From: chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: ba.sports
Subject: Re: Frank Jordan strikes again
Date: 25 Aug 92 20:37:20 GMT
Organization: I is a writur

J056600@LMSC5.IS.LMSC.LOCKHEED.COM writes:

>Yet again, San Francisco mayor Frank Jordan has exposed himself as the boob
>that he is.  Last night, opening a press conference with Charlotte Hornets
>owner George Shinn, Jordan introduced Shinn as the owner of the "National
>Basketball League Charlton Hornets."

> No wonder the city is about to lose the Giants...

That's called "getting your facts straight before opening your mouth",
something Mayor Wind Baffles excells at. 

Maybe that's why Shinn did all those proctologist jokes. They needed to
bring one in to find Jordan's head.

You know, all this running around and posturing and holding half-assed press
conferences where nothing useful is said is not only not helping the cause
for keeping the Giants around, it's actively hurting. 

Excuse me for a second while I put on my three piece suit and hire a sherpa
to carry my wallet. (wiggle, shrug). There. I'm a Major League Baseball team
owner. I've been asked to decide whether or not to allow the Giants to move
to Tampa Bay. How do I vote?

The St. Pete Giants would give the NL a stranglehold on the Florida market.
That's bad, right? Hey, if the Florida market was so lucrative, why did it
take them this long to put any team in there, much less two? As a tradeoff,
the AL gets a permanent monopoly on the fourth largest media market in the
country, the S.F. Bay area. As an AL owner, I'd take the Oakland A's having
the entire market here over getting a share of Florida in a minute.

The St. Pete Giants would be in a (boo hiss) dome on (boo hiss) astroturf.
That's bad, right? Well, the San Francisco Giants are in (hey! where'd that
fog come from? Where's the field? Where's my wallet? I can't feel my toes!
Medic! Frostbite!) Candlestick park. Four attempts to get a new stadium have
failed. Even if Angela Alioto's attempt to build a park doesn't blow up in
here face (hah. see below) we're talking four more years in the Nuclear
Powered Freezer Unit From Hell, minimum. The fact that Candlestick has real
grass and is open-air won't help: the open-air simply makes it easier for
the monsoons to attack. A new domed stadium will win over Candlestick any
day. St. Pete 2, San Francisco 0.

Mayor Frank "Wind Baffles" Jordan and the government of the city of San
Francisco. When he's not caught in open, bald-faced lies (like the time he
claimed Lurie would give SF precedence in the bidding), he's shown to be
either uninformed or simply baffled (how many examples do you want? How
about when the St. Pete deal was announced and Jordan was shocked that Lurie
(who stopped speaking to Jordan after the wind baffles bit, although Jordan
doesn't seem to realize that) wouldn't have warned him -- even though Lurie
was only doing what he'd told everyone, and what was widely reported in the
papers, that he was doing). Jordan's probably worth two negative votes on
his own, but what the heck. St. Pete 3, San Francisco 0.

The voters. Four votes, four nos. St. Pete 4, San Francisco 0.

The local buyers for the team. According to Shorenstein, the best they could
get was an $80 million deal for the Giants. St. Pete's paying $111-115 mil.
Shows what the local business folks think the Giants is worth. 5-0.

The local fans. As soon as the deal was announced, there was a big push to
send postcard to Fay "I am not a lame duck" Vincent and (non-binding)
deposits for season tickets and to generally rally around and make noise to
prove the area wants to keep the Giants. A couple of hundred season tickets
later (plus the PG&E corporate committment -- it's still far under 1,000)
and a couple of thousand postcards later, the silence is deadening. Except
for couple of games of the season, where everyone rushed out to buy tickets
so they could say goodbye, the Giants are still pulling < 15,000 a game. If
the fans REALLY wanted to prove they deserved the Giants, they wouldn't do
it with postcards and $50 meaningless checks. They'd do it by putting 30,000
butts in the seats of Candlestick each and every game until this thing is
decided for once and for all, because the primary reasons they're leaving
are Candlestick (which is a dump) and the feeble fan support. 

St. Pete 7, San Francisco 0 (one for the season ticket drive that died, one
for the post card drive that's dying and one for the empty stadium every
night. I'd give one more for the folks who bought tickets to say goodbye,
but their heart is in the right place, and they're probably right, anyway).

So, what does S.F. really have to offer that might balance the scales a bit:

1) A possible, tentative (and in my eyes tenuous) ownership group that's
already making noises that sound an awful lot like "our offer won't have as
much money as St. Pete's, but we're terribly earnest and nice people, so
give it to us anyway, okay?" -- that includes as the primary managing
partnet a non-local owner (which is, by the way, an official league 'boo
hiss', so Shinn is a mixed blessing in many ways. He's not only non-local,
but he's a visible billboard that says "SAN FRANCISCO COULDN'T SAVE THE TEAM
THEMSELVES" all over it, because they had to go and get an outside white
knight to help them. That's a major negative to this ownership group,
because it implies lack of local business/financial support and it calls
into question their financial strength. But it's better than having no group
at all.

2) Angela Alioto's stadium proposal. It almost pains me to say this, but
she's the only person in the whole ordeal (other than Lurie, who I feel has
been far too patient and nice through the last ten years that the Bay Area
has been running him through various hoops and wringers. If it were me, they
would have been gone after the second vote). I find her to be an amazing
flutterbrain at times, but she's been working hard on this thing and I like
the proposal, mostly. It might actually fly -- except:
  a) this is the city of san francisco
  b) she actually has to let Jordan and some of the others 'help'
  c) she's talking about building it without a vote, which implies
  d) someone else will force a vote on them, and there will be a long 
     line of lawyers traipsing in for an endless series of injunctions,
     delaying the damn thing for years until everyone gives up in disgust.
  e) unless, of course, it blows up for some other reason first.

The way I count it, it's St. Pete 7 or 8, San Francisco 1 (for Alioto's
stadium proposal), with an abstention on the local owner's group until we
figure out if it's smoke, mirrors or Memorex. 

As a baseball owner, I vote against the move if (and only if):

1) S.F. has an equivalent offer on the table to the one from St. Pete
   (forcing Lurie to take a smaller offer to stay in the same market is
   a really bad precedent, and as a current owner I'd be scared shootless
   of being hoist by my own petard when I sell in five years. Not to mention
   that Lurie owns lawyers. So does St. Pete)

2) S.F. has a stadium plan that has a foundation with more strength than
   cottage cheese. As an owner, I'd never force a team to stay in
   Candlestick any more than I'd force my children to go to summer camp in a
   Louisiana swamp during a hurricane. If it were for a couple more years as
   a stopgap, maybe. Maybe. The stadium has to have a good chance of
   happening, because otherwise, we're going to do this whole thing all over
   again in three years when the new owners decide to bail out of the stick.

3) I'm convinced we can justify that the S.F. deal is a better one for 
   everyone involved when the inevitable lawsuits start rolling in.

As a baseball owner, I vote for the move because:

1) I don't believe San Francisco can come up with an equitable
   counter-offer, with or without non-local ownership.

2) Even if the do, it's non-local ownership, and I don't want a major
   league baseball team in Charlotte, or even Charlton for that matter, in
   five years. 

3) I don't believe the stadium proposal is real, and if it is, I don't
   believe the litigous atmospher of San Francisco will allow it to be biuld
   without major hassles and long, expensive delays.

4) I don't believe that forcing the Giants to stay in the Bay Area is good
   for baseball or for the franchise, because the region has been a marginal
   two-team market for years (while at the same time will be nicely
   profitable for a single team), while moving them to St. Pete will 
   move baseball into another market and a new audience (note: if this were
   a one team market, it's an entirely different story. It's not).

5) Everything the market has done since announcement of the deal has done
   nothing but convince me (as an owner) that the market doesn't really
   want (or deserve) the Giants. Between the empty seats, the failed votes,
   the non-existent ticket and postcard drives and all of the over things
   (like the rally. yawn) have not shown how much the Bay Area wants the
   Giants, but how little. Let them move, let the A's take up the slack.

In other words, as a (virtual) baseball owner, I vote for the move in a
nanosecond. 

And now, I'll take off my owner suit and put on my asbestos one so that we
can discuss the strengths and weaknesses of what I've just said. I'd love to
be proven wrong, but I don't think there's a chance in hell I am.

-- 
Chuq "IMHO" Von Rospach, ESD Support & Training (DAL/AUX) =+= Member, SFWA
  chuq@apple.com | GEnie: MAC.BIGOT | ALink:CHUQ =+= Editor, OtherRealms
	A real SF writur with stories in ALTERNATE KENNEDYS and THE 
	  FURTHER ADVENTURES OF BATMAN, in better bookstores now!

          Painted emblems of a race, all accurst in days of yore,
       Each from his accustomed place steps into the world once more.
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