A’s have signed a binding agreement to purchase land for a future ballpark in Las Vegas.

soxhop411

news aggravator
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Dec 4, 2009
46,276
Seems like this is going to become a Major thorn for MLB this season.
As we all know the A’s pretty much stripped their team to the studs as they try and either force Oakland to build them a stadium or move the team to Vegas.
Todays attendance at the A’s game? 2,703. Yes. You read that right. Under 3K. I bet there are many minor league teams in baseball and hockey that will draw more than that on a daily basis
View: https://twitter.com/BNightengale/status/1516950729470009344

The Oakland A’s attendance today: 2,703. Lowest since 1980.
yesterdays attendance?
3,748
View: https://twitter.com/sfchronicle/status/1516646618606546944?s=21&t=M_XhBT32QYSrBVGUDARAPA



and this has been brewing for more than a season.
The team with the slogan “Rooted in Oakland” plays its home opener Monday night. Sometime soon, and perhaps as soon as this week, the Oakland Athletics figure to play before an audience counted in four figures.

The A’s did that 18 times last season, and we
did not even start counting until June 29, when pandemic restrictions were lifted and the team could play to full capacity.

On Aug. 23, with the A’s 3½ games out of first place in the American League West, the teamsold 4,140 tickets. On the same night, the A’s triple-A team in Las Vegas sold 6,213 tickets.
But guess what? If you give the A’s a new stadium they claim they will suddenly have top 10 payroll!
View: https://twitter.com/billshaikin/status/1516063267700949000?s=21&t=M_XhBT32QYSrBVGUDARAPA

A's rank last in MLB in payroll. In a new ballpark, A's in the top 10?
"100%," president Dave Kaval says.
Tonight, the home opener, at the home they keep failing to escape. Don't be confused: Low attendance this season is the symptom, not the illness.
I’m not sure why anyone should believe crap like that from a team that has a payroll under 50 million.
And honestly if I was the commissioner I would force the A’s to sell the team as it’s clear they give zero shits about oak or the fans that supported them for decades.
 
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Cellar-Door

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Oakland should say okay.... if you get a stadium you have to be top 10 in payroll every year, if you ever fail to be in the top 10 you have to sell the franchise to the city for $1.
 

soxhop411

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Dec 4, 2009
46,276
Oakland should say okay.... if you get a stadium you have to be top 10 in payroll every year, if you ever fail to be in the top 10 you have to sell the franchise to the city for $1.
Honestly I would love Manfred even more if he blocked the oak a’s from moving to Vegas as it’s clear what the ownership is trying to do here. And force them to sell the team.

fans deserve better than having an ownership group that currently run the a’s
 

VORP Speed

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Since 2000, the A’s have the 6th highest winning % in MLB and have made the playoffs the 6th most times (11 times in 22 years). I don’t think the fans have that much to complain about.
 

jon abbey

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Since 2000, the A’s have the 6th highest winning % in MLB and have made the playoffs the 6th most times (11 times in 22 years). I don’t think the fans have that much to complain about.
They actually have the second best run differential in the AL right now at +14, behind, as we all expected, the illustrious franchise from Cleveland (+22). The AL East is a collective -4.
 

RIrooter09

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Honestly I would love Manfred even more if he blocked the oak a’s from moving to Vegas as it’s clear what the ownership is trying to do here. And force them to sell the team.

fans deserve better than having an ownership group that currently run the a’s
Wait you love Manfred?
 

SemperFidelisSox

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A’s fans didn’t show up last season when they had Olson, Chapman, Manaea, Bassit. This narrative that they went from sell outs to 3k because ownership blew up the team is crap.
 

PseuFighter

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It's an awful stadium that's difficult to get to with nothing nearby in a region that's skyrocketed in price and become completely taken over by the Giants. They've tried for the new stadium on the waterfront for the better part of the past twenty years, and it's just not happening. Moving to Vegas isn't an awful plan at all.
 

MuzzyField

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A’s fans didn’t show up last season when they had Olson, Chapman, Manaea, Bassit. This narrative that they went from sell outs to 3k because ownership blew up the team is crap.
A's fan is not the problem in this money grab equation.

The A's screwed themselves with the giving up of territorial rights to San Jose that the Giants never gave back after not moving there.

Egon safety tip to A's management, don't flush too many toilets at the same time!
 

Ale Xander

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The AAAviators in Las Vegas drew 5,607 yesterday. (Tonight's game not over yet so couldn't find box score/attendance for tonight)
 

TDFenway

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I have not been to a game in Oakland since 2006 and it was terrible then





Charlie Finley knew in 1968 he made a mistake when in Game 2 they only drew 5304

Attendance did improve when the BART subway opened but the team was a hard sell in San Francisco.

I see the A's winding up in Portland as I don't see them being viable for 81 dates in Vegas.
 

Yelling At Clouds

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Tangential question, maybe should be moved to another thread: how do people here feel about expansion? Genuinely curious here, I haven’t formed an opinion on it.
 

Max Power

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Tangential question, maybe should be moved to another thread: how do people here feel about expansion? Genuinely curious here, I haven’t formed an opinion on it.
In general, it would be nice to have 32 teams so there wouldn't have to be a daily interleague game. But 30 actually works better when you have two leagues and teams that play in basically 3 time zones. You ideally want divisions to be broken up by time zone so start times on the majority of games are the same for all the teams.

The easiest thing would be to have the Rays move to Montreal and the A's move to Portland. The AL East would all be even closer geographically and the Mariners would finally have a short flight for some of their road games.
 

Kliq

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The A's never invested in their star players or made a serious attempt to try to retain them and thus establish a strong connection between key individual players and the local fanbase. You can argue that they have "won" a lot of games (but never actually won anything important and haven't won a playoff series in 15 years) but the fanbase lacks identifiable stars to grab on to; there is only so much support you can generate night-to-night as a baseball franchise for a bunch of nameless players that you know will likely not be on the team in two seasons.
 

YTF

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In general, it would be nice to have 32 teams so there wouldn't have to be a daily interleague game. But 30 actually works better when you have two leagues and teams that play in basically 3 time zones. You ideally want divisions to be broken up by time zone so start times on the majority of games are the same for all the teams.

The easiest thing would be to have the Rays move to Montreal and the A's move to Portland. The AL East would all be even closer geographically and the Mariners would finally have a short flight for some of their road games.
Daily interleague games are here to stay. With the new scheduling there will be more or them next season and IMO the universal DH makes an interleague game the same as any other.
 

pokey_reese

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I knew some people involved in the 'get a team to Portland' movement when I was in Oregon. They are serious about it, and I don't think they would have a hard time getting an ownership group together or a stadium site worked out with the city. Concept drawings for a park on the river were pretty cool. It's clear that no matter what, the current situation is unsustainable, bad for fans, bad for players, and bad for the league. Get them out of there.
 

Toe Nash

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Tangential question, maybe should be moved to another thread: how do people here feel about expansion? Genuinely curious here, I haven’t formed an opinion on it.
I posted this in an NBA thread but the NFL, NBA and MLB should all expand. You have ~20% more people living in the country than in the late 90s / early 00s when they last expanded, many more wealthy fans in cities, and more players from all around the world in every league. The supply and demand imbalance is clear from franchise values which have exploded even for less great markets. And obviously ticket prices.

The problem in baseball and basketball's case is that the best regions for expansion are the NY / NJ / CT area and southern CA, and the existing teams will not allow expansion there. If major league sports weren't a cartel of owners, there would be an additional MLB team in the NYC metro (probably southern CT) and probably LA, and then you could talk about moving the A's or whoever to LV and whatever you want to do with the Rays.

The counter-argument would be that fans have more other options for entertainment than they did in the 90s, which is true to some extent but I don't fully buy it. Adding two teams would increase the number by 7% in a country that again has 20% more people living in it.
 

Leather

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Jesus. The St. Paul Saints were an independent league team from 2015-2019, playing 10 miles from The Twins, and drew 8,000 per game in those years. They drew 6,000 per game last year despite having 50% attendance for half the season.
 

LogansDad

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The A's never invested in their star players or made a serious attempt to try to retain them and thus establish a strong connection between key individual players and the local fanbase. You can argue that they have "won" a lot of games (but never actually won anything important and haven't won a playoff series in 15 years) but the fanbase lacks identifiable stars to grab on to; there is only so much support you can generate night-to-night as a baseball franchise for a bunch of nameless players that you know will likely not be on the team in two seasons.
This. I understand why the A's management has chosen to run the team the way they do, as it's clear that it hasn't really hindered their ability to "win games", but I can't blame the fans for not wanting to be on board anymore, as it has to be hard to watch literally every single player you grow attached to shipped out for somehow who will likely be successful two or three years down the road. I can't imagine this makes it easy to grow attached to the current crop of players. Sean Murphy is fantastic, but why bother caring about him when you know he is going to be playing for St Louis or something by the end of next season.

I realize that every fan base deals with this to some extent. But when you think about the way we reacted when Mookie got traded, it's understandable to me that the fans don't want to latch on when the face of the franchise gets traded every two years.
 

Marbleheader

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Tangential question, maybe should be moved to another thread: how do people here feel about expansion? Genuinely curious here, I haven’t formed an opinion on it.
I don't think the league should expand when there are franchises ripe for relocation. The A's to Portland seems like a no-brainer to me. I get the nostalgia of the Expos but Montreal shouldn't get a team before Charlotte or Nashville. Move the Rays out, call them the Nashville Expos and redo the logo a bit.
 

Attachments

Cellar-Door

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Aug 1, 2006
34,460
I posted this in an NBA thread but the NFL, NBA and MLB should all expand. You have ~20% more people living in the country than in the late 90s / early 00s when they last expanded, many more wealthy fans in cities, and more players from all around the world in every league. The supply and demand imbalance is clear from franchise values which have exploded even for less great markets. And obviously ticket prices.

The problem in baseball and basketball's case is that the best regions for expansion are the NY / NJ / CT area and southern CA, and the existing teams will not allow expansion there. If major league sports weren't a cartel of owners, there would be an additional MLB team in the NYC metro (probably southern CT) and probably LA, and then you could talk about moving the A's or whoever to LV and whatever you want to do with the Rays.

The counter-argument would be that fans have more other options for entertainment than they did in the 90s, which is true to some extent but I don't fully buy it. Adding two teams would increase the number by 7% in a country that again has 20% more people living in it.
NBA is putting a team in SEA within 10 years, I have zero doubt, the NBPA came out in support of expansion and the league is not shooting it down, obviously you have to convince the other owners to dilute the revenue share short term. The odds on favorite for the 2nd spot is Vegas who have facilities and a lot of interest, though hypothetically a couple other cities might show interest (KC, TB, etc.). the current TV deal ends in 2024-25, I would guess that's around the time the league really starts discussing it with the governor's board, since they can plan it into the new TV deal.
 

Philip Jeff Frye

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This. I understand why the A's management has chosen to run the team the way they do, as it's clear that it hasn't really hindered their ability to "win games", but I can't blame the fans for not wanting to be on board anymore, as it has to be hard to watch literally every single player you grow attached to shipped out for somehow who will likely be successful two or three years down the road. I can't imagine this makes it easy to grow attached to the current crop of players. Sean Murphy is fantastic, but why bother caring about him when you know he is going to be playing for St Louis or something by the end of next season.

I realize that every fan base deals with this to some extent. But when you think about the way we reacted when Mookie got traded, it's understandable to me that the fans don't want to latch on when the face of the franchise gets traded every two years.
I have a good friend who grew up as a very serious A's fan in the bay area. He is now totally checked out on the team for exactly these reasons. That they haven't had any post-season success has only added to his frustration and fueled has "why should I bother cheering for these guys?" attitude.
 

lexrageorge

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MLB has a choice to make: tell San Francisco Giants to go to hell about their "exclusivity rights" to San Jose, or deal with the fact that the A's will need to be elsewhere. That stadium is the worst in the league right now and it's a long way to 2nd place on that list. Between the dump the team plays in, the revenue cap that MLB's corrupt deal with the Giants imposes on the A's, and fans rightfully getting tired of the "same old story" when it comes to the team, there is no way the A's should stay in Oakland unless something gives. Which is a shame, as the A's had some pretty cool history from their time there, and the Giants are super-annoying.
 

Leather

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I don't think the league should expand when there are franchises ripe for relocation. The A's to Portland seems like a no-brainer to me. I get the nostalgia of the Expos but Montreal shouldn't get a team before Charlotte or Nashville. Move the Rays out, call them the Nashville Expos and redo the logo a bit.
The Montreal metro is nearly twice the size of either Portland's or Nashville's and about 1.6x the size of Charlotte. If they want a long-term home for a team and not run into this problem again in 10 years once the novelty wears off, Montreal makes the most sense from an economic standpoint. The economies of the other cities can't compare.

Nostalgia shouldn't be a factor but neither should should any sense of what's "fair". It's business.
 

axx

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MLB has a choice to make: tell San Francisco Giants to go to hell about their "exclusivity rights" to San Jose, or deal with the fact that the A's will need to be elsewhere.
Totally agree but there's zero chance the Giants lets that happen.
 

Sad Sam Jones

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The thread title doesn't really make sense. It might be a repeat of the Expos next-to-last year, but in their final year they were a lame duck team that had already announced their relocation to DC, had scheduled some of their home games in other locations and were being operated by management assigned by MLB.
 

Marbleheader

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The Montreal metro is nearly twice the size of either Portland's or Nashville's and about 1.6x the size of Charlotte. If they want a long-term home for a team and not run into this problem again in 10 years once the novelty wears off, Montreal makes the most sense from an economic standpoint. The economies of the other cities can't compare.

Nostalgia shouldn't be a factor but neither should should any sense of what's "fair". It's business.
Throughout the Expos 36 year history, they were in the bottom half of NL attendance for all but 5 years. They finished dead last 8 times and several years they were second to last. The South is a hotbed for baseball and in the states of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky , Arkansas, and West Virginia (more than 1/5 of the states in the union) there is exactly 1 MLB team. Just my opinion, but I believe Charlotte and Nashville have a better chance of being more sustainable than Montreal. I get where you are coming from though.
 

Ale Xander

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Quebec needs a 2nd hockey team more than it needs a single baseball team. Plus we don't need that Vermont maple sugar and milkfat revenue to change allegiances.
 

AlNipper49

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I'll stay up late to watch West Coast games with the exception of Oakland. That park is so bad that it makes even watching it on TV horrible. They have like 8 miles of foul territory, it sounds dead and looks like shit.
 

AlNipper49

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Throughout the Expos 36 year history, they were in the bottom half of NL attendance for all but 5 years. They finished dead last 8 times and several years they were second to last. The South is a hotbed for baseball and in the states of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky , Arkansas, and West Virginia (more than 1/5 of the states in the union) there is exactly 1 MLB team. Just my opinion, but I believe Charlotte and Nashville have a better chance of being more sustainable than Montreal. I get where you are coming from though.
Downtown Charlotte or Nashville would be literally perfect. Both are setup precisely perfectly to throw a park right in the middle of everything (Super gentrified core that gets non-gentrified in a matter of seconds).
 

lexrageorge

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Totally agree but there's zero chance the Giants lets that happen.
Technically, the 29 other owners could tell the Giants to pound sand. But they will only do that if they feel having the A's stay in Oakland is more important, which seems unlikely.
 

Daniel_Son

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Not to derail the thread by continuing the expansion route, but has there been any talk about expanding into Mexico? Mexico City would probably be too far w/o an established network south of the border, but Monterrey would be a decent 1st candidate. They've already got a Mexican League team that leads the league in attendance, and it's not too far geographically (or culturally) from the southern teams.
 

Humphrey

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I'll stay up late to watch West Coast games with the exception of Oakland. That park is so bad that it makes even watching it on TV horrible. They have like 8 miles of foul territory, it sounds dead and looks like shit.
It's astounding that the worst of the cookie-cutter round multi-purpose stadia of the 60s/early 70s is the one still in use. The Trop's close behind, however.
 

lexrageorge

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It's astounding that the worst of the cookie-cutter round multi-purpose stadia of the 60s/early 70s is the one still in use. The Trop's close behind, however.
I dunno. As bad as the Trop is (and it's clearly 2nd worst among MLB parks), it seems much closer to <insert your favorite ballpark> than it is to the Coliseum.
 

VORP Speed

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The Trop is like if you saved and scrimped and scraped all your pennies together to buy a blackberry in 2007 to send emails for your new job and then a month later Apple announces the iPhone. And then you get laid off because your boss only hired you as a threat to some of his other employees to get them to shape up, and once they did, he didn’t need you anymore and it turns out you were an idiot to spend your own money on the blackberry. And so now you can’t afford a cell plan so you just use it as a paperweight or doorstop for 10 years and once you finally get re-hired you’re so poor from the decade of unemployment that you’re stuck using the blackberry while all your friends have, like, an iPhone 13 Pro Max and then they make fun of you for not being able to get a date, but you’re walking around with a blackberry in a belt holster so who’s going to date you??
 

PC Drunken Friar

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The Trop is like if you saved and scrimped and scraped all your pennies together to buy a blackberry in 2007 to send emails for your new job and then a month later Apple announces the iPhone. And then you get laid off because your boss only hired you as a threat to some of his other employees to get them to shape up, and once they did, he didn’t need you anymore and it turns out you were an idiot to spend your own money on the blackberry. And so now you can’t afford a cell plan so you just use it as a paperweight or doorstop for 10 years and once you finally get re-hired you’re so poor from the decade of unemployment that you’re stuck using the blackberry while all your friends have, like, an iPhone 13 Pro Max and then they make fun of you for not being able to get a date, but you’re walking around with a blackberry in a belt holster so who’s going to date you??
I would
 

ponch73

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I knew some people involved in the 'get a team to Portland' movement when I was in Oregon. They are serious about it, and I don't think they would have a hard time getting an ownership group together or a stadium site worked out with the city. Concept drawings for a park on the river were pretty cool. It's clear that no matter what, the current situation is unsustainable, bad for fans, bad for players, and bad for the league. Get them out of there.
As a Portland transplant, I agree that the City of Roses would make for an excellent relocation candidate for the A's.

Local and civic pride is extremely high here, and the city is a diehard sports town in the same way that Buffalo is. The MLS team, the Timbers, routinely sell out a 25,000 seat stadium and rank near the top of league attendance figures. The Trail Blazers, who just finished 13th in the Western Conference standings, still managed to fill a 20,000 stadium to 89% of capacity coming out of a pandemic.

Portland also appears underserved by the four major professional sports leagues given its ranking as the 19th largest Combined Statistical Area in the country (the two CSA's ahead of it, Denver and Cleveland, boast 4 and 3 major professional sports franchises, respectively, whereas Portland has only 1). In addition, Nike and Adidas (along with the connections and resources they bring to bear) are headquartered here.

Finally, the failed Lloyd Center mall on the city's inner east side would present the perfect location for a new MLB stadium (great highway and public transit access), much more so than a riverfront site where access, land and infrastructure cost, environmental impact, ground sinking, and liquefaction during an earthquake would be significant countervailing issues.

I worry a bit, however, that Portland's inept city leadership and national reputation for civic unrest during the pandemic may have had a chilling effect on major franchises considering relocating here. I'd be very surprised if Portland was ranked ahead of Las Vegas, Charlotte, Nashville and Austin/San Antonio by either A's ownership or Rob Manfred.
 
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Bernie Carbohydrate

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The Trop is like if you saved and scrimped and scraped all your pennies together to buy a blackberry in 2007 to send emails for your new job and then a month later Apple announces the iPhone. And then you get laid off because your boss only hired you as a threat to some of his other employees to get them to shape up, and once they did, he didn’t need you anymore and it turns out you were an idiot to spend your own money on the blackberry. And so now you can’t afford a cell plan so you just use it as a paperweight or doorstop for 10 years and once you finally get re-hired you’re so poor from the decade of unemployment that you’re stuck using the blackberry while all your friends have, like, an iPhone 13 Pro Max and then they make fun of you for not being able to get a date, but you’re walking around with a blackberry in a belt holster so who’s going to date you??
I still miss my Blackberry.
 

candylandriots

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The Trop is like if you saved and scrimped and scraped all your pennies together to buy a blackberry in 2007 to send emails for your new job and then a month later Apple announces the iPhone. And then you get laid off because your boss only hired you as a threat to some of his other employees to get them to shape up, and once they did, he didn’t need you anymore and it turns out you were an idiot to spend your own money on the blackberry. And so now you can’t afford a cell plan so you just use it as a paperweight or doorstop for 10 years and once you finally get re-hired you’re so poor from the decade of unemployment that you’re stuck using the blackberry while all your friends have, like, an iPhone 13 Pro Max and then they make fun of you for not being able to get a date, but you’re walking around with a blackberry in a belt holster so who’s going to date you??
That is a very specific analogy.
 

Humphrey

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Attendance fro the 3 game series averaged 3,600; which is equivalent to the average attendance of the 1952 Boston Braves (277K total for the season).
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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It's astounding that the worst of the cookie-cutter round multi-purpose stadia of the 60s/early 70s is the one still in use. The Trop's close behind, however.
It's sad because before Mt Davis was added, it really wasn't a bad spot even as a "cookie-cutter" park. The view through the open end beyond CF gave it character. The foul territory was (still is) ridiculous but it gave the place character like the Monster or the ivy or the RF overhang give/gave Fenway, Wrigley, and Tiger Stadium character. After Mt Davis, it was just another anti-septic monolith with no character and no appeal.

 

PseuFighter

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And goes without saying that Mt. Davis was added for the Raiders, who left again. So the team is left with a dump that was last fixed up, if you can even call it that, for football. Also worth mentioning the arena nextdoor is now abandoned with the Warriors getting their new rich person’s palace in SF.

The whole Coliseum complex needs to be torn down and turned into something better.
 

Humphrey

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What's the problem with building a reasonable ballpark where the arena is considering it's most likely coming down as well- you don't lose much parking in the interim, then when the Mausoleum is finally razed, you get more back.