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Baseball Primer Newsblog — The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand Monday, December 21, 2009Purdy: S.F. Giants must think San Jose is full of clueless rubesIf you’ve ever had shingles, you could get chickenpox now!
Repoz
Posted: December 21, 2009 at 04:32 AM | 41 comment(s)
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1. The Most Interesting Man In The World Posted: December 21, 2009 at 04:50 AM (#3418401)The Sharks work, but they are the only hockey team in the entire Bay Area. If they played at a decent arena in SF or Oakland, they'd likely draw just as well.
Well, yeah.
Either way, I still want everyone to work out a downtown Oakland site. I think it would really be a sad deal if the A's left Oakland- for Oakland and the A's.
No doubt the "San Jose A's" would generate a few luxury suite sales. But in terms of everybody else, Oakland is a far more convenient location - I sure as hell wouldn't travel down from Marin to see them. Nor would people from the counties Sonoma, Napa, Solano, Contra Costa, San Francisco, most of Alameda and most of San Mateo (not to mention those coming in from the valley) prefer the drive down 101 or 280 (or for the clinically insane, 92, or egad egad 680/880) to coming to Oakland or SF. Geographically speaking, Oakland is far more centrally located.
I mean that's really all it comes down to.
If there was a state of the art stadium with double the ticket prices in Oakland right now they would draw about what they are drawing the last few years. Put it in San Jose and you get at least what they are drawing and the likelihood that the prices can be inflated regularly.
Well, sure. If they attend games. And there's really no evidence of that. Most of San Jose still roots for the other team.
These people will all buy tickets to this stadium in San Jose. They will not care what it costs, because they are too important to have such concerns. It will not matter to them if they ever use the tickets themselves. What matters is that they deserve these tickets, because they are such important people. And when they can't use these tickets (which is most of the time, because they are so very very busy doing very very important things), they will give these tickets to their little people, partly as thanks for helping them do such important things, but also to display what kind and generous people they truly are.
This is how Silicon Valley works. And this is why the San Francisco Giants would much rather have the A's five miles away in Oakland than 45 miles away in San Jose.
So, by all means, move a team there. It's Giants country now, but that could change. And watch the Giants swoon like the A's did when they have to try to replace the giant, meaningless, filthy rich suburb with the piddling pittance that is the East Bay, a place with some meaning but no money.
But Santa Clara....
If the A's move to San Jose, can we just shorten the name to the San Joses?
I probably own more books about the history of Silicon Valley than about the rest of the world combined. :-)
Winchester Mystery House. pwn3d.
Not nearly as well as the Sacramento River Cats, which is the direction the A's should be looking to move, IMHO.
SJ: 211,054 in 70 games
Sac: 657,095 in 72 games
Given the way that tech firms bought up Pac Bell/SBC/AT&T;when it first opened, I'd think the A's would do well in that regard, as long as the economy is strong.
SJ: 211,054 in 70 games
Sac: 657,095 in 72 games
Granted that Sac is AAA and SJ is A, but still, the point stands. I concur that the Sac are may be the A's eventual destination (but probably not for at least 20 years).
I know that public transit helps, but that commute into Oakland/Alameda around game time isn't exactly the autobahn, either.
Obviously there are good financial reasons to go to San Jose, but it's not going to be the panacea the A's seem to think it will be. They'll still need to improve their marketing by a hell of a lot.
Well, for you it is. And for me too; but a lot more of "everyone else" live in San Jose than Oakland, and it's growing much faster. Add in Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, the peninsula up to Palo Alto, and the East Bay up to Hayward, and there's plenty of folks for whom a game in San Jose is as convenient if not much more so than in Oakland. For most of the others, SF is still close and convenient (and if someone's willing to take the 80 from Vallejo through the maze, I don't know if an extra 25 minutes on 880's a dealbreaker).
It's a shame that the situation is being played out like this, with Oakland being judged based on a terrible ballpark and the A's making virtually no effort to stimulate interest; but in terms of general population size, I can understand why Wolff's obsessed with SJ.
I agree 100% with this. Ultimately the problem really isn't with Oakland itself (although it surely isn't helping), it's with Wolff.
And for me too; but a lot more of "everyone else" live in San Jose than Oakland, and it's growing much faster. Add in Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, the peninsula up to Palo Alto, and the East Bay up to Hayward, and there's plenty of folks for whom a game in San Jose is as convenient if not much more so than in Oakland.
The problem is that you've pretty much named San Jose's entire reach in this statement. As Flynn points out above, the A's would be punting the Solano/Sacramento areas, which currently lean towards the A's, and those areas would be immediately swallowed by the Giants (whom, as has been pointed out time and time again, know a thing or two about marketing).
Not sure it's that much of a problem--that's a lot of people, and San Jose's still growing.
Yeah. Again, the current situation makes it hard to tell whether, without Mt. Davis and with a real marketing team, the Solano/Sacramento areas would support the team much more than they are now. I can see that it's a gamble, but I can see why (a) Wolff would rather have a huge population base right there even at the expense of losing one metro satellite area and a few suburban/rural ones, and (b) why Selig would rather have a "north bay" team and a "south bay" team.
Does the South Bay have shortcomings? Sure. Public transportation isn't as good as it is in Alameda County, and it's a much longer haul for fans from north of Berkeley. The A's would trade convenience for Sacramento and Napa fans to compete with the Giants for people from San Mateo and Palo Alto. A Jack London Square ballpark stands a better chance of becoming a tourist destination than any site in San Jose or Fremont. But if the A's want to be proximate to not only the piles of money that have accumulated in Sunnyvale and Cupertino, but also the larger, faster-growing population base, relocating to San Jose makes some sense.
That said, I'd much rather have the As be in Sacramento. That city, and its surrounding suburbs, certainly generates some avid sports fans.
If it were only that I'd agree. Except that you're also trading what interest there is in the North Bay and the Valley. And San Francisco as well as essentially all of San Mateo County. And Alameda County north of maybe the Dumbarton Bridge, which is a pretty sizable chunk.
Would people from those areas visit the A's in San Jose at all? Probably a little. All I can say is that in the last 13 years of living in the North Bay, I have seen the Sharks play in person once. At an exhibition. In Oakland. As craptastic as the Warriors have been for the most part, I've seen them play about 30 times during that timespan.
Well, they're not visiting the A's in Oakland very much right now (obviously this has a lot to do with the stadium, marketing, etc..., but still). The areas that you mentioned apart from maybe the inland Valley and Alameda* are already essentially Giants regions where the A's have to compete to keep a minority position (and there's plenty of folks in both the Valley and even Alameda that root Giants). When the Giants have KNBR and a better TV deal and cetera, that's a very tough competition.
*I'd put the interest line at the San Mateo bridge, not Dumbarton; from Union City and parts of Hayward, taking the 880 south to SJ is just as easy as taking it north to Oakland, and much easier than driving to SF.
I live in Fremont, which is south of Hayward (making it closer to San Jose), and it is MUCH easier to get to the Colosseum around 7 PM than anywhere in San Jose. The entire South Bay is a transportation disaster area.
Last time I went by car through Germany it took three hours just to get past 20 miles of autobahn around Hamburg.
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