Bay Area baseball teams a study in contrasts
Posted: Thursday, January 24, 2008 3:28 PM
The bill has come due in San Francisco. Fifteen years of Barry Bonds -- many filled with memories for a lifetime -- have come to a crashing halt. And it's both franchise and superstar that have crashed.
Bonds is an indicted felon, awaiting a trial that could land him in jail. Remarkably, he still harbors hopes of playing in 2008 and informed parties tell me the trial won’t happen for months, affording Bonds an uninterrupted summer.
At 24 Willie Mays Plaza, the home of the Giants' front office, the price for selling out to Bonds in recent years has been the reputations of good men. The first executives to be offered as BALCO “road kill” by self-serving congressmen are Giants owner Peter Magowan and general manager Brian Sabean. And they are the front men for waves of people culpable in the enabling of Bonds and his entourage. Of course, those people are breathing deeply for their names have not been attached to this matter. But Congress has targeted Magowan and Sabean after the Mitchell Report and although my view holds punishment as unproductive, Major League Baseball may need to sate the grotesque beast on Capitol Hill.
All the while the Giants show little life on the field. They have made one improvement this offseason, adding Aaron Rowand, whose offense will surely suffer at AT&T Park. And that’s part of the cost for Bonds -- a development system that's been bereft of position players over the last five years. When the Giants -- built for the now around an aging core -- needed reinforcements, there were none.
In a division ruled by youth, the Giants will lean on pitching. Matt Cain is the starter most highly regarded for his handling of a season marked by pathetic run and defensive support. It was puzzling that the Giants considered a Tim Lincecum-Alex Rios trade as it devalues Lincecum in any future talks.
Then there are the Oakland Athletics. The Bay Area teams are separated by less than 10 miles, but the gulf in their approaches to running their organizations is massive. The A’s spent the fall taking a reality check and came to the conclusion that their team, if it returned intact for 2008, would be just not good enough. So a teardown was ordered. The A’s would not delude themselves or their fans, a refreshing change in today’s world of professional sports.
Like the Giants, the player pipeline for the A's ran dry in the last few years. The difference is that Oakland is proactive and the players it received in the Dan Haren and Nick Swisher deals this winter elevate their farm system into the top 10.
Both teams project at the bottom of their division for the coming season. While the Giants face the prospect of empty seats for the first time in nine years at their downtown ballpark, the A’s hopes to move towards San Jose seem to have stalled.
So two thoughts have surfaced in the Bay Area: 1) Would Oakland sign Bonds, filling seats on a short-term basis and offering their baseball “neighbors” a complete smackdown? The business of such a deal makes sense, but such a move would run counter to everything on which the A’s have been built in recent years. Also, MLB would not be thrilled with a team, located in the modern-day birthplace of steroids in baseball, signing a player destined for a date in federal court. That wouldn’t play well with the aforementioned scholars on the Hill. And also remember that A’s owner Lew Wolff is a lifelong friend of MLB commissioner Bud Selig. 2) Could the punishment to Magowan/Sabean be the lifting of the Giants’ territorial rights to San Jose? This has more sense and much more intrigue. It would hurt the Giants to their core but help Wolff and the A’s achieve their dream of locating in the heart of Silicon Valley rather than the suburbs (Fremont).
The final chapter of this bizarre baseball winter in the Bay Area was the one smart move made by the Giants. They have become a minority owner of the lone regional sports network in Northern California. The deal is staggering and inexplicable to sensible minds in the television business. Comcast has just assumed controlling interest in the network and one wonders if their interest was pre-empting any thought of a “Giants Network.”
Whatever the motivation for Comcast, the result is that one team, the Giants, is now the television rightsholder for another, the A’s. No similar deal exists in baseball. Besides offering the Giants huge financial relief (the team pays a $20 million mortgage annually on its stadium), it changes the dynamic between the two teams in a way that does not portend a happy ending.
