LAS VEGAS IS THE NEW SPORTS PARADISE, BUT NEVER FORGET OAKLAND’S AGONY
Once the Supreme Court enabled legal sports gambling, Sin City was destined to become Win City, with the Golden Knights claiming the Stanley Cup one night before the Vegas Athletics neared reality
The t-shirts and signs targeted a flim-flam owner, John Fisher. “SELL” was the most common message, though it’s much too late to unload the Athletics to a buyer in Oakland, a tormented town on the wrong side of the bay, 10.6 miles from the tech money and ambivalent decay in San Francisco. The billionaire heir of Gap Inc. — a clothing brand big, when, in the ‘90s? — reflects many of his ilk who backstab the very consumers who’ve kept teams in business.
The victims came anyway, 27,000 strong, to a so-called “Reverse Boycott” that recalled the creative campus protests in nearby Berkeley. This was one final collective middle finger to Fisher and his facilitators at Major League Baseball, a last-gasp rebuke of his greed and neglect, the way he has force-fed a team of glorified minor-leaguers — who replaced a battalion of young stars shipped away to save money — onto poor souls in a sewage-and-possums-infested stadium. Yet if they really thought about it, the people would have aimed their ire at six other names, too.
Samuel Alito. John Roberts. Clarence Thomas. Elena Kagan. Neil Gorsuch. Anthony Kennedy. They are the Supreme Court justices who tilted a 2018 vote that enabled legalized sports gambling in America. Without it, Las Vegas would continue to be forbidden and unspeakable in the sporting kingdom. With it, Sin City has become the favored destination of leagues hellbent on exploiting the gambling-and-glitz fervor they once condemned. When Big Sports went rogue, the doors whipped open to Vegas.
And Oakland lost its ass. First the Raiders, now the A’s. What’s next, Jack London Square?
You do feel good for a place that finally has a community identity apart from Dana White’s blather, Evander Holyfield’s ear, Tupac Shakur’s death, Elvis, the Rat Pack, the Fountains of Bellagio, the clang-clang of casinos and the next residency. There are people who live in Vegas who want nothing to do with neon, pool parties and Carrot Top, and they’ve finally found their soulmates, the Golden Knights, who won the Stanley Cup in a celebration that, naturally, will conclude Saturday night with a parade on The Strip. In a tweet, President Biden congratulated a “proud American city.” Five years ago, you would have looked around and wondered if he was talking about Salt Lake City.
Now, Vegas is in full blast as a burgeoning pro sports hotbed. Sure, gambling is part of it, with opportunistic media companies shamefully planting flags and headquarters there. But bigger than that, you’re looking at a market — among the smallest in the industry — that could transform from zero franchises to four before Mark Davis stops by Great Clips for a haircut. The Raiders, with Tom Brady as a part-owner who will demand victories and and an end to fatal drag racing, play in one of the NFL’s showcase stadiums, which will host next year’s Super Bowl and the 2028 Final Four. The NBA inevitably is coming, with an expansion team perhaps called the James Gang if an aspiring owner gets his way. Because people can bet on apps across this country, what happens in Vegas can happen anywhere — meaning, a gambling scandal. The coronation of the Golden Knights sheds the seamy side to a considerable degree, as the commissioners of four leagues are giddily aware, with money signs shining in their eyes like glare from a slot machine.
A fixed game? An integrity breach? Why would they care about minutiae when so many people are having so much fun and making so much money?
“Vegas, you certainly know how to throw a party,” NHL boss Gary Bettman told screaming fans after the five-game romp over Florida. “What’s going on inside this arena and outside is incredible and a testament to what a great hockey market this is. Not only is Vegas a hockey town, it’s a championship town now.”
Soon enough, apparently, it also will be a baseball town. With Nevada willing to pay a carpetbagger like Fisher, the state legislature approved $380 million in taxpayer money Wednesday evening so he can build a 30,000-seat ballpark. Of all the new franchises, this one is the most perilous as an outdoor summer attraction in a desert town where high temperatures the next week will be mostly in the mid-90s. Mockups of the park, on the site of the Tropicana Hotel by the Strip, include a retractable roof. Still, who wants watch baseball at night, with so much happening nearby, especially if the team doesn’t win?
Short of a lobotomy, Fisher very well might be the same killjoy who has run the A’s like a thrift shop. Only four years ago, they were in the American League wild-card game, with 54,000 fans dodging critters and charring throats at the Coliseum. Their roster included Matt Olson, Matt Chapman, Marcus Semien, Sean Murphy and Liam Hendriks. Once again, a strategy that began in the 2000s as “Moneyball” — maybe you’ve seen the movie — was paying off in the spirit of architect Billy Beane. And, of course, Fisher gutted the whole thing, spiting Oakland officials in ongoing negotiations for a waterfront stadium at the Howard Terminal site. Never mind that California doesn’t hand public money to rich men looking to build stadiums, as Stan Kroenke and Joe Lacob know. Fisher got his stretch jeans in a wad and finally said, “Viva, Las Vegas,” leaving fans to watch a team of neophytes in a rotting building.
The recklessness of relocation is dreadful enough. What’s heinous is when Fisher trashes decades of tradition as the last owner leaving a city that hung its national identity on sports — the nine championships won there by the A’s, Raiders and Warriors. I understand why Lacob wanted his basketball team across the Bay Bridge, where he could buy land and build an arena. I also give Davis some slack for fleeing and taking a $750 million subsidy from Nevada, because he never stopped trying to win in Oakland and always paid tribute to the fans. But Fisher never shows his face, in lockstep with MLB owners who wanted to be in Vegas all along.
To be realistic, the Bay Area no longer should be a two-team market in any sport. Other than New York and Los Angeles — where two baseball teams, two football teams and two basketball teams can be equally competitive on the field and in the stands — no other city can pull off more than one franchise in each sport. The novelty of Vegas makes it more sensible home for the A’s than Oakland. But if Fisher continues to trade young stars before having to pay them big money, his new fan base also will turn on him. Nevada assemblywoman Selena La Rue Hatch is among those doubting that “somehow, a deadbeat owner is going to invest in his team overnight, and suddenly a losing team will become a winning team.” He’s better not disappoint her, or he might end up shoved into a car trunk like Ken Jeong in “The Hangover.”
No two cities on this planet are more diametrically different. Oakland’s grit and struggle mirror that of its mayor, Sheng Thao, who only 12 years ago was living in her car with her newborn son. She was convinced she had a deal with Fisher until recently, telling ESPN, “We were so close. We secured $1 billion for outside infrastructure, and I truly believe the city of Oakland was leveraged in the move to go to Las Vegas. That's why I said no more. No more. It started to feel a little bit abusive in that sense, and that's why we walked away." Once she did, Vegas pounced. Sin City is Win City, everyone’s favorite place now, with the house winning like never before in a 24-hour period that produced a hockey champion and a new baseball team. The aligning of stars seemed more than coincidental, didn’t it?
By Wednesday night, the usual gloom had returned to the Coliseum. After a miraculous seven-game winning streak, the A’s lost to Tampa Bay and dropped to 19-51. An announced crowd of 7,055 — more likely, 5,500 — attended. The derogatory signs were still hanging in the bleachers, but the raucous defiance of the previous night was gone, probably for good. Fisher and president Dave Kaval can’t possibly return to Oakland next season, even if the A’s have to play in their new town’s minor-league park while the stadium is under construction.
Money has won again, as it always does in sports. Fisher very well could be in mid-snooker, bamboozling Nevada politicians such as Stadium Authority chairman Steve Hill, who said, “He has told me that he is committed to bringing a winner to Las Vegas.” Did anyone check Fisher’s fingers to see if they were crossed? If he fails, Vegas would be fine, of course.
Oakland would not be fine. The town’s soul is gone, ripped away by arrogance and greed. If this doesn’t convince fanboys and fangirls that 21st-century sport is anything but a fairy tale, what will?
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.