They’re the pride of Oakland, ballplayers who were raised in the city and later became teammates and dominant forces on their hometown team’s last World Series championship in 1989.
Rickey Henderson and Dave Stewart grew up knowing Oakland as a title town — from the 1972, 1973 and 1974 Oakland Athletics to the 1976 and 1980 Oakland Raiders to the 1974-1975 Golden State Warriors — and then experienced a championship themselves in 1989 when Henderson was the ALCS MVP, Stewart the World Series MVP.
Over time, one by one, all those Oakland teams decided to pack up and leave town — the Raiders twice — so it’s almost as if locals such as Henderson and Stewart are numb to the fact the A’s are bolting to Las Vegas.
“It’s disappointing to see the A’s leaving,” Henderson said. “But we’ve gone through so much with all the teams. The city, there’s something they’re not seeing. When you have a city that had three big-name professional sports teams, and you can’t keep any of them, something’s wrong. It’s sad for the city.”
Both Henderson and Stewart have suited up in A’s training camp this spring to guide and inspire young players. They see emerging talent — Henderson admires Esteury Ruiz’s base-running skills, and Stewart’s impressed with Zack Gelof’s leadership skills — but also see a team coming off consecutive 100-loss seasons that again will be challenged to compete in 2024.
More than any of that, the Oakland mainstays -- Henderson is a special assistant to the president, and Stewart is a TV analyst on pregame and postgame shows -- see a team that’s getting pulled out of town by owner John Fisher, a move that’s supported by the other 29 teams, including the Giants, who stand to benefit from a one-team market. Though every relocation bid by Oakland teams has had its own set of reasons or excuses, the common denominator is the city itself, about to go 0-for-3.
At this point, the best Oakland, Mayor Sheng Thao and Alameda County can do is negotiate a lease extension for the team and push the A’s to sell their half of the Coliseum property that they’re purchasing from the county, an unfortunate 2019 transaction that has backfired. The A’s maintained at the time they needed to develop at the property to help fund their ballpark at Howard Terminal, but until further notice, they’re ditching town and keeping the real estate.
While Fisher works to build a stadium on the Strip that’ll supposedly open in 2028, he needs a place to play in 2025, 2026 and 2027. Both sides are playing hardball in negotiations for a Coliseum lease extension, Fisher not wanting to open his vault after previously paying just $1.25 million annually and Thao insisting Oakland would need to secure an expansion team as part of any arrangement.
That’s a non-starter for Major League Baseball, which eventually will expand from 30 to 32 teams but hasn’t yet started the process of identifying cities as final expansion candidates. Thao also has pushed to keep the team’s name and colors in Oakland, which also might be a stretch because they’re the property of the team, not the city.
“The mayor can say whatever she wants to, but if what I’m reading is true, it’s a wrong approach,” Stewart said. “She talked about the lack of jobs because they’re leaving, but in the meantime, you have an opportunity to keep jobs and create jobs until ’28 when they do leave. You’re going to try to force baseball to give you an expansion team? It’s not the way to go about it.
“When you make that kind of thing public, I think you’re just trying to talk to your constituents in Oakland.”
Stewart is rooting for the A’s to stay in the interim years but isn’t confident it’ll happen — “Even for something as little as getting an extended lease for the stadium, I just don’t see there to be a possibility,” said Stewart, who doesn’t have much faith in Oakland politicians after his group’s bid to buy the city’s half of the Coliseum was ignored. The city chose to enter an exclusive negotiating agreement with the African American Sports Entertainment Group even though Stewart said his group’s bid was higher.
Fisher is threatening to move the A’s to a minor-league facility in Sacramento or Salt Lake City in the interim years if an agreement for a lease extension isn’t reached. At the same time, Thao and Co. know Fisher stands to lose his regional-TV network money, which was $67 million in 2023, by not playing in the Bay Area.
The sides met for the second time Thursday but didn’t hash out a new lease, so they’ll meet again April 2. If Thao understands MLB absolutely won’t sign off on a future expansion team, she could focus on the bigger picture of getting the A’s to sell back the property and pushing them to ante up on a lease.
In retrospect, Henderson wished the team and city had finalized a deal for a Howard Terminal ballpark, saying, “It was really a no-brainer, a win-win for the city, a win-win for the people. It’s closer to downtown. Businesses could have been created around there. We need something there.”
As for expansion to Oakland, neither Henderson nor Stewart would bet on it. “It’s a possibility but would have been a better possibility” without the bad blood that developed between the mayor’s office and MLB. “Once they leave, I don’t think they’ll come back,” Henderson said of another MLB team.
Stewart is a lead official with Music City Baseball, an investment group trying to lure an expansion team to Nashville. Commissioner Rob Manfred said he expects one team to be in the east and the other either in the west or the mountain region.
As for the A’s staying long term in Oakland, Henderson’s still hoping for a miracle. “Maybe they figure out a way to make it work. That would be good for the city,” he said.
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