Thursday, May 17, 2012

Purdy of the SJ Merc on latest 'A's Aren't Going to San Jose' News

Mark Purdy of the San Jose Merc and I have had friendly debates on the future of the Oakland A's.

Here's his take on the latest news, which he correctly points out is really no news, but I think otherwise.

15 comments:

  1. Mark Purdy is beyond biased,he's doing his best to thank Lew Wolff and the A's for tipping him off that the Giants had fired Nuekom. Selig-Wolff-Purdy.
    Purdy now bashes all things Oakland..he wrote two days ago the Raiders are leaving-eyes roll.

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    1. @May 17, 2012 2:25
      Your 100% correct! Take it from the residents of SF, this man Mark Purdy, Bashed everything San Francisco, in his efforts to get the Yorks & the 49ers to the bland, bland, land of the Suburbs....known as Santa Clara, in your case San Jose...Watch out for him, he is a snake in the grass.

      I can't stand that butt-wipe! Sport reports should stay out of the fray, & just report on the professional sports teams, and keep you opinion to yourself.

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  2. Purdy is a SJ punk. He slams Oakland all the time, while spitting out Wolff's venomous lies. What a sheep.

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  3. All I know is this! Wolfie and Fishie want to move to San Jose real badly! $100 million for the Giants please!!!

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  4. Look. Selig has sold out all his pals when the other owners have said enough. See the McCourts and before that Tom Hicks in Texas the Drayton McLane asshat in Houston, and tried to contract Carl Pohlad's Twins shortly after they won the World Series. Wilpon has until next year's AS game before he gets flushed out and he's forced to sell the Mets.

    Owning a MLB is fat ass money maker before one ticket is sold. The A's are making money, increasing assets, and preserving capital. Lew Wolff (and Loria, Glass in KC, Werner in D.C., Sternberg in Tampa) in spite of their whining are all making money. Every single one of them.

    Here's the deal with the Giants. They have an ironclad, signed in blood deal with MLB, Inc to the rights to San Jose. Its not going away ever unless they want it to. That was the price Selig and the other owners had to pay in order to get Magowan, Burns and the rest of San Francisco Baseball Associates, LLP to agree to a 100% privately owned stadium.

    That is ironclad. It was further strengthened when the San Francisco Baseball Associates bought the San Jose Giants outright. They already have a team in San Jose.

    I have no idea why Purdy is writing the silliness he is; just another case of sputtering, wishful thinking and hallucinations trying to be pawned off as investigative reporting

    The real point here is that Oakland is the ideal place for the A's. The Oakland Estuary and Jack London Square have every bit as much potential, if not more, as the 3rd and King location for Phone Booth Park had in the early 90s.

    Here's the background and the details from two months ago.

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    1. Purdy and the SJ Mercury News got away with sliming SF to steal the 49ers. So now that they have won that fight, by winning a fraud of an election called Measure J, they have set their sites on the Oakland A's.

      I grew up in the South Bay, but how they operate now, is just like a gang of thugs, taking what does not belong to them...Just because SC County is spread out like Los Angeles, with a strip malls on every corner, does not make the South Bay the Capitol of California, thats in Sacramento...But then maybe Mr. Purdy will steal the Capitol of CA. for SJ too....imho

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  5. Mark is a good writer, but he's like a lot of guys who have worked for a long time in one place....he wants his area to be more of a destination spot for sports. Who can blame him? He'll have more to write about and won't have to drive all the way up to Oakland or San Francisco every day (with the exception of when the Sharks are playing) to cover Major League sports.

    But the thing is, San Jose and the A's will continue to cast longing glances at each other across the dance floor, but will be kept away by the Giants insistence that they keep the territorial rights, (granted to the them by A's management back in 1992 so that Bob Lurie could see if the folks down there wanted to build a park for the Giants), and by the fact that in the current economic climate, it will be very difficult to find a site for a ballpark and the money to build one.

    If they want to do it right, they'll need to do what the Dodgers and Giants both did, and that is use no public money to build their playpen. But Fisher and Wolff are rich guys, and they didn't get that way by being foolish. So they'll need to find other folks or businesses who will kick in a large portion of the money.

    Almost every rich owner in pro sports wants a good deal that will limit their financial liability, and then they want to reap the rewards once the fans start clicking through those turnstiles.

    The Giants did it right and that club and it's owners, including their non-baseball revenue from 'Giants Enterprises' has made them among the most secure and financially flush in the game.
    And with that park and the atmosphere they've created, it will only get better, unless the Giants crash and burn as they did from 2005-2008.

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  6. I heard that Wolff has a son who is part owner of the A's. NO wonder he deny's wanting to sell..it just drives up the value of the team.

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  7. Someone alerted me to this comment section. Normally I don't jump into this kind of stuff because I would prefer to have people comment on my columns at the Mercury News site. But I'm making an exception because -- as Rich noted -- he and I have had friendly debates on the topic, so I guess this is just an extension of that. And I always enjoy the dialogue. But I do think it works best if that dialogue is based on facts. While I do have strong opinions--that's my job--I do my best to be accurate with information and fair in my approach as I develop those opinions. There's been a lot of misinformation out there about all this. So with the intent of clearing that up:

    1. The Giants were indeed granted territorial rights to Santa Clara County in 1990 but they are not written in stone or ironclad. They can be overturned by a 75% vote of MLB owners at any time -- and those rights have been frequently bartered away and transferred throughout baseball history. In 1957, the territorial rights to San Francisco were possessed by the Boston Red Sox, who were pressured by MLB to work out a deal with the New York Giants before the Giants were relocated to the West Coast. Otherwise, the Giants would not be here today.

    2. My feelings on this issue are not based on where I live. I'm paid a decent wage to make those drives to San Francisco and Oakland for baseball games. And by the time a new A's ballpark is built--anywhere--I will likely be retired and catching up on my reading, somewhere near the ocean, I hope. Here's the basis of my stridency: I believe the citizens of San Jose should be the ones who decide whether they want to build a Major League Ballpark in their city, not the Giants or Major League Baseball. Wolff and Fisher say they will pay for the entire construction costs of the ballpark but the issue will still have to go to the ballot box. If the San Jose voters decide not to build that ballpark or accept that deal, so be it. But why shouldn't they have a chance to decide for themselves?

    3. I think it would be fabulous if the A's were playing in a new Oakland ballpark right now. But over the years, the city has botched or bumbled any ballpark plans. Mayor Brown decided to build condos on another proposed downtown ballpark site. Mayor Quan wants the A's to build a new ballpark as part of the "Coliseum City" proposal -- but wait, the Clorox CEO who's supposedly behind a new stadium effort says he would prefer to build on a downtown location. A site at Victory Court was identified a few years ago but none of the land has been purchased and no environmental impact report has ever even been started. Is it any wonder Wolff has looked elsewhere? Including San Jose, where a ballpark site has been identified, land partially purchased and an EIR completed?

    4. I have never written that the Raiders were leaving Oakland. I have reported (accurately) that before Al Davis died, he met with LA interests about moving the team back south but ultimately rejected that proposal. I also noted (accurately) that with the Vikings reaching a stadium deal in Minnesota, the Raiders move up on the list of teams that potentially could relocate to LA when their current stadium leases expire.

    5. While I never reveal my sources for obvious reasons, I can tell you that Lew Wolff was not my tipster/source about the Bill Neukom story. I do my best to develop many sources from many teams in all sports.

    Thanks for allowing me to clear up the facts. I won't respond to any other comments here, but you're welcome to visit either the Mercury News site or my Facebook site and have at me. I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read my stuff. And let's hope that, no matter how this turns out, the A's are still playing here in the Bay Area in 10 or 20 years. Anywhere.

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    1. What happened to the plan to build on the Alameda/Santa Clara County line in Fremont? Seemed like a way around the territorial rights issue.

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    2. San Jose and Santa Clara need to go lobby for their "own" Professional Sports teams. And to stop stealing other Communities pro-sports teams, with the help of the SJ Mercury News, and you Mr. Purdy

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  8. South Bay ResidentMay 18, 2012 at 6:35 PM

    Silicon Valley is not part of San Francisco. It the economic center of the Bay Area, not SF or Oakland. We have the right climate, demographics and corporate sponsor's to support a baseball team. Why do you think the 49er's will be here? Let's see: Intel, HP, Apple, Cisco Systems, Google, Yahoo, E Bay to name a few. San Francisco should go back to collecting signatures to ban circumcision and stop looking down their noses at the South Bay, as if we cared what they think.

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  9. Mark Purdy is the same SJ Mercury News Hack that helped the Yorks "Steal," yeah you heard it right, "steal" the San Francisco 49ers to Santa Clara with his overly biased articles. And then when Purdy isn't being "biased" in his reporting, he embellishes his reporting when it come to reporting on the stewardship of SF, & the 49ers.

    The Oakland A's should remain in Oaktown, period! I applaud the Corporations in Oakland for stepping up to buy the A's from the current ownership to keep the team in Oakland. I just "wish" some of our cprporate leaders in SF, would have stepped up to buy the 49ers form the Dorks, the Carpetbaggers from Ohio.

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  10. It wasn't Wolf-but somebody in the A's group. Your over the top admiration for Wolff coincides with the firing. I guess when you write the book you'll admit it.
    And the city of San Jose can build a park you say? They cant even pay cops. You leave out that the A's and John Fisher are 4th or 5th wealthiest group in MLB and could build on their own but are so greedy they want SJ to lower the land from 14 mill to 2 or so. Can you explain why a group like the A's need subsidized land? Oh,they got's money for a billion dollar stadium they say..but not 14 mill for the land

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  11. This whole thing has been planned since at least '98 when Wolff said he would "only" build a ballpark in SJ. His frat buddy most likely assured him that they would get it done in the years to come. The Piccinini group, who would have kept the team in Oakland and embraced the city, was thwarted by Selig at the 11th hour. Years later Wolff becomes the owner. As early as 2006, when he tarped the upper deck, there were rumblings about SJ. This ownership has done everything in their power to cry poor to try and validate their SJ fantasies by citing poor attendance and support in the East Bay. Really? Purdy is just one part of the overall conspiracy that has been at work; the media side. What failing business in the world is ever blamed on their customers? It's ownership with the help of key people inside MLB and the media that have perpetuated this lie from the very beginning. Wolff is a liar. He did the same thing to the Fairmont in SF but ultimately lost. I keep reading things like "Please Wolff, work with Oakland." I'm at a point that I don't even want that. I don't trust that guy one iota and the only way the A's will thrive is with him and the rest of the conspirators gone, including Beane, Crowley, and the rest of them, including some of the announcers. Not Melvin though. He seems like a good guy....until I hear him say things that indicate otherwise.

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