Oakland’s Heartbreak 💔 One Year Later | Brodie Brazil on How the A’s Were Stolen from Their Fans

Oakland’s Heartbreak 💔 One Year Later | Brodie Brazil on How the A’s Were Stolen from Their Fans

yet, you know, a year later to this day, people who say, you know, I I didn’t watch a lot, but I watched that last one to see how you would handle it and and and just to see how everybody was handling it. And um I don’t know, it’s kind of a pride point that I take. You know, obviously I don’t work there anymore. So like it’s got some other raw feelings, but the fact that I that I handled it in um in in a at least a fair and appropriate and um in a way that I that I hope goes down and is timeless, you know, I hope 20 years from now if I dust off that footage um that I’ll feel good about how I handled it. Dress play. Well, during this multi-part series, I had to go to the source. I had to go to Oakland. I had to go to the East Bay. And one of the voices to me of the A’s fans cause, he was in studio on TV for A’s Games for the last decade and a half. And so A’s fans know him intimately. And then through his YouTube channel, I think even more intimately, is he covered this story as well as anybody could tell it, talk about it, and report on it. Brody, Brazil. Brody, how we doing, DA? I don’t know what to say. I’m at a loss for words right now. Usually, all I do is listen to you. I don’t get to talk back to you like this. This is so cool. I’m I’m a frequent listener and watcher of so many things you do, not just Oakland and AIDS related. Obviously, you’ve covered that topic so well and and I do appreciate the interest you have shown from a continent away. Like, that means more to me than somebody who’s here. Like, I get it. I’ve lived this. you don’t have a horse in this race, but you’ve made it one of your like causes and emphasis areas. So, I appreciate you for this, but again, it’s still so weird that I watch you talk about so many things. I get to talk back to you now. That’s fantastic. Talk back as much as you want and we’ll try to make this as uh as seamless as possible. I was watching this from afar, 3,000 miles away, when it first started to to kind of come to the surface, and I just noticed that a lot of national media kind of just passed the buck of, well, the fans didn’t show up, the stadium’s crumbling, so of course they would move. And I just felt like I don’t think that’s the whole story. The more that I dug, the more that I picked and prodded, the more that I realized, oh my god, that’s 10% of the story, maybe 1% of the story. And there’s so much under this almost like an iceberg. We’re now a year removed from that. And I wonder, do you think that by and large people outside the Bay Area there’s a better understanding of how this went down or is there the same ignorance outside of the Bay Area of why the A’s left? It’s a great question. I think the worry here initially was nobody’s even aware of this and they’re they’re they’re they’re even aware of some question and controversy because it’s so easy to see from the outside like oh hey a lot of teams are moving to Vegas. Look at the Raiders and the Golden Knights existed or or or became uh in existence and Las Vegas is a popular place for pro sports to go after they ignored it for so long. And Oakland’s got its challenges and the Raiders obviously left and the Warriors moved to San Francisco. So they see 1 plus 1 equals 2 and that might be the end of the story. So initially we were like out here we hope people at least have this on their radar. And then the next step to your point was understanding it. And the more time passed and look I think most of the 2023 season for us was the whole Las Vegas public funding thing and would that actually legitim legitimately be an option. the realization and the conversation kind of halfarted in that season, but then once 2024 kicked in, the start of last baseball season, and they announced Sacramento, and they announced the official end of Oakland, I think a lot of people really started to dig in and say, “Well, but why?” And yes, we can see what the fan attendance has been like, but how about the efforts and the trying versus sometimes the the not trying? And on both sides, on the Oakland side, on the athletic side, there’s a lot to uncover here. I could go on for much longer than we have time for here, but I think the point is is that they were became aware of it outside of Oakland, but then they started to understand a little bit more of the details. And once that box was opened, I mean, it’s kind of an endless amount of stories and things that have transpired. And still to this day, not a lot of it makes sense in reverse. That’s a very good point. We’re one year removed from the A’s playing their last game in Oakland. And I’m not sure some of the more important things have clarified. Um, yeah. Okay. There’s always economic forces that are in play and owners that want to make more money and perhaps that’s just the end of the rainbow. That’s just the way that it’s going to be. But do you feel at this point, one year later, that there is clarification on some of the wise, or is it still as murky as it ever was for you? I think the only part that’s more clear to me now is that baseball never really wanted to give Oakland every last chance. And you know, when the the Rays had their situation, and I see Rob Manfred going down to meet with Florida’s governor, or I see an effort by baseball to really say, “Let’s let’s let’s slow things down here and go through this process.” I I don’t feel like baseball had Oakland’s back. And in reverse, it just kind of feels like, well, they were ready to let this slide away. And you know, Rob Manfred, one of my criticisms, and I think he he and baseball have done a lot of good things in the last decade, and not everybody’s going to agree with a pitch clock or speeding the game up or the new ABS system, but um I think they’ve implemented a lot of good things for the game, but in the case of Manfred representing fans, I don’t think he’s done a good job there. To say what he said about Oakland fans, like, whoa, that was an average night of attendance. I guess that’s great for them. uh to not understand or sympathize with customers. Like whatever happened to the expression the customer is always right and I don’t want to say that in this case necessarily like like you should just do anything fans want because they’ll go over the edge and ask for too much. But in this case to not even like build a bridge with the fan base. I think Adam Silver of the NBA, I think Gary Bman of the NHL, I think Roger Goodell of the NFL, like they are all representative of their respective fan bases. And I think in the case of Rob Manfred, it’s like owners, what do you what do you all want to do? Oh, you want to protect your team and trying to get the most public subsidies possible? Well, if you need to use relocation as a tool, I don’t want to tell the A’s they can’t do that. I don’t want to tell the Rays that they can’t do that. Let’s talk about the Orlando Dreamers while the Rays had their roof ripped off. So, they want to keep that leverage out there. And to do that, they had to sacrifice fans in Oakland. So, I think that’s, you know, that’s kind of the part to me of where things really slid away was that baseball didn’t slow this down. Baseball didn’t say, “Wait, do we really like are we really willing to extinct one of our fan bases?” Like, I know it’s it’s one of 30, but to get rid of an entire an entire market and fan base of 57 seasons and just say, “Well, we don’t care if you exist or not anymore.” or to think that you’ll just switch over to being a Giants fan or to think that you’ll follow the A’s to Las Vegas as a as a Northern California baseball fan. No chance. So, it’s been a calendar year since the A’s played in Oakland, their rightful place. I wanted to put together a multi-part series to dissect it all. Make sure you are subscribed to the channel. Click on this button below me. I partnered with The Last Dive Bar. I think we created an awesome t-shirt together and it serves as a reminder that even if this team moves, it’ll still be the Oakland A’s to those who know. As a thank you for all the loyalty, all the patronage from every A’s fan that’s ever reached out to me. Use code Oakland for 10% off your order at watchdastore.com. That’s watchdastore.com. Use code Oakland for 10% off your order. I wonder if the smoking gun is simply waving the relocation fee because if you use the raise which you’ve done really I thought sophisticatedly on your YouTube channel to explain this the they have gone to great lengths to try to make sure to keep the Rays in Florida and there’s a lot less history to the Rays in Florida and I would say a lot less passion in Florida for that baseball team and I think If the raise were to move, I have to imagine they would instigate and institute the relocation fee. So, the fact that MLB just didn’t force John Fiser that punitive action, does that just say it all that baseball was okay, as you said, just kind of giving up Oakland and its fans because they’re going to let him go free, then they really didn’t want to keep him in Oakland anyway. The relocation fee or the lack of it was hard to believe. The other part about it that doesn’t get discussed as as much was there was a vote right November of 2023 at the owners meetings and they said, “Well, do we do we vote to let uh the A’s move to Las Vegas and and have this temporary weird stop in Sacramento?” At least that was kind of being discussed as one of their plans. DA when in 2023, 2024, 2025, when do 30 people walk in a room and all agree on something like to the point of a unanimous vote? had baseball come out and say, “Well, the vote was 25 to 5.” I’d say, “All right, at least they actually took a proper vote. There’s nothing fishy going on here.” The fact that it was 30 to nothing, like what does that say? And I’m not here to suggest there’s conspiracy. I’m here to say that without even speaking it to each other, they all look at each other and go, “We have to do this, right?” And they did. And nobody stood up. And I I know um you know, Peter Sidler had passed away what, just days before this meeting, owner of the San Diego Padres’s. there was all this conversation that he was going to be the one to vote no against against this happening and that several other teams who felt similarly and especially the Los Angeles teams were like wait you you want to take put a team in a market that’s close to us like the Dodgers don’t need to worry about fans but Las Vegas is a Dodger baseball market even if you’re the Angels or the Padres’s you’d want to vote against this there was a lot of thought that well he might have been the one to at least make that stand and he passed away and then it just they got it was unanimously voted on and doesn’t change the overall vote or results. If majority wins, I think they would have got it just because. But the fact that it’s unanimous, I think also tells a story here of of what’s really going on. The story has to be that baseball’s racing to Las Vegas as a market, just the same way the NFL and the NBA want to do and the NHL did. And even though John Fischer is is incapable, inept, they were just going to make sure that it happened because somebody wanted to go there and they wanted somebody there, some team there. So they all stood down. They all stood down and let that happen. Could be that too, right? Like they they were just more enticed by that’s where the popularity is right now. Other leagues are doing it. We don’t want to fall behind the NBA. And think about this, like I mean something is happening at that site. construction of some sort and it’s going up and we can talk more about like you know later on there’s a lot of disbelief of like well is it being funded yet or who’s actually funding this and it’s sad that that’s even a question but I for a lot of time I thought the NBA was going to get into Las Vegas before baseball actually landed there. So to your point, I think baseball was like we we can’t be the last ones in here, you know, and if you just follow the money, sports gambling is is the revenue that right now is helping the leagues become flushed with cash and is um is a way a dynamic for fans to remain engaged with sports at a time when sports are be becoming disengaged with the younger fan. If you’re asking a 21-year-old baseball, 21-year-old sports fan who’s in college and is watching NFL Sunday Ticket in Red Zone, but doesn’t really care about baseball, how are they consuming baseball? Based on their live betting, based on their betting. And baseball wants to capture that all these sports leagues do that’s not football. So, it would make sense to want to get in there. What doesn’t make sense though is to basically say, “Okay, the A’s get to go and there is no penalty in going in instead of saying, well, let’s just put an expansion team there, right? We’ll keep the fan base in Oakland will become a one team market, which is great in sports, whether you’re Sacramento or San Antonio or Salt Lake before the hockey team got there. When you’re the only team in town, you have 100% of that marketplace.” They could have done that in Oakland, but they said, “Nah, no, we’re not interested in that. we just got to get somebody to Las Vegas instead of putting a real a an expansion team there. And that’s the part I don’t understand which feels to me beyond even like the what’s the the shady backstory is like that’s just bad business. Why did baseball not take you why why didn’t they take a relocation fee from the A’s and or take the expansion fee from new owners to get into Las Vegas? I think it also needs to be spelled out that, you know, baseball might have looked at this market and said, “Well, A’s and Giants both in the same area. We can we can do without one of those teams.” And I always thought, well, what does this mean to White Sox fans and Angels fans and Mets fans? You know, the other team, not the big one in the market. Does that mean that you’re disposable, too? Um, you know, that’s part of it. I I would have understood more if Major League Baseball allowed the A’s to move to Sacramento permanently. If they could build a brand new stadium then look I don’t know that Sacramento in this last 12 months have they gotten a fair shake like a real if this was a try out like do they feel like they got some actual looks their attend there if you want to talk about attendance in Oakland attendance in Sacramento was not great 10,000 you can’t even sell that out on a nightly basis that’s it’s a little bit of a red flag but not against the fan base more about the overall um scenery and setting the other thing I want to say about going to Las Vegas and the excitement of seeing what other teams did like the Golden Knights and their their expansion in what 2017 versus the Raiders who came there and have fans or I should say have people in the seats but they’re not all Raider fans. We’ve seen what happens when Kansas City comes into town, when Denver comes into town, when the 49ers take over Allegiance Stadium, like that’s a whole different um can of worms. And to think that baseball like going to Las Vegas in the summertime and playing 81 home dates a year in a dome during the slow time of of tourism in Las Vegas. Again, the amount of home games for Raiders, uh, Raider fans and whoever comes there, it’s it’s doable. It’s it’s on a Sunday. It’s eight times a year. Again, you’re getting so many outside fans coming in to see their team in Vegas play against the Raiders. And the Golden Knights, like they really did it the right way. They paid for T-Mobile Arena all by themselves. They came in during an unfortunate tragedy that had just happened with that shooting at the country music festival that that region needed something to like grasp on to and move forward with and it timed out like that sports saved the day a little bit in terms of emotions down there. They had they got to the Stanley Cup final in their very first year of existence. That’s a Hollywood movie. So, apples and oranges is the story for me between the A’s having success in Vegas versus the Raiders getting football fans to find them in Vegas and the Golden Knights actually being an expansion team with a true fan base with a homegrown product. And you know what? someday like I I could say this firsthand as a fan uh uh employee of the of the San Jose Sharks like you you in the NHL and in sports, you’re going to go through some some years and eras of rough times of contracts and players and having to move things around and rebuild and retool and that happens in a hard salary cap sport like the NHL. Like the Golden Knights are eventually going to have uh you know games where it’s not a full crowd and they’re a bad team for a couple years. So, we haven’t even seen that yet with them. My point in all of this against Las Vegas or or with Las Vegas is just to say that um you can’t just assume that every pro sports team moving there is going to have the same result. It’s a completely different beast. And football doesn’t even need a butt in the stands. They don’t even need it because they have billions of dollars in a national television contract, right? Nobody has to show up to a football game and these owners will still make billions of dollars a year. Certainly different than the other sports, but in hockey, first team in was the most important team in. If hockey was the fourth team into Vegas, it would not nearly do this this well. And their ownership is great. Their ownership is smart and sharp. And John Fischer just isn’t. And so, it’s going to be a completely different beast. And also, you know, hockey is fast. It’s indoors. It can be sexy. It can be a show. Baseball can’t. Baseball needs your loyalty and needs your tradition. It needs you to feel like you’re tethered to it through generations. It is not going to be the same at all. And I just think that this is such such a tragedy. It the whole thing is such a tragedy and so unnecessarily sad. And before you and I spoke, I went back and I watched your broadcast from a year ago, that final home game at Oakland Coliseum. Yeah. And and I thought it’s it’s I I think it’s transcendent. And I’m not just saying that um because you’re here. It’s because in sports there’s a natural emotion that connects us to everything. But rarely do the people on TV show it because we’re supposed to be, you know, starched to collar and professional in front of the microphone and and we are here to present. We’re not here to emote with you. And you guys on that set emoted what A’s fans were feeling because you were that you you for the moment could be very transparent and say we’re not broadcasters here. We’re from the Bay Area and this means a lot and this is heart-wrenching and heartbreaking. Now I don’t know if you’ve ever gone back and watched it. I thought what you did was a great service. a great service to a fan base that deserved somebody to show them what you feel is real and it is worthy and you have dignity in doing so. So, my hats off to you cuz it is so rare for that to have happened. And I know probably from a political standpoint within a company that broadcast a game and a team that is moving, you’re not supposed to be like, “This sucks.” You’re supposed to be like, “Everything’s fine.” But you guys said it sucks. And I think that was an incredibly powerful moment. What do you do with a 43-year-old uh sports po pre and postgame show host who comes out of the studio crying? Do you tell them you shouldn’t have done that? I mean, no. I was I was feeling genuine emotion. And DA, the one thing that I I didn’t want to do was be fake about any of this. Um I’m a real person. These are real connections. I had a long history, you know, again, personally and professionally with the A’s. They won the World Series in ‘ 89 when I was 8 years old and 88 89 to 90 and the Bash Brothers and Ricky Henderson and um Dave Stewart, Dennis Eckersley. I could go on and on and on. Um I didn’t want to go out there and say, “Well, I’m going to cry for effect. That’s that’s just not me.” I just wanted to be genuine. If I was angry, I guess I would let that show to a certain degree. I was disappointed, I definitely let that show to a certain degree. But if I got emotional and cried and you know, certain other things had happened in prior years. one of our uh longtime announcers, Ray Fy, passed away. And I knew the first game of the next season when it was our first game without him. Like when we played the tribute, I’m going to do like I I can’t stop myself and I don’t care if there’s a camera on me or I’m in a studio or five or 50,000 or 500,000 people are watching. It doesn’t matter. I can’t stop myself. And I felt the wave of here I am starting to talk about it and oh boy. And then I I do the whole I can’t, you know, can’t breathe type thing when I start crying and I can’t stop it. And uh I I knew that that was likely to happen. I was not going to force being emotional, but I was not going to stop it. And um you know, it happened several times over the last several days, like the last show I did with my co-host Bip Roberts or Shy Babbitt or Dave Stewart or saying goodbye to Dallas Braden or the final home game or the final overall game uh ever of the Oakland Athletics. So, um, you know, they all I’m just like, well, walk into the studio like, here we go. Uh, the the tears are probably going to happen knowing the situation and knowing me. So, thank you for saying that. Um, I still get, you know, a year later to this day, people who say, you know, I I didn’t watch a lot, but I watched that last one to see how you would handle it and and and just to see how everybody was handling it. And um, I don’t know, it’s kind of a pride point that I take. you know, obviously I don’t work there anymore, so like it’s got some other raw feelings, but the fact that I that I handled it in um in in a at least a fair and appropriate and um in a way that I that I hope goes down and is timeless, you know, I hope 20 years from now if I dust off that footage, um that I’ll feel good about how I handled it. Authenticity is important and it’s a currency that a lot of people can’t buy. And I think we see there’s a lot of people in our industry that make a lot more cash than we do and they have a lot bigger platforms than we do, but they cannot figure out the authenticity part. The authenticity part is something that comes from way deep within you and uh you have it and you have it in spades and it showed there and it was important. It was an important moment to show it. It feels like to me that there was this fight in A’s fans for years of, hey, we’re getting screwed, we’re getting jobbed. The last 24 months was, uh, is anybody noticing we’re really getting screwed and there’s there’s anger here. The LA, yes, there’s a lot of help. Then the last 6 months is desperation. Please tell me this isn’t happening, right? And in the final two months, there is you this this can’t be real. This is a this is a nightmare. just I have to wake up from this and then it ended a year ago and there is a percolation of tell me that maybe there’s something that maybe I can look forward to but there is um a bit of a death of hope that I have sensed from A’s fans you lived it you are living it uh what has been your experience over the last 12 to 18 months in that regard thanks for asking that question because I I’m to your point I’m living it and I I predicted it a little bit maybe in the final six months of hey we think this is the hard part. Like saying goodbye is the hard part, but the absence and it this is like losing a loved one. I hate to always bring sports to anytime to to a life and death type um real life circumstance because fortunately that’s not usually what sports are about, but the death of a franchise, the death of a fan base, the death of traditions, the death of uh things that were passed on from generation to generation of being a fan of this team, um something died here. And so is it’s very difficult to like go go forward without with like the absence is so strong. And I think that’s what we’ve all realized um in these months. Again, I I I’m not taking credit for predicting that. I’m I’m just thinking I not a lot of people realize that this part was going to happen. I think where I’m at now on a couple different regards. People look at a construction site in Las Vegas and say, “Well, it must be happening.” And you know what? To some degree, I just wish at this point just do it. like stop stop being, you know, like stop having questions in the middle of who’s going to fund it. Like just show show me the money. Show the money. Start I mean finish the project, right? And I also believe that at this point, even if the A’s are not and A’s ownership is not fully able to fund this or whatever, you’ve got Major League Baseball that’s going to help you out. You’ve got the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority that’s going to jump in. Like they’ve already put their stamp on this, too. They don’t want to look bad in this process. It’s like the kid who cannot hit the piñata and daddy or mommy comes behind him and says, “Here, Billy, turn to the left and here, take a swing.” And the A’s are that kid and you know that parent or those parents are are baseball in Las Vegas. So, I I do think that it’s something is going to get built there. Some team owned by some person is going to play at that stadium. Probably the A’s. Who knows? Um, but I think more locally to where we’re at and I and I I do want to fit this in there because uh the Oakland Ballers have been a tremendous feel-good win the Pioneer League championship like the providing something for a certain demographic. It’s they they’ve jumped in at a great time but a really hard time too because there’s a lot of people who are just upset at professional sports like base even going to a baseball game in Oakland. They’re they’re just like they have a weird taste about it still. I I hope for the ballers that will fade and I I’ve seen their growth so I do want to just include them in the conversation. But the real thing that doesn’t sit well with me is for example right now in Arizona um they had the Coyotes for a couple decades. They just lost the Coyotes and already there are groups of people between politicians and business leaders and hockey people who are getting together to say, “Okay, we got wronged here. How do we make this right? How do we go about this the right way? How do we talk to the league? How do we talk to everybody to say, “Hey, we’re here. Um, you know, we had this for the past ownership. They screwed it up, but we’re still here. We want this.” What has Oakland done as a city? What has Alama County done as an entity? Like, they’re still worried about playing defense and defending themselves and their reputation and why teams left. Okay, fine. And maybe you believe also that Rob Manfred is here to screw you over until he turns out. But, you know, he’s going to turn out soon. Start the process right now. Stop playing defense on your reputation. Start playing offense on the future. If you really had several ownership groups that wanted to buy the team from John Fischer, let’s bring them back into the fold. Who are they? What would they contribute? How would this look? Do you have a site? Is Howard Terminal like turnkey ready? And if it’s not, and it’s fine if it’s not, how about the Coliseum site site? We’ve got more than a 100 acres there that a lot of different people would love to do something productive with. How can we use that? I guess the point is what frustrates me most in this in this last year is that a lot of people have and they’ve they’ve dealt with the emotion. That’s fine. But at some point you got to turn a corner. You got to pick yourself up and you got to figure out can you do this again or are you just going to let it go and and feel sorry for yourself. That’s where we’re at right now. So if I’ve been accused of anything, um it has been turning a blind eye to Oakland’s responsibility in all of this. Um and I can understand that accusation of my coverage. Um, I have always viewed it through the lens of fans that got effed because I’m at the end of the day going to always sympathize with a fan that has no control over anything and they love something so much and they they can’t help whether their politicians do X, Y, or Z. Um, but let’s dig into that cuz that is a fair part of this. Is the last 12 months an indicator that there is responsibility of um a disorganization or a lack of focus on the task at hand that happened over the last 20 years and is happening again in terms of as you said instead of being proactive and trying to get other ownerships, other sites or maybe a different franchise back. Um that it’s it’s lacking that that focus that perhaps they lacked the last 5 to 10 years. Yeah. And you know, you mentioned you get some some kickback on people or from people who say that you’re not har harsh enough on criticizing the Oakland side or the political side. Like they didn’t do a great job either. There were no heroes in any of this. All it took was one hero from one side to say, “Okay, everybody slow down. I’m going to take charge here. I’m going to navigate us through this. You know, believe me, trust me, we’re going to we’re going to give and take. We’re going to make this work.” Nobody chose to do that. They’re literally all walking around like this or or maybe even with blinders on. Um, it is it is definitely appropriate to fault government leaders over the different course of however many terms and years and decades. Here’s the other thing. This wasn’t just one mayor. Everybody points at former mayor Shang Tao who ran into her own political turmoil of of recent years. There were like several mayors prior to that. And Libby Sha, the prior mayor, had a lot of success in trying to bridge with the A’s and trying to get them on the same page. But that’s the thing. This isn’t even one mayor. This isn’t even one board of supervisors for Alama County. Um it’s it was over decades. So I do blame government. I also realize that sometimes if you’re the city of Oakland, you do have some other more serious problems to tend with. Crime, jobs, economy, homelessness, all the above. Um they’re real life problems. So it’s hard to say, well, we need to prioritize a baseball team. But as even politicians in Oakland said, if you can’t chew gum and walk at the same time, like you can’t be that dysfunctional that you can’t multitask a little bit to something else that’s also, you know, important to your constituents, important to your economy and your industry. Oakland is definitely to blame. And look, we don’t even have time to dig into all the different ways. Uh but just trust me when I say that if you’re if you’re pointing fingers, there’s enough to be pointed in all directions. The A’s are ultimately the ones who forced this timeline. The A’s are the ones who wanted to buy the entire coliseum site as a backup plan to stay in Oakland. Like they were part of let’s make this happen and then they said, “Well, actually, we didn’t buy the land for that. What did you buy it for again?” Um, it it is still the A’s who did what they did. The city and the county did not help. I think that’s probably the best way to sum it up. That’s a really good way to sum it up. And I just think you have to also look at the last year in Sacramento and realize that’s the organization that’s that wrought this. They they stink in Sacramento, too. That at all the things they stunk at in Oakland. There’s no community outreach. There is no fostering local pride. There is no respecting the audience of the consumer. There is no winning product. It is amateur hour after amateur hour after amateur hour and they’re in a new spot. You think that changes just because they’re out of Oakland? It’s the same old stuff. I mean, Sac, they’ve been in Sacramento for, you know, 15 minutes. They’ve already pissed everybody, every a every customer off there. So, I mean, the idea that it is anything beyond that’s the first and foremost problem. The team led by that owner Timmy is also kind of losing the point that that’s going to be that team as long as that owner owns it wherever they play. So, to your point, in the last two things you brought up, Oakland is kind of showing who they are in just saying, “Well, we lost the team and we’re just going to move on.” Like, we never were serious about this anyway. And the A’s have gone on. And if you’re thinking, well, they don’t make any mistakes. They’re perfect. It was Oakland’s fault. They go somewhere else and they they run into more problems. Like, there is that saying, zebras can’t change their stripes, right? And so, here we have two sets of zebras going in different directions. And what’s really different about either of them, you know, again, and and not to say that uh they’re both not responsible. The A’s are still the ones who caused all this. They had a lot more say in this. Um but neither side has been perfect. And you know what, the the Sacramento side, I’ve got to say, you know, there’s even locally here in Northern California, they’re about 90 minutes away from us, a short but long drive, depending on traffic and how you interpret drives. Um, you know, there’s a weird like rivalry or feeling here about Sacramento who’s always wanted a team and now they’re getting this chance, but is it really a chance? Are they getting used? The Sacramento name across the jersey, I think, is so interesting because they’re going to do it next year. They said when they went up there, don’t call us Sacramento. Don’t associate us. Nothing to do. No. And then they do a patch. Then they start rolling out merch and then they want to put it across. So, I think the A’s are realizing, oops, we screwed up. I would have had so much more respect for them had they gone in as Sacramento and did a little bit of that. That’s fine. Or had they said, “We’re not going to do that at all because of this reasoning. Sorry, we can’t help you.” But to say one thing, then to totally do the 180 reminds me of when you were rooted in Oakland until you weren’t rooted in Oakland, you know. Totally. Totally. And I just spoke to Carmichael Dave, who is a big-time sports talk host in Sacramento. A good friend of mine, too. Yeah. He’s great at what he does. for part one of this series. And uh you know, all the same bleaguered feelings towards the A’s that all Oakland fans had for 57 years or at least the the term of of John Fischer are all the feelings that people in Sacramento have and they just it was like microwaved there. They they only had to be there one season, heck, a month before they all were like, “Oh, this is the John Fischer experience. This is the A’s experience.” Okay. You’ve followed, I think, to a fine tip point, the financial ramifications and minations of this better than anybody. When you look at what’s happening in Las Vegas and yeah, there’s there’s a site and it’s bulldozed and there’s cranes, but like is anything actually being built? What’s the timeline and what’s the financing? What are you looking at as real and don’t look behind the curtain when it comes to the A’s of financing of this ballpark? Well, the concrete they’re pouring is real. Like I I just happened to look at the webcam or whatever that is the other day and there’s progress there. So, it’s not to say that things aren’t happening. Um, for the longest time, people were like, “Well, the hotel’s coming down. This is definitely happening.” Well, the hotel, Tropicana Hotel was coming down no matter what. Bal was going to make sure that was happening. My questions now are, who’s actually paying for this initial portion? Is it fully funded all the way? Why does John Fischer all of a sudden need to sell the San Jose earthquakes? like that’s a four or five or six or maybe $700 million sale that wait all of a sudden this is so do you need $700 million right now you you probably do and there’s nothing wrong with saying well I need to sell one of my other assets to make this happen like that’d be totally fine but to deny that um I think those are all the questions that exist not to mention I mean the the valleys for for me seem to be like the Oakland days of casino operators I I at Oakland. Um because they’re like they didn’t have plans and now they just came out with what literally looks like something I could make on chat GPT of renderings of the entire site. And it’s funny because you look at the A’s renderings of the stadium. It’s huge. It’s like on 15 acres and then you look at um valleys and it’s like on a postage stamp and they’re doing all this other stuff. Um, still I mean and I’m I’m looking at construction of this stadium that’s has to be on a circular shape of 9 acres and I’m still like how do you do this or or what’s it when you build it? What’s going to be wrong with it? I mean I I’ve done all like 9 acres is the same size as the Bellagio fountains. Wow. Seriously. No, seriously. Look it up. Wow. Um, but it’s also like even Wrigley Field is a little bit bigger than 9 acres and capacity is fine, but what do people say about Wrigley Field or or Finway Park? Like when I go to a game there, I’m like a sardine. So, there’s still a lot of things I just cannot figure out. Um, you know, and it remains to be seen. Maybe they get it done. Uh, maybe there’s help along the way, maybe there’s some developments, but, you know, this to me is not not a like I can I can see the I can see I can’t see the the other end of the bridge right now that they’re crossing. Brody Brazil joining me on part two of this love triangle when it comes to open. I saw that title. That’s a great title, by the way. I I I you beat me to it. I’ I’ve never used that one, but that is a great one. That’s that is what it is. There’s a lot of hard feelings. There’s a lot of um you know, there’s romance, there’s heartbreak, there’s animosity, and uh I’m sure you have felt a lot of it the same way I have. You know, the people in Las Vegas don’t want to hear me keep badgering the point that this didn’t need to happen. They want me to celebrate Las Vegas. And I look at them and go, “Hey, maybe when we get there one day, fine. But for the moment, you have to respect the deceased.” And at the moment, there’s there’s a few in Las Vegas that seem to be doing a bit of a touchdown dance, which I referenced with with Carmichael David. I’m like, I don’t understand that. I would never dance because of somebody else’s uh death at somebody else’s funeral. But, uh, they sometimes turn the turrets on me because I’ve been the voice of how screwed up this whole thing is. Um, so yeah, there just happens to be every point of this has some remorse or some antagonism or some hard feelings. There’s no point in this triangle that everybody’s like kind of happy and okay with it. But see, like Las Vegas is not, how do I say this? Oakland has been the main character in all of this, right? And Sacramento right now, it’s like we’re the main character. Well, this is still a bigger picture movie and story and we’re not at the final chapter yet. Maybe Las Vegas is some of the final chapters. They move, they play, that’s it. Stadium opens, we’re done. But Las Vegas even feel like they’re the they’re the they’re the main character here. Like, you can’t let that you can’t actually seriously think that. And I also want to point this out. You know, the best conversations I’ve ever had with actual people that I know uh in media and other entities in Las Vegas is just like, hey, we’re only just sharing intel with you here of of where where everybody’s been here with this some of the history you don’t know about this. And when they understand it more, even if they disagree or they’re or they’re very open to accepting the A’s and thinking it’ll be a brand new chapter, um at least they understand that part, you know, but I I do get a lot of the younger sibling type. I don’t want to hear your advice. I’m not I’m going to if I make a mistake, I’ll make it myself and I don’t want to, you know, I don’t want to even hear what you have to say. Okay. Okay. Like we’re just here to talk to you, you know, and nobody’s bashed Las Vegas. No, I’ve never said no. I have said I don’t know how baseball is going to work on the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard in Tropicana. Like you wouldn’t put the New York Yankees stadium in the middle of Time Square. Why are you doing this to a baseball team in Las Vegas? Like you know tourism. It’s not that baseball can’t work at that level in Las Vegas. I’m just saying that site, this plan, this ownership group, all of that. So I think they they hear one negative part and that’s all they can they can fixate on. I think that’s a good point. And uh you know, look, I understand also Las Vegas th those baseball fans that want to be excited about it want to be excited about it. They don’t want somebody to rain on their parade. And I understand that. And and there’s you can’t help but also understand that what they’ve done with the the Knights is extraordinary. They love the Knights. That city has has of all the things the desert in Nevada went all in on hockey and people love it. So that can be a very good sports town. It’s this process that is so dysfunctional. this team that’s going to be popped there at that spot as you said in that timeline and this that seems so dysfunctional that you have to have question marks about the uh the success rate of it. But I you know I I also don’t think that this story is over. I think that we’re a year removed from them playing in Oakland, but we’re years removed from some type of um end result here. They could even open up this ballpark in 28 or 29 and play a full slate there. And I still think it would be a tumultuous next couple of years and we wouldn’t really have kind of full endgame perspective on this for I don’t know 5 years after they get into Las Vegas. Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know. I I think the biggest question I get from people or or the criticism is dude let it go. And it’s like, well, I’m tracking a flight. The plane hasn’t landed yet. So, got that right. Well, I mean, you’re tracking a flight and the airport hasn’t been built yet. That’s not good. Uh, you know, it’s it it it took a while to take off. It was delayed, then it took off, and then it was in a a holding pattern halfway, you know, to its journey and and now maybe it’s maybe it’s descending, maybe not. Maybe it’s going to do a goound. I don’t, you know, so unfortunately like I tell people, yeah, sometimes I get fatigued about this, too. I don’t wake up in the morning and say, “Oh, I can’t wait to make that next A’s video.” I I don’t I’m I’m ready to just have this come to some conclusion. And whatever it is, I I’m again, I’m more focused on what’s doing, what’s Alama County doing, like what what’s actually happening here. Maybe that’s more my emphasis, but I also feel the responsibility. How stupid would it be of me to just say, “Well, I think it’s gone, so I’m just going to let it go.” Um, I I do feel that responsibility to make sure the plane lands. It’s as simple as that. And that has not happened yet. And you might only have to track it until the plane lands. But I think that I will be tracking it in 2030. And if you gave me these two options, option A is the A’s are settled in Las Vegas in a beautiful new ballpark. John Fischer owns the team and it it’s it’s wildly successful and they’re going to be a profitable enterprise for baseball in Las Vegas. is A or B. They built the ballpark. It came in underwhelming. Um the fan base is apathetic and John Fischer’s running into the same problems of uh fan base and funding and revenue that he did for years before. And now there’s question marks about attendance, whether this was worth it and whether they’ve got to sell. I would say I think B will happen. I think B is far more likely than A where it’s like, okay, you know what? It actually ended up working out. I think the the prediction on on my part is like an option C in that maybe I don’t even know who’s going to fully own the team. Is somebody else going to have to buy into this to to fund it to make it happen? Um or or uh if John Fischer still wants to own the team but realizes hey maybe I can’t own the ballpark like I wanted to pay for this and and take the free land and uh own the ballpark and own this $2 billion thing that I’m building here. What happens if all of a sudden MGM comes in or or even because I don’t think B is in the position to do this if somebody else says we’ll we’ll finish the ballpark for you but then right Fischer loses value of the team but at least he gets to keep the team. It’s not viewed as a failure. There’s there’s so many different elements. So my my theory is that a baseball team owned by somebody is going to play at that stadium there. And I can’t assure you that it’s going to look how it does today. I will say that if it does if it if it actually turns out to be the same athletics that it has been for the last 1015 years. I mean, this is still a group that says, “Oh, we’re building to 2028.” You traded Mason Miller this year. Like, I get it like under team control for a little bit longer. One of the more dominant relievers in the game, like a piece of your team. And so, like, is Lawrence Butler ever going to really play uh a game in Las Vegas for the athletics? I don’t know. like does he time out? You know, everybody loves Curts and what he brought to the team this year and I do think he’s a dynamic talent and you know the timing of where he’s at. Yeah, he probably should time out to being an athletic in Las Vegas if they make it there by 28. But how about beyond that? Like they’ve never operated any different. I just go back to zebras and stripes. I don’t know if you can actually change that. And like with the raise in Tampa Bay, it’s part of Stuart Sternberg’s exit, right? He couldn’t get a stadium done. But also a lot of people are like we cannot run the team like this anymore. We cannot do the shoestring budget. We can’t run out openers out there. We can’t do this. And so that’s why the the new group has kind of said, you know, we recognize that it worked, but we don’t know if we can do that still to the same way. But if it’s the same owner, I don’t know how you how do you flip a switch like that? I I I would be surprised if anybody’s able to do it like that. Agreed. I agree with that. Brody Brazil has been um one of the real strong steady informed voices on this for a long long time and I know even before that Ace fans trusted you and your coverage and your thoughts. So um it’s really really a pleasure to finally be able to catch up. We’ve texted, we’ve emailed but we’ve never actually spoken in person. So uh this is awesome man. Thank you so much for taking the time today. First of hopefully several more. So I’ll talk to you soon. Da make sure you are subscribed to the channel. That way you are notified when new parts, new episodes of this series, Love Triangle continues here on my YouTube channel. Make sure you are subscribed. You can also join to become a member for exclusive videos about this conversation but other exclusive perks as well. And watchdastore.com. If you’d like the t-shirt, Forever Oakland, use code Oakland at watchdastore.com for 10% off your order. We will see you for the next installment, the next part of Love Triangle. Thanks for watching everybody.

In Part 2 of “Love Triangle”, Damon Amendolara dives deep into the Oakland heartbreak one year after the A’s left the Bay Area — joined by longtime NBC Sports Bay Area host Brodie Brazil, one of the most passionate and informed voices on the A’s relocation saga.

Brodie spent years hosting A’s pre- and postgame coverage and investigating the team’s move in real time on his YouTube channel. In this powerful long-form conversation, he and D.A. discuss:

💔 Brodie’s emotional final day covering the A’s
🕵️‍♂️ The “smoking guns” behind the relocation vote
💰 Who truly bears responsibility for the move
🏙 How MLB and ownership failed the city of Oakland
⚾ Why this story matters to all baseball fans

This is a must-watch for A’s fans still grieving, and for any sports fan who wonders how something like this could happen.

#OaklandAs #MLB #JohnFisher #LasVegasAs #Baseball #DamonAmendolara #BrodieBrazil #Oakland #SportsBusiness #MLBRelocation

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