16 Comments

A big smile from Nutting when he was able to participate in this fiasco. The lease on PNC Park expires on 2030. It won't be long till Nutting starts putting his hand out and then puts the heat on the city of Pittsburgh, Allegheny County and the state for a new super stadium, more tax breaks or just ask the city to pay for fans tickets and parking or he will move the team to Oakland, Montreal or some other city that previously had a major sports franchise. Antitrust is a good notion but too bad it never became an ideal!

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girlfriend goals.

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Maybe they will spend now and make it one team easier for the Bucs to keep drafting first overall. I am typing this while wearing my bright green Rickey Henderson Mizuno batting gloves.

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I guess the A's will now have the record for having called the most cities home with four. The Braves are next with three and then there are a bunch of teams with two. I may be forgetting a franchise.

And yes, I'm always saddened when a team moves. I had my heart broken by the second incarnation of the Senators moving to become the Rangers.

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not sad because this is the fourth city in history to host the Athletics baseball club

sad would be changing the team name

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I think its fucked that we are relying on vegas during the summer to support a MLB franchise, even namely a hugely historic one like the A's. I don't see a great outcome for this tbh

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MLB set this up when they let SF claim a territory that hemmed the A’s into a relatively small area with no economic growth potential. The Giants got San Jose, which easily merits its own team. It’s a variation on the idiocy with DC/ Balt.

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Oakland's Mayor was a little late with the hostage payment and the owners seemingly quick unanimous vote to allow the move was more or less a message to cities that have franchise's that you better have your taxpayers dollars ready for new stadiums when we say if you don't want the team to move.

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That's the message of fear they want, absolutely.

The problem remains that there are far more existing markets than new ones capable of actually pulling off the whole charade.

The bad news is that Pittsburgh is one of those few markets likely underwater relative to high-growth regions without ballclubs.

I still can't accept, from the depths of my cynical MLB heart, that they'd allow a franchise like Pittsburgh to disappear.

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You can be sure that Nutting will deploy such fear when the time comes to renegotiate the lease at PNC.

I really think the best solution is to remove MLB's monopoly on baseball. There is no reason for it, except that Kennesaw Williams was as corrupt as those he was hired to run out of baseball. No other league holds such privileges, and it is absurd to argue that baseball is not a commodity and therefore not subject to Sherman anti-trust.

Let independent leagues flourish. Let teams move from league to league if they wish. True competition will produce a much more enjoyable product for everyone.

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All the more reason for cities to give MLB the finger. The economics of it have been studied repeatedly, always with the same result. Sports teams are not beneficial.

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Yeah, it's just more "trickle down economics" fantasy BS.

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I believe every bit of what both of you are saying, and yet I can't exactly look at Oakland right now and see the fruits of these decisions leading to anything better for the city than having a couple ballclubs to rally around. Which sucks.

I'm just some guy up in Montana tho, looking on from afar.

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Montana? In Jellystone?!

The cynic in me wonders if they’re a candidate for expansion now.

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True, who needs new markets when the same couple can lob development deals back and forth from one generation to the next lol

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Not that it’s recent precedent, but it happened in Washington in 1960: Senators to Twins, and an expansion Senators (who a decade later decamped to Texas). Which, kinda sucks. Imagine rooting for a terrible franchise in Washington for years, they finally get some good young talent...and the franchise bolts town and becomes one of the best franchises in the AL in the 60’s.

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