After 57 years, the Athletics are just three days away from their visit to Oakland. The final home series begins Tuesday.
The A’s are moving: in Sacramento for the short term, then in Las VegasThursday’s sold-out finale is a definitive answer to the plaintive cry of Oakland fans: Is there anyone who can stop this movement?
No, but Rep. Barbara Lee tried.
Fifteen months ago, the day before Nevada lawmakers approved $380 million in public funding With a new stadium in Las Vegas in mind, Lee introduced a bill in Congress to prevent the A’s from moving – or at least impose an exit fee large enough to make them think twice about leaving.
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Lee, the longtime Democratic congresswoman from Oakland, even included a knowing nod to A’s story in her effort. She dubbed her bill the “Moneyball Law”.
It was a hot topic for a day. After that, nothing happened to the bill. On Monday, I spoke with Lee to find out why.
When someone in Congress is upset with Major League Baseball, the response is predictable: summon the media, issue a very public threat to repeal the sport’s cherished antitrust exemption, challenge Rob Manfred. I mean, who gets upset about painting Manfred, the commissioner, as the bad guy? Standing up for owners is part of Manfred’s job description.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is about as liberal as you can get in Congress, threatened exemption about the league that killed what turned out to be 43 minor league teams. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who is about as conservative as you can get in Congress, threatened exemption on the league move the all-star game from Atlanta after Georgia passed laws that critics said amounted to voter suppression.
Nothing happened in either case. If something ever gets too serious, the league deploys its lobbyists. Since 1950, according to Indiana University professor Nathaniel Grow, Congress has held more than 60 audiences to debate Major League Baseball’s antitrust exemption, but never repeal it.
So Lee proposed this: MLB teams love to tout the economic impact they have on their communities, many of which have contributed taxpayer dollars to stadiums. Therefore, any team leaving the city would have to repay its community an amount equal to the state and local taxes it paid over the previous ten years.
If a team failed to pay, the league would lose its antitrust exemption.
“It’s absolutely fair,” Lee said. “It’s the only fair way to do it. You have to compensate the community because they’ve invested a lot.”
Lee said she had no idea how much the A’s might have had to pay. She said the idea was to legalize a framework rather than a formula, since state and local taxes vary by community.
“We had no clear idea of what the money would look like,” she said. “We couldn’t go that far. It had to be determined by local jurisdictions.”
Lee was optimistic about gaining support in Washington, though she couldn’t tell another lawmaker what the financial impact of her bill might be. After all, a community can lose a team whether its representative is a Democrat or a Republican, and teams other than the A’s were making noise about potential moves.
The first step for his bill would have been a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican.
Ohio is home to two small-market MLB teams – the Cincinnati Reds and Cleveland Guardians – and Cleveland’s NFL team has already moved to BaltimoreYet Jordan neither co-sponsored Lee’s bill nor authorized the committee hearing needed to advance the bill.
I asked a spokeswoman for Jordan whether he would support the bill; the spokeswoman said she would check but did not get back to me. But among the 434 other members of the House, Lee was able to find only four to co-sponsor The more co-sponsors you have, the more likely your bill is to pass.
“To get co-sponsors, you also have to have an outside strategy, with outside activists or people who have money to get things done, or an organized effort,” Lee said. “There was no organized effort outside for this. We would have had to build that kind of support.”
This type of support usually requires an established organization in terms of experience, logistics and funding.
Yet why couldn’t Lee have mobilized an A’s fan base that Given to a Nevada teachers union trying to block public funding for the Las Vegas baseball stadium, organized creative And crowded demonstrations in Oakland, and flooded Lee’s office with phone calls?
“When people hear about it, at the local level, at the community level, they like it, but it takes a lot of organizing,” Lee said. “I don’t think they’ve been organized for a national effort.”
To be clear, amid Washington’s partisan dysfunction, the outcome might not have been different even with a well-organized and well-funded national effort.
Lee tried. The A’s are screwed anyway.
Does one of the most powerful Americans, a member of Congress for 26 years, feel powerless here?
Learn more: Teachers Union Loses New Legal Attempt to Block Las Vegas A’s Stadium Funding
“No, no, no,” Lee said. “I lost a lot. But I gained a lot, too. I don’t feel helpless, I don’t feel hopeless. We put up a good fight. The city, the county, everybody put up a good fight.”
“Unfortunately, we are losing a team that, at the time, exemplified black excellence in Oakland“This is more than just the team leaving. This is part of Oakland’s history and our culture.”
Thursday is the end. I asked Lee how she felt about it, and she recited the five stages of grief:denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. So I asked her what stage she was in.
“Far from being an acceptance,” she said, “it is certain and sure.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
