Good morning. I don’t feel like writing about chickens and I assume you had heard of R.A. Dickey before last weekend. There’s nothing new out there in the Metsosphere this morning so I’m going to dip into the generic pile..
…moving the A’s to New Jersey or Long Island or Brooklyn would solve another of baseball’s thorniest problems. The Yankees, by virtue of being in a media market vastly larger than anyone else’s, can bid up player salaries into the stratosphere with the assurance that it will get that money back with TV revenue. (The Mets should get the same benefit of the NYC media market, but have been held back by a factor that’s hard to legislate: incompetence.)
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Splitting the New York market among three teams instead of two would dilute that advantage and help make for a more level playing field league-wide. This, of course, is why neither the Steinbrenners nor the Wilpons would allow the A’s to move to New York. (Unlike the Bay Area, which MLB has split into discrete A’s and Giants territories, the Mets and Yankees both have veto power over other teams moving into the New York metro area.) The Mets’ owners, ever protective of their territory, even rejected a much-needed payoff that would’ve allowed the Yankees’ top minor-league club to play in Newark for a year, leaving the team wandering homeless this season as the Empire State Yankees.
via Oakland A’s, San Jose move: Forget the West Coast. The A’s should move to New York..
Let’s for sake of argument put the New Jersey A’s in the AL East. Bounce Toronto to the Central and I guess KC to the West (the Astros will be pleased).
The A’s would draw well in their division games vs. the Yankees and baseball could always force some interleague between the NJA’s and the Mets and the Phillies. That’s 25 home games with pretty good crowds..better than many teams get now.
Location-wise I’m not sure where you’d put it. Meadowlands? Newark? New Brunswick?
I’m not sure that you could find a city that would really want the A’s!
Didn’t read the whole article that you quoted, just the part that you put there (and your commentary)…but…there is no way that the Mets, Yanks and the Phils would all agree to allow a major league team to move into NJ…Cripes, the Mets even blocked a AAA team from playing in Newark…
Who do I contact to be reimbursed for the 5 minutes of my life wasted on reading that moronic Slate article?
Several years ago a person in the Commissioner’s office told me off the record that MLB did consider the New York market a prime candidate for another team given population and media. He also admitted that the hurdles involved (namely the Steinbrenners and the Wilpons) made it very unlikely, though not impossible.
They had three teams in the 50’s, with a lot less population and media. In the long run it might not be bad, but being second banana for 20 years is bad enough…imagine becoming third banana.
“Location-wise I’m not sure where you’d put it. Meadowlands? Newark? New Brunswick?”
Put it in Hackensack! That’d teach Billy Joel a lesson! (“Who needs a house out in Hackensack? Is that all you get for your money?” – from “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)”)
And why do I want to teach Billy Joel a lesson? Billy Joel has been “Billy Joel FEH!” since the Last Play At Shea fraud, where after the tickets for the original 7/16/08 Last Play date sold out, they added another show – two days LATER – which meant everyone who had bought tickets for 7/16 under the impression they were going to see the last concert at Shea now held tickets for the NEXT-TO-last show. They could have sold 7/18 first, and kept 7/16 as an open date for a second show.