THE BUILD-IT-OR-LOSE-IT POLICY

The recent excitement over the Oakland A’s record winning streak revives an old question: why do Oakland A’s fans need a new stadium? Not the A’s owners, or major league baseball…for them, like the young folks say, it’s all about the benjamins. But what about the people who pay their money and come out to the games? Why is it so important to them that a new stadium is built?

I’m not talking about what the fans would like. We’d all like new things. I’d like a new car, myself, preferably a Lexus. But that ain’t a need. The hatchback gets me where I want to go.

Sure, the building of the Mt. Davis seats along the hills side of the Coliseum is supposed to have made it a less pleasant place for fans, or that’s the word we keep hearing, anyways. Me, I can’t really tell the difference. I always thought that you went to a baseball game to watch those guys running around on the field. Are fans really staying away from Oakland baseball because they can’t get a good view of the Leona Quarry through the afternoon smog?

A’s baseball remains the best professional sports bargain in Oakland. For $25, you can get a seat close enough to the field that you can chat with the players as they walk back and forth to the bullpen. $25 won’t even get you past the front gate at a Raiders game, and comparable courtside Warriors seats run in the several hundreds. There are supposed to be Warriors seats that run about $24, but in an area where you get a better view of that girl in the go-go cage on the top tier than you do of those itty-bitty guys way down there on the court.

If a new all-baseball A’s stadium were to be built somewhere in the East Bay…either in Oakland or, possibly, Fremont…that A’s bargain would almost certainly go the way of the 25 cent Bay Bridge toll or the more recent $3 Golden Gate Bridge toll. Contrary to popular belief, baseball ticket prices are probably based less on players’ salaries than they are on supply-and-demand. The new, baseball-only stadiums are being built with a smaller seating capacity so that the owners can jack up the prices. So what good would a brand-new stadium be to the fans who could no longer afford to attend?

You want to get a vision of the future of major league baseball if all this comes to pass? Take a look at the history of the Raiders in Oakland. The Oakland Raiders, Part One, were a working class team. Ticket prices were affordable, and seats were available to the average Oaklander. That’s part of what fueled this city’s original love affair with the team. But when the Raiders returned from Los Angeles, tickets were beyond the price range of most Raider fans in this city. It’s sort of sad, watching people walk around with t-shirts and watch-caps sporting the logo of a team whose players they can’t ever afford to go to a game to see. Most of us watch Raider games from afar (on those rare times when they aren’t blacked out locally) while the luxury boxes are filled by the corporates and the general stadium crowd has a distinctly east-of-the-hills flavor.

Don’t get me wrong, folks. I love them east-of-the-hills folks, and I think they should come through the Caldecott as much as possible and spend their available cash. I just believe that Oakland attractions should be economically available to the average Oakland citizen, lest we become like one of those old colonial nations, where all of the best entertainment venues were exclusively for the tourists, available to the natives only if they wore a cook’s or maid’s uniform.

A’s fans are smart enough to figure out what they want to do, without a columnist’s advice. Still, I’ll give a little. If I were an A’s fan and I was worried about the A’s leaving Oakland, I’d get off Oakland City Council’s back about building a new stadium. Instead, I’d go after the A’s owners and major league baseball in general about their build-it-or-lose-it policy. That’s where the problem lies.