If you care...

‘This does not make sense’: Las Vegas mayor says team should stay in Oakland

By Gabe Lehman

Outside of John Fisher, Dave Kaval and MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, no one seems to really want the Oakland A’s to make their proposed move to Las Vegas. And one very prominent name who seemed to publicly join that list on Tuesday was Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman. 

In two different formats, Goodman made it clear that she prefers for the A’s to remain in Oakland, despite expressing excitement at the possibility of an MLB team coming to Las Vegas.

Goodman’s comments from the Front Office Sports Today podcast made the initial social media rounds. Host Owen Poindexter and Goodman discussed Vegas’ growing footprint in professional sports, highlighted by the upcoming Super Bowl between the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs and the rolling disaster that was Formula 1’s first Las Vegas Grand Prix, before conversation turned to the A’s.

Goodman started by taking a not-so-subtle dig at Fisher’s leadership and the A’s resulting on-field product.

“Of course, the team has not been doing very well. And, but then again too, you know when you know what other ownerships and franchises do to build their teams,” said Goodman, seemingly implying A’s ownership could be making more of an effort. 

Goodman sounded particularly tepid about A’s ownership’s goal to build a stadium at the site of the soon-to-be closed Tropicana hotel and casino, which is technically in unincorporated Clark County and not in Goodman’s city. But the traffic on the Strip is already a headache even without a new baseball stadium, so Goodman said she’d proposed a different site to A’s brass. According to Goodman, they were uninterested. 

 “I thought ‘This does not make sense.’ And so why is it happening?” said Goodman. 

During the podcast, Goodman was clear she wanted to bring a baseball team to Las Vegas — especially if the team was located in downtown Las Vegas instead of the Strip — but she seemed unsure if the A’s were the best fit. 

The mayor said explicitly no less than three times that she believes the A’s should stay in Oakland. From the interview: 

“I love the people from Oakland and I believe they deserve to have their team.”

“I just know that Mr. Fisher — from a longtime successful family — in my opinion, needs to listen to the people that are up there. It’s their team.”

“I personally think they’ve got to figure out a way to stay in Oakland and make their dream come true.”

After the podcast episode was published early Tuesday morning, it quickly flew all around social media, picked up by dozens of outlets. It led Goodman to put out a statement that we typically see when a public official wants to correct their previous statements — except the mayor’s statement did the opposite:

“I want to be clear that I am excited about the prospect of Major League Baseball in Las Vegas, and it very well may be that the Las Vegas A’s will become a reality that we will welcome to our city.

“On Feb. 5, 2024, I was interviewed for the Front Office Sports podcast. It was one of many interviews about the rise of major league sports in Las Vegas, and how this weekend’s Super Bowl is a milestone in my and former Mayor Oscar Goodman’s pursuit of sports teams for Las Vegas. We discussed several topics, including the Oakland A’s for about seven minutes, and I mentioned the passionate fans of Oakland who often visit our city to cheer on the Raiders. My points included that it is my belief that in their perfect world the ownership of the A’s would like to have a new ballpark on the water in Oakland and that the ownership and government there should listen to their great fans and try to make that dream come true.

“Should that fail, Las Vegas has shown that it is a spectacular market for major league sports franchises,” read the statement.

At this point, it seems like even Patrick Mahomes is getting a warmer Las Vegas welcome than the A’s.