MLB's Ugly History of Messing with Oakland
As bad as Commissioner Rob Manfred has treated Oakland fans, his predecessor Bud Selig was worse. Selig spent years blocking ownership groups that could have solved the A's ballpark issue decades ago.
Commissioner Rob Manfred has emerged this year as a belligerent foe of Oakland baseball, angering local fans by insulting their campaign to force A’s owner John Fisher to sell the team.
But Manfred’s predecessor – Bud Selig – was even worse. For years, in fact, Selig blocked potentially great ownership groups from buying the A’s. Instead, he steered the team toward a stingy, incompetent group led by Fisher and Lew Wolff, who happens to be Selig’s old college fraternity buddy.
During this “Summer of Sell,” in which A’s fans have chanted at ballparks nationwide for Fisher to unload the franchise, nagging questions have persisted:
If Fisher ever sells, who would even want to buy this awful team? And have there been any in the past?
As with life, the answers to those questions come at you fast. Yes, indeed there have have been multiple ownership groups with deep pockets that have tried to buy the A’s to keep them in Oakland. That’s been true for a quarter-century.
Let’s start with the most recent groups and then work backward.
Joe Lacob: 2005 to Present
The oft-mentioned option – Warriors co-owner Joe Lacob – has been openly pining to buy the club for nearly 20 years.
Just a few months ago (July 2023), Lacob reiterated his desire to buy the A’s, albeit noting that Fisher’s team is not for sale.
Last year, in July 2022, Lacob aggressively made his case for buying the A’s, laying out his plan for building on the Oakland waterfront. He said he has given a “standing offer” to Fisher.
In 2015, Lacob’s name came up again. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Scott Ostler wrote:
“The good news for Oakland is that Joe Lacob apparently is eager to buy the A’s and build a ballpark… The less-good news is that the A’s are not for sale. They are being held tightly by owners John Fisher and Lew Wolff, for whom the team is a bottomless gold mine, no matter how many games it loses.”
In late 2013, Steven Tavares reported in the East Bay Express that Lacob and Warriors co-owner Peter Guber wanted to buy the A’s. Guber denied having any interest but declined to comment about Lacob. Notably, Lacob never denied the report.
In 2005, Lacob came so close to buying the A’s, he actually thought it was a done deal.
That’s a recurring theme for prospective owners over the years. Such as:
Reggie Jackson – 2005
Former A’s superstar Reggie Jackson thought he had a deal to buy the A’s in 2005. But, according to Jackson, then-Commissioner Selig blocked Jackson’s group. Selig instead delivered Oakland’s team to Fisher and Wolff.
Yes, Jackson reportedly was eyeing Las Vegas back then, but if the commissioner had made staying in Oakland a condition of the purchase, you can bet your life Reggie would have kept the team in The Town.
However, Selig never gave Jackson – or Oakland – that chance.
Peter Guber, Billy Beane, and Bob Piccinini – 2001
Yes, it’s true. Guber also tried to buy the A’s. He joined Save Mart Supermarket chain magnate Bob Piccinini and Billy Beane on that ill-fated deal in 2001 – about a year before the famous Moneyball season made Beane a household name.
What happened to this group? Well, this article blurb helps explain:
That’s where Billy Beane was sitting when Guber and Save Mart Supermarkets chain owner Bob Piccinini negotiated a deal to buy the Oakland A’s in July of 2001. To make sure Beane stayed on after the sale, they were giving him a small stake in the team. Beane eventually got that stake, but not from Guber, whose group got a thanks but no thanks from baseball, which said it would prefer to contract the A’s than see them sold.
Andy Dolich and Bob Piccinini – 1999
This one is the granddaddy of them all. Andy Dolich and Bob Piccinini (yes, the same guy who joined Guber and Beane in 2001) led a wealthy and powerfully connected ownership group that went through a lengthy process throughout 1999 to buy the A’s. They intended to build a new A’s ballpark next to the Oakland Coliseum.
However, when they all gathered with Selig and MLB owners in Cooperstown to seal the deal in September 1999 … well, I’ll let Los Angeles Times sportswriter Ross Newhan describe what happened next:
The A’s hopes of remaining in Oakland may have been damaged even more severely by what some in the East Bay and elsewhere consider a blatant ambush by Commissioner Bud Selig and major league owners.
The decision by owners, meeting in Cooperstown, N.Y., on Wednesday, to table a vote on the $122.4-million sale of the A’s to a group financed primarily by Bay Area supermarket mogul Robert Piccinini and fronted by former A’s executive Andy Dolich ostensibly killed a deal that would have committed the team to Oakland through the 2004 season. … The A’s have been left in owner and location limbo, undercutting the difficult process of rebuilding the fan base after six long and losing seasons.
Are Selig and the owners determined to protect the Bay Area for the San Francisco Giants, who move into a new ballpark next year, and restore it as a one-team market?
That was 24 years ago. Yet it sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
To review, that’s at least four qualified ownership groups that likely would have built a new Oakland ballpark by now. Instead, Selig cleared the way for Fisher and Wolff – who obsessively chased San Jose to no avail for more than a decade.
And those are just the people who went public. I’ve heard a few other names over the past 25 years who wanted to buy and build in Oakland. Some are obscure, and some are well-known and quite intriguing.
The point is that, for all the lip service Selig gave during his tenure about "competitive balance" and "integrity of the game," Selig's interference in A's ownership possibilities obstructed Oakland's ability to compete and rendered the franchise unstable. It also tainted the integrity of the game. For years.
With a real owner, the A’s and the city of Oakland could easily find a solution to their ballpark problem. This city deserves a positive resolution after years of “ambushes” and mistreatment from Selig, Fisher, and other MLB leaders.
What MLB has done to Oakland instead is unacceptable.
Timeline Cleanser
This little guy from Minnesota asks a fair question.
Selig is a self-aggrandizing scumbag who put a statue of himself in front of his team's ballpark. The world will be just a little less crappier when he's worm food.
Chris, with regard to RJ’s offer in 2005, recently in a tv interview with Dave Stewart, Reggie said Selig, as a favor, offered to hand-deliver the written proposal to the committee. Reggie gave Selig the paperwork, but Selig never passed it along.