{"id":281432,"date":"2026-04-23T03:55:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T03:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/281432\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T03:55:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T03:55:21","slug":"former-mlb-owner-claims-despicable-san-francisco-giants-are-the-reason-the-as-left-oakland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/281432\/","title":{"rendered":"Former MLB owner claims ‘despicable’ San Francisco Giants are the reason the A’s left Oakland"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The team formerly known as the Oakland Athletics<\/a> are just two years away from officially moving to Las Vegas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After decades in Oakland, it was a frustrating, heartbreaking conclusion for the remaining diehard fans of the franchise, brought on by Major League Baseball<\/a>\u2019s worst stadium situation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For years, the Athletics and the city of Oakland tried to work out a deal on a new stadium, with several different locations tossed around. They even came close at one point, with a mega-waterfront site deal nearing fruition. The A\u2019s even tried to move south to the San Jose area, hoping to capitalize on the growing, and generally wealthy, Silicon Valley subset of the Bay Area.<\/p>\n

None of it ever worked out, though, and the Athletics are set to play three years in<\/a> a minor league facility in Sacramento before moving to Vegas. There\u2019s plenty of blame to go around, but one of the team\u2019s former owners has one obvious culprit: the\u2026 San Francisco Giants?<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A general view of Oakland Coliseum during the final game played by the Oakland Athletics last month. (Eakin Howard\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Former Athletics owner Lew Wolff blames Giants for A\u2019s moving<\/p>\n

Wolff is out with a new book, called “Moments,” and took a big shot at the Giants organization for pushing the Athletics to leave.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the book, per The Athletic<\/a>, he said the move was “100 percent due to the nasty, shameful, and continuing opposition of the Giants.” Why? Because the Giants blocked the A\u2019s from moving to anywhere nearby, on the grounds that it would encroach into their MLB-defined local broadcast territory.<\/p>\n

That territory included San Jose, because at one point, decades earlier, the Giants had explored moving there themselves. At one point, the city of San Jose sued the Giants over their ability to block the A\u2019s from moving there, but lost and the A\u2019s deal fizzled.<\/p>\n

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“John Fisher gets blamed<\/a> for things he doesn\u2019t deserve to be blamed for,” he said. “We tried everything we could think of, but the real key was we had no leverage. The Giants\u2019 position really, really messed us up in trying to even negotiate with Oakland.”<\/p>\n

There\u2019s some truth to that, though at the same time, many of the issues that arise from stadium deals start because owners want to spend as little as possible of their own money on construction. Las Vegas and the state of Nevada gave the Athletics hundreds of millions of dollars to build their new stadium on The Strip, a handout that Oakland likely couldn\u2019t match. It raises the question that if these stadiums are such good investments, why shouldn\u2019t owners arrange financing themselves?<\/p>\n

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\"Assembly <\/p>\n

Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager, U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, Athletics President Marc Badain, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, Athletics owner John Fisher, Gov. Joe Lombardo, LVCVA President Steve Hill and Clark County Commission Chairman Jim Gibson participate in a ceremonial groundbreaking for the $1.75 billion, 33,000-seat domed stadium for MLB’s Athletics on June 23, 2025, in Las Vegas, Nev. (Ethan Miller\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The answer, of course, is that they don\u2019t want to, because it\u2019s much more beneficial to get taxpayers to fund a substantial percentage of it for them. Sure, the Giants didn\u2019t help, and the Athletics probably should have been able to move to San Jose without interference. Of course, MLB\u2019s arcane antitrust exemption and their territorial rights interfered. Still, they had decades to get something done in Oakland and couldn\u2019t.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The new Vegas stadium will be a gigantic improvement, and the city has already shown support for the Golden Knights<\/a> and Raiders. None of that will make Oakland fans any happier though.<\/p>\n

Ian Miller is a writer at OutKick.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The team formerly known as the Oakland Athletics are just two years away from officially moving to Las…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1334,143,14827,145,144,121010,4820],"class_list":{"0":"post-281432","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-mlb","9":"tag-oakland","10":"tag-oakland-athletics","11":"tag-oakland-headlines","12":"tag-oakland-news","13":"tag-outkick-sports","14":"tag-san-francisco-giants"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}