The committee will be chaired by Bob Starkey, a stadium expert and financial consultant for Major League Baseball. It also will consist of Corey Busch, a former baseball executive, and Irwin Raij, a lawyer with Foley and Lardner who worked extensively on both the Washington and Miami ballpark proposals. They will work with MLB President & Chief Operating Officer Bob DuPuy and will provide a written report to the Commissioner at the conclusion of their analysis."Lew Wolff and the Oakland ownership group and management have worked very hard to obtain a facility that will allow them to compete into the 21st Century," Commissioner Selig said.
"To date they, like the two ownership groups in Oakland before them, have been unsuccessful in those efforts, despite having the significant support of their corporate partner Cisco. The time has come for a thorough analysis of why a stadium deal has not been reached. The A's cannot and will not continue indefinitely in their current situation."It's certainly not news that the A's think they need to get out of the Coliseum. Nor is it news that Selig agrees with them. What this development tells me is that Selig is going to start throwing his weight around to get things done.
One logical assumption from that is that Selig will push to have the Giants' territorial rights to San Jose lifted. The Giants were awarded that territory back when they were considering building a park there, before the first blueprints of AT&T Park were drawn. Now that the Giants don't need a San Jose park, they really don't need the rights to the San Jose territory.
Of course, the Giants would tell you that they do need that territory because a lot of the rich folks who buy all those fancy boxes at AT&T Park live and work in San Jose, so if another team comes there, the Giants will be out a lot of money.
The guess here is that eventually the Giants are going to get some form of financial compensation -- either from MLB or from the A's -- to give up San Jose, and that's where the A's are going to end up.
