Bay Area included in that? It was a two-team market. Now it\u2019s a one-team market.\u201d<\/p>\n Johnson of the Giants told Baggarly he had no direct answer as to whether the Giants would support an expansion team in Oakland because he balances \u201cwhat\u2019s good for baseball and good for the Giants.\u201d<\/p>\n Local politics<\/p>\n The general feeling around the Bay Area has been that Wolff was serious about moving the A\u2019s to the South Bay<\/a>. But Wolff says Santa Clara County was more of a cudgel in his negotiations with Oakland than his preferred new home for the team.<\/p>\n In the memoir, Wolff positioned his interest in San Jose<\/a> as a possible destination for the A\u2019s as a means of pressuring Oakland officials to finalize a new stadium for the A\u2019s in Oakland. Wolff confirmed on the phone that this was his view.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is the most astute question we\u2019ve had in 20 years. People didn\u2019t realize I needed that (leverage),\u201d Wolff said. \u201cThey\u2019re nice people, but three different (Oakland) mayors basically said, \u2018Yeah, well, anything you need, but what choice do you have?\u2019 And had the Giants been more cooperative on this, we would have had a choice, in my opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n Jean Quan, mayor of Oakland from 2011 to 2015, didn\u2019t buy that outlook in an interview with The Athletic. Wolff owned property in San Jose and stood to profit if the team moved there, Quan said.<\/p>\n \u201cI was offering him the (Howard Terminal waterfront) site, which we thought was the one he really wanted at one point,\u201d Quan said. \u201cIt was very clear to me that when I was there, he was going to kill that deal no matter what, because he wanted it in San Jose, and he\u2019d make a fortune because he owned the land all around the San Jose site.\u201d<\/p>\n By email, Wolff said he \u201cdid not have any significant real estate in San Jose as I sold the majority of what I had long before I purchased the A\u2019s. Actually, that is where I got most of my funds to make my purchase.\u201d<\/p>\n Wolff wrote in the memoir that Quan was \u201ca rather confused person in my estimation.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe brought in some developer offering to redo the entire Coliseum Site,\u201d Wolff wrote, referring to the longtime home of the A\u2019s in Oakland. \u201cIt turned out he was a waste of time \u2014 he did not perform a single thing that he had Mayor Quan believing. She likewise had no real interest in sports.\u201d<\/p>\n Quan countered that she was not confused and said that while she is not a huge sports fan, she was \u201ca pretty big booster\u201d of the A\u2019s. Quan felt Wolff was \u201carrogant\u201d during their brief meeting.<\/p>\n \u201cAs a woman in politics, I\u2019m used to arrogant men, but that\u2019s probably one of the worst experiences I\u2019ve ever had,\u201d Quan said.<\/p>\n Spending and the future<\/p>\n Wolff wrote that he wound up in the A\u2019s ownership group at the behest of Selig, who asked Wolff at a 2002 World Series game in San Francisco if he had an interest in buying a portion of the team from Hoffman and Schott.<\/p>\n In his own book, Schott wrote that Joe Lacob<\/a>, owner of basketball\u2019s Golden State Warriors, was close to a deal that would have given the team to him instead of Fisher and Wolff. Lacob has spoken about his interest<\/a> in buying the A\u2019s publicly, though Wolff didn\u2019t mention Lacob\u2019s bid in the book.<\/p>\n \u201cI absolutely did not know that,\u201d Wolff said. \u201cThere were two years before John and I actually bought the team that I was working with the team. So if that would have come up, somebody would have said something about it, but I did not know any of that.\u201d<\/p>\n Wolff came to the A\u2019s not long after the franchise gained fame for its 2002 \u201cMoneyball\u201d team, led by then-general manager Billy Beane. Beane\u2019s efficiency-minded, cost-saving approach to roster building has since permeated front offices across baseball. Wolff and Fisher gave Beane an ownership stake as part of Beane\u2019s compensation package to stay with the team in April 2005.<\/p>\n But while a long-term commitment was made to Beane, very rarely under Wolff\u2019s leadership did the A\u2019s make similar commitments to their players.\u00a0 The A\u2019s, who for a time led the league in payroll under the Haas family, have often been criticized for spending too little. After Wolff left the A\u2019s, the players\u2019 union brought a grievance<\/a> against the team (and other clubs) over their use of revenue-sharing proceeds.<\/p>\n In his book, Wolff wrote, \u201cthe A\u2019s successful financial performance was not due to an MLB subsidy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe tried to do as much as we could,\u201d Wolff said by phone. \u201cWould we have devoted 100 percent of the revenue and gone broke? I guess we could have done that.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were competitive. \u2026 We couldn\u2019t fill up the stadium.\u201d<\/p>\n \n The upper decks at the Oakland Coliseum were regularly tarped off. (Kelley L Cox \/ USA TODAY)<\/p>\n But fans have a different view of the club\u2019s perennially poor attendance, blaming A\u2019s ownership for not doing enough with the roster to boost attendance. Leon pointed to constant rebuilds as one of the factors that kept casual fans from attending games regularly.<\/p>\n \u201cWe always had to restart every other year or every four years,\u201d Leon said.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/USATSI_12430027-scaled.jpg\")
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