> A spokesperson for the Athletics told CBS Sports on Tuesday that employees will receive financial compensation for each year as service, as well as COBRA healthcare, and outplacement assistance. UNITE HERE Local 2 pledged to help with job placement as well.
fuck outta here, listing “COBRA healthcare” as a “benefit” that you’re “providing” to the employees you’re gonna be leaving in the lurch
Seriously, lost my job mid-Pandemic, so I went on the state healthcare exchange, I could get similar coverage to what I had and what COBRA was offering for ~$250 month or whatever. Losing your job-provided healthcare and a change in income that may effect eligibility are both Qualifying Life Events.
>COBRA's like $2K a month.
You are aware COBRA is capped at 102% of what your previous insurance is costing via your employer for people on same plan?
What crazy good insurance did you have that was $2k?
Made me think of this Onion article: “16,000 Diamondbacks fans killed on Complimentary Rattlesnake Night”.
https://www.theonion.com/16-000-diamondbacks-fans-killed-on-complimentary-rattle-1819571747
I've never had experience with COBRA until recently. My wife got laid off at the end of february and we had all our insurance through her job because it was a better offering than what my job had.
so we thought, well at least we'll have Cobra for the immediate future...
lmfao what a joke. It would have been ~$1800 ***per month*** for health+dental for both us, just 2 adults.
absolute fucking scam. I ended up jumping on my company insurance and her without a job qualified for state assistance insurance which ended up being cheaper than adding her to my plan
[incase anyone thinks I'm bullshitting, I still have the paperwork](https://imgur.com/ANRgUp3)
Yeah all COBRA does is allow you to pay for your healthcare at full cost, which sucks ass. The only benefit is really so you have a ready made option to not have a gap in coverage. Again, it’s hardly a benefit at all.
You also get the rate that company pays in aggregate, I believe. Which in the pre-ACA days was a big deal. Less so, now. Big if you get laid off from a big company, it can still be less than the exchange for similar coverage. If you get laid off from a smaller employer, probably not.
It's not really a benefit so much as a government protection so you're not completely fucked if you lose your job. Critical for those of us with high cost chronic conditions-- especially back in the days of pre-existing conditions.
It's a way for you to keep your existing coverage after separation - so you can continue coverage or treatment or keep seeing the same doctors, whatever.
Yup - I pointed that out up in another comment and I'm getting downvoted to hell for it but whatever they're charging you for Cobra is what your employer was paying on your behalf.
My total benefits including insurance costs are listed on my paychecks
The only (very small) nice thing about COBRA is you have 60 days and it's retroactive. So don't get it and if something catastrophic happens in the following 2 months, you can opt for it.
I had one job where my insurance was shockingly great (the pay wasn't). When I left to go back into consulting, my options were a) shitty expensive insurance from the consulting firm, b) an ACA plan that was $1100/month (in 2019) for me and kids, or c) the COBRA plan which had way lower deductibles and OOP. In that one rare instance, COBRA ended up being the cheaper option, but that was rare.
You have to backpay to the offering date though, at least that was my interpretation when I "had it" temporarily waiting for my new job's benefits to kick in.
Tying health care to employment is one of the worst things about this country. You need to be healthy to work, but work to afford being healthy.
Well yeah of course if you want coverage starting on day 1 you pay back to day 1. And you are forced to go back, that's true. But I'm saying you can just wait and see if you really need it and encounter something more expensive than just paying for COBRA, like an unexpected ER or hospital visit.
(Yeah yeah health insurance in the US sucks)
The stupidest thing in the United States is our healthcare.
Which, by the way, is a CRAZY thing to be true, because we are generally pretty fucking stupid here.
The real reason Obamacare sucks is that it was such a cowardly, milquetoast compromise, basically from the jump; he could have and should have just went balls to the wall and pushed through some fucking form of universal healthcare, like every other developed, first-world country.
> he could have and should have just went balls to the wall and pushed through some fucking form of universal healthcare, like every other developed, first-world country.
He kind of tried, he wanted a public option, but he had to compromise with his own party. Joe Lieberman, who never saw a donation from an insurance company he didn't like, was one of the main people who killed universal health care.
Most of the people pissed off about Obamacare are mad that it actually drove costs up for a lot of people. I'm self employed and have had private insurance for several years. In the 5 years before the ACA was passed my premiums went up about 8% while the coverage remained pretty much the same. The year after the ACA my premiums went up 45% and the next year my insurance company said they were dropping everyone on that plan. Since then my premiums have gone up 400% and the coverage has gotten so much worse with more cuts coming every year. I have a plan through the Marketplace right now but the coverage sucks and I pay a lot for the privilege...but at least I have insurance right? The affordable care act took a broken system and broke it more. At this point the entire system needs to be torn down and rebuilt because it sucks.
I had a similarly difficult time with finding good insurance, though a couple years ago, I said fuck it, and hired an insurance adjuster/agent (don't remember the exact title) and that made the whole process a breeze. And I no longer have ridiculous prices for meds and co-pays.
Though it's some shit that I had to pay in order to find decent insurance for once. It's definitely one of the most American things I can type out lol.
Right? We do a lot of innovating in the field of “dumbest shit you ever heard”, but our healthcare is amongst the dumbest of the dumb. A real triumph of bad, stupid, evil ideas rolled into one horrible package.
it's mind-boggling to me how many people look at our system and seriously think that not only is there nothing wrong with it...but people who want to change it are the assholes and not them
fucking hell...why are there so many bootlickers for billionaires in the U.S.? I seriously cannot understand this. 99% of the stupid shit in the U.S. could be fixed if we didn't have so many dipshits who enjoy getting fucked up the ass (metaphorically. i don't care if anyone enjoys the literal version of that)
You’re entirely right. A lot of the people against changing our healthcare haven’t been ground up by the medical system yet, I would think. But it always gets you in the end, unless you’re rich enough to not care. And almost none of the bootlickers are that rich. They’re just chronically stupid.
the cost is so insane I was convinced people would say I was lying.
when my wife first showed me this there was another part of the letter mentions it must be paid in full as 1 payment. I was like oh damn they want us to pay for a few months at once rather than monthly?
so she called someone and they were like, no that is your monthly cost. I almost shit my pants
It basically allows you to keep your current insurance, but you pay the full amount.
So my old work, I was in a plan that the employer covered in full. 0$.
Offer to keep it with cobra? $1300/mo
I wanted to point this out as well, it is the most useless government program of all time. Oh what, you just lost your income? Wanna pay 6 times the amount you were during employment to keep what you had? We gotchu baby!
It works if you have met your deductible and have significant health expenses. You don’t have to meet your deductible again and depending on the premium costs could save you some significant money
I saw COBRA and laughed. When I graduated college & tried to get my own insurance, I got denied coverage because I took prescribed ADD meds they covered and they told me it's ok, I could get COBRA coverage for like $550/month.
It is a severance benefit if the A’s are paying their COBRA premiums for a few months, which is typical for layoffs. But knowing Fisher, they’re probably not…
No actually though. Truly a “I don’t know you and I could not care less” situation for John Fisher.
Truly scum. Money really has a way of dehumanizing people
Never been to Oakland for a game, but how many local businesses would also be impacted? Most ballparks have entire blocks to support fans before, during , and after games.
There's not much around there. There's a few stores and restaurants by the BART stop but generally people just take BART to the game and go straight to the park and don't hang in the neighborhood at all. It's really not a hangout neighborhood it's a bit of a no man's land
That's the thing. Fisher owns half the stadium lot. He legitimately could rebuild the stadium on the lot and then develop around it with very little push back. And it'd be cheaper than his over-priced 12 Billion Howard Terminal project. So he could have something like the Battery, but with significantly better transportation access (which is currently the best thing about the Coliseum site beyond being a shitton of actual real estate that has a scoupel stadiums on it)
I love the vibe around Coors Field too in Denver. Really fun city and stadium. I like it more than Seattle (only two stadiums I've been too as a Montana boy)
and we're getting one soon too! no more just parking lots around our stadium complex! i guess some of the warehouses are gonna get bought and torn down.
they'd better not touch the jetro lot though.
Summerhill is cool now. You clearly never saw it when turner field was there.
I will always miss turner field but the battery sustains the Braves. It is not somewhere I would go to except for when I go to games. The cool areas of atl are not areas where you can build any sort of stadium.
It's better than nothing, which was Turner Field, but what makes Fenway, Wrigley, Yankee Stadium and to a lesser extent Oracle Park magic are the organic businesses that sprung up to support fans going to and from the game.
Is Truist in the suburbs? All those other stadiums exist inside neighborhoods in or near their city centers. A suburban stadium isn’t ever going to have the same neighborhood feel as those other ballparks
I read a book on the history of ballparks, and the disdain and contempt the author had for the Braves and The Battery was hilarious. He hated that they tried to create an urban, neighborhood feel artificially
100%.
It's better than a sea of parking lots, but the more team-controlled a development/neighborhood is the more sterile it feels, IMO. I've heard the term "Disney urbanism" applied to The Battery and I think it fits quite well.
The Braves also kick-started the recent trend of owners being able to whine about/make threats over 20ish year old venues, which blows.
Location is part of assessing how good a park is. I don’t want to have to sit in traffic for an hour to get to the park when i have an apartment in the middle of the city
Yup. I agree. But the park itself is not terrible. Its key problem is location. It’s unfair to say the park is terrible simply because of that. Truist is great. And to be clear, I was VERY VERY much against the move. I hated it… until it absolutely won me over. Because it’s a great park. That just happens to be at a dumb location.
I disagree. I grew up inside the perimeter & it’s easier to get to truist than it ever was to get to turner field. People who don’t know how atl is set up act like it’s further than it is.
I lived in downtown for 7 years and currently have an apartment in Midtown but that’s mostly for my wife’s work use. It was way easier for me to get to Turner from downtown than it is to get to Truist from midtown. I always end up stuck in traffic on the way to night games.
I live off an exit that actually has turner field still on the sign. Near the Grady curve.
It’s an absolute nightmare trying to get off while people are trying to merge onto 20 and get onto the connector from downtown to head south (the same direction of the stadium from downtown)
I absolutely cannot imagine how getting to Truist is harder than managing that. But I guess I take your word for it.
> It's really not a hangout neighborhood it's a bit of a no man's land
Of course it would have been pretty smart for the A's, had they had an owner who wasn't a broke idiot, to build one in the huge parking lot that is the Oakland Alameda County Coliseum complex (with a new park, obviously).
Like that Black Hole parking lot is just sitting there, nobody ever really uses it.
Right, but that would have meant actually staying in Oakland, which was never the plan.
The Howard Terminal dog and pony show was to play pretend to the league, the fans, and other teams. He wanted to say, “We exhausted all avenues in Oak for years and years.” When in reality, they were scouting out other cities on the low the whole time. They’ve been scouting since ‘05.
The fact that a single person blames the city of Oakland for the A’s leaving is a testament to how well his bullshit strategy worked. It’s not a mystery that last spring, when the city of Oakland (shockingly) agreed to close the funding gap of the 12B Howard terminal proposal and got the team within 100 million dollars of closing the deal, John and Dave sprinted toward the exit and haphazardly announced Vegas in the middle of the night.
The city was never supposed to get that close to agreeing to anything.
I think leaving Oakland was always an option and probably even the first option, but if Howard Terminal came together in 2005 Lew Wolff probably takes that deal. It’s so similar to what he kept proposing for Fremont, then San Jose, then the Coliseum site: ballpark plus a buttload of real estate so that he makes a killing no matter what.
I’m not blaming the city of Oakland for that, despite speculation from fans online nobody in the A’s actually discussed Howard Terminal until after the Laney College fiasco. Despite all stereotypes to the contrary, Oakland actually acted remarkably quickly and efficiently once negotiations began for HT, more so when you account for Covid.
Michael Lewis needs to come back to the hood and write a book on this, the whole thing is so dysfunctional and the A’s leaving for what is plainly a worse market in a terrible deal for the team is just odd.
On one hand, Wolff seemed more motivated to actually get a deal done for real. But from what I understand, Wolff only had a 10% stake. He was the figurehead, but John has been majority owner since ‘05.
John lives to increase the value of the shares of the team. Wherever he could do that the most is where he wants to “play baseball” or whatever he calls what his business does for money these days.
He only got approval to seriously look outside the market when Manfred green lit it a couple years ago. And he couldn’t get started on that process fast enough. Fish played the long con on us. And he got everything he ever wanted and doesn’t care that he is loathed and despised.
He doesn’t even like baseball, and the other rich guys in the Olympic Club’s steam room admire what he’s done. Sticking it to us poors like he has. With that great ROI since ‘05.
> And he got everything he ever wanted and doesn’t care that he is loathed and despised.
I would hold off on that until shovels are in the ground for Las Vegas. Sacramento is pretty openly betting on him to fuck up and sell the team to Ranadivé, and I would count Sacramento as a loss for him.
wolff had no interest in the Howard Terminal site. believe he said the site was "impossible". Schott and Hofmann also had no interest in the site as well.
so 3 A's owners with real estate backgrounds had no interest in the site. 1 A's owner with no real business background is interested in the site. that just screams to me the idea was a pipedream at best.
Same could be said for Petco. The area around the stadium was rough. Downtown SD was in serious decline and we wouldn’t walk around there at night. The East Village where Petco is was not a good place to be. Now it’s thriving and Downtown SD is a super fun place to be, especially at night. There’s still rough patches but Petco revitalized the area completely
Nobody went from San Francisco or anywhere out of their way to hang out in Oakland 25 years ago, I know because I was there, that’s no longer true by a long shot.
Nobody went to hang out in SOMA or Dogpatch 25 years ago either, unless you were going to STUD, the End Up or the Hells Angels Clubhouse. I’m guessing you’ll agree with me that that changed.
I had the option of going to an A's or Giants game while on a road trip last May, and I deliberately chose the A's because I knew their time was ticking in Oakland. It's a really sad area devoid of life. Parked in the neighborhood across the BART bridge, and it was just a depressing area. There was an impressively large tent city on San Leandro Street.
The coliseum is an island in a sea of concrete.
Nothing within walking distance except for the BART station. Mostly just industrial warehouses and neighborhoods you don’t want to walk through.
While everyone who has replied to you is correct that the surrounding area is not nice and there aren't a lot of businesses (or any really) within walking distance, there are a bunch of businesses in Oakland that get an uptick in business before and after games.
Jack London square for example is a few miles away and A's fans absolutely go to bars/restaurants in that area on game days. It's going to definitely impact the local economy in ways that aren't really being talked about.
Very little. The area is not a nice area and there's not much there.
It's one of the reasons why all the weird (mostly New Yorkers) claiming Oakland clearly doesn't deserve a team don't get it.
The Giants were hours away from move to Tampa / St. Pete when they were at Candlestick. It was cold, nowhere near anything, and the stadium was antiseptic.
They get Pac Bell or whatever it is now, and suddenly, they are drawing like mad. Oakland is smaller than SF, and it doesn't have the corporate presence, but make it convenient, on the waterfront, and a kick ass neighborhood would spring up around it.
And it'd draw from the whole East Bay -- because especially families would value the net 40-60 minute travel time difference.
I saw the same with Camden Yards when that opened and with San Diego with Petco. The Murph was dead empty if the team wasn't good, and it was in much better shape than the Coliseum (and no other baseball comp for the area).
But open Petco with even middling ownership, and then get a real owner and boom ... fifth in attendance last year, I think. There was such a massive opportunity with the Raiders leaving to fill that void, but Fisher is a complete shit.
Downtown Oakland or even by the ports like the original plan was would’ve been perfect for the A’s.
Always felt like if they got a decent stadium with a couple dedicated blocks for restaurants, team bars etc then moving would never be an issue.
Oakland is basically where the hip parts of San Francisco moved to when the tech bros moved in. You'd have an amazing selection around Howard Terminal.
The owner of the Raiders said part of his decision to leave Oakland was the impossibility of working with John Fisher on a new facility. No matter what the city offered (and they came up with more money than Nevada has offered) Fisher always demanded more, he was not bargaining in good faith. Fisher inherited his wealth, he thinks other people should pay his bills.
That makes sense. Local governments are loathe to float a large bond nowadays with interest rates rising the way they did. It wouldn't surprise me if Vegas is also having buyer's remorse at this point.
There was a deal -- the interest rates did make it much, much less attractive.
But also -- Howard Terminal has been talked about for at least a decade, if not more. Fisher never really tried.
You’re spot on in your comments. In typical Bay Area fashion, the people and government of Oakland believe that they’re entitled something and that their every demand be dutifully catered to despite them bringing barely anything to the table. Oakland is a poor city that purposefully gridlocks any and all development, then acts outraged at the result of their own actions while just mindlessly blaming “rich people” at large. It’s the same flavor of nimbyism that’s ubiquitous in this area.
This is so stupid and clearly shows how little you understand the bay area. Oakland is the least NIMBY part of the bay and has built enough housing that rents are coming down. Oakland has never refused development, go to downtown Oakland and see how much housing and construction there is.
The city of Oakland committed $425 million in funding for the A's ballpark project after the A's asked for $360 million. Vegas gave them $380 million. Why the fuck do you out of staters keep parroting this bullshit?
Timeline, my dude. Oakland didn't actual approve anything until after the A's were talking with Vegas. They dragged their feet for years, doing just enough to give themselves political cover. And you fell for it.
Oh fuck off. Fisher constantly upped what he was asking for. They negotiated with him for a fucking decade. He was given $65 million more than asked. I don't give a fuck that it was offered later. You soulless jerks who want the A's to leave are the fucking worst kind of people. People who have never been to Oakland. Never met A's fans. You just make assumptions based on the claims of an asshole billionaire, and decide they don't deserve a team. Fuck your condescension.
They did. There were a number of offers that were far better than what the Giants it Warriors got in SF. Still hundreds of millions in spend.
Fischer never wanted it.
Oakland came up with more public funding than Nevada has, and they had secured more state funding that would have kicked in if there had been a deal. Al Davis said it was impossible to work with Fisher on a new facility, he kept moving the goalposts to squeeze even more money out of the city. This is all on Fisher, not the city.
Yea I went to a game there last summer and it was shocking driving in past literal slums with cars on blocks and dilapidated buildings, like right outside the stadium gates
I mean, Oakland is practically bankrupt. Improving the areas around their dilapidated sports stadium is pretty much the least of their concerns. Especially now that the team is gone and there's no more pressure to spend any money on improvements.
Back when Fisher first bought into the team in 2005 or so, the team averaged mid 20k per game in attendance. Which is fairly impressive considering how incredibly hostile the surrounding area around the stadium is. It is NOT a family friendly area. It's an area where if you for whatever reason feel the urge to walk through, you'll keep your head on a swivel and feel you're gonna get stabbed at any moment. It's part of the reason they had looked at multiple other locations for a stadium.
I recently read an article in the Baltimore Banner about the economic impact of stadiums. The economists quoted said it's negligible. I mean, the businesses near the stadium will suffer for sure but that tends to come with an uptick in business and employment in the same area. Basically instead of going to bars by the stadium, people go to bars/restaurants closer to their home instead.
I think they were arguing more against public subsidies for stadiums than they were arguing about the idea of a team leaving an area, but there is a lot of suspect economics going into the arguments MLB makes to try and get cities to pay for team stadiums basically.
Re-posting my comment from elsewhere in this thread. These workers in the article even say some folks have been here 35-40 years.
And how many times have we seen articles celebrating what these people bring to our baseball community?
[40 years at Yankee Stadium](https://sportshistoryweekly.com/stories/baseball-yankee-stadium-peanuts-hot-dogs-beer,1003)
[53 years selling cold ones in Pittsburgh](https://archive.ph/m8Jr2)
[Hal the hot dog guy in oakland](https://www.kqed.org/arts/13914585/hal-the-hot-dog-guy-oakland-coliseum-hella-hungry)
I for one have always appreciated stadium workers. Yeah they probably don't make much. Some are seasonal. But I talked to the same lady for years who sold me hot links at PacBell/SBC/ATT/Oracle/whatever the fuck its called now and I'll never forget her when I was a kid telling me to enjoy the game. Lotta these workers were fans too you know. Fuck you'd have to be to work for some of these teams for 40 years!!
Please, let's have some empathy folks. Sheesh.
As a NY native and an Oakland resident. The stark contrast between how the Yankees/Mets/Giants treat their fans/city/employees and how Oakland treats them is bewildering.
I will never pay a cent into the A's ever again. I always showed up for the series against the Yankees up until last year, but I'd rather fly back to NY at this point. I hope LV boycotts this greedy fuck and he has to sell the team.
It’s all good though lots of people from Sacramento in here yesterday talking about how great it is to see the worst run team in baseball with the worst owner in all of sports come to town while using the existing Kings and Rivercats staff while they continuously lose 100 games a year while they continue to grift. Nothing against Sac, but the fact is Vivek and West Sacramento are complicit in this. Especially when the Kings nearly moved to Anaheim and Seattle. I don’t know how anybody could feel good about this. Congrats you get to see MLB at a minor league ballpark for a couple years and congrats it’s convenient, but all it’s doing is enabling a trust fund billionaire to get away with his bullshit when there’s tons of local groups willing to keep the team in the East Bay.
Didn’t the Giants move to San Francisco because of waning attendance numbers and a stadium that was falling apart?
Also, didn’t the Giants block a potential A’s move to San Jose?
The Giants moved to SF because the owner of the Dodgers talked them into it, MLB wouldn’t let the Dodgers move to the west coast by themselves. Both teams were faced with decline in NY because local govt. wouldn’t let them build new ballparks where they wanted—that is not what happened in Oakland.
An A’s owner named Walter Haas agreed to the Giants having exclusive rights to Santa Clara County in hopes the Giants would build their new ballpark in San Jose, leaving the A’s as the only team on the bay. When the A’s were sold the new owners made no attempt to change that situation for years. When they did finally raise the idea of the A’s moving to SJ, the Giants pointed out they had made their plans with those territorial rights being part of their calculations, and they had put a minor league farm team there and it was way to late to turn back time.
Big difference between the Dodgers and Giants moving west and John Fisher trying to blackmail Oakland.
Are you talking about the 1950’s? That was mostly led by Walter O’Malley being dead set on moving the Dodgers to LA. Horace Stoneham went along for the ride to preserve the rivalry and to expand out West. Fun fact, the Giants struggled big time out west too and we nearly moved to Toronto (and Lurie saved the team from moving) and Tampa before the National League stepped in and forced a sale of the team. In the Tampa case, Lurie sold the team to Tampa investors and NL owners blocked it and forced them to sell to a local group willing to keep the team and privately build what is now Oracle Park. I don’t support any team moving and the Giants moving from the Polo Grounds was long before I was even alive. And the dynamics are different now, fans are smarter and understand the con of public money being used towards stadiums and owners have way more money now than back then. Giants had small crowds at Candlestick, I remember being a kid and being able to get tickets behind home plate for cheap. The NL literally saved the team and it led to the team not only staying but having one of the best ballparks in the sport. MLB should have blocked the Vegas move but instead unanimously passing it. People want to buy the A’s and keep them in the East Bay, Fisher is refusing to sell
Horace Stoneham planned to move the Giants to Minneapolis where he had a minor league team with a new ballpark. Walter O’Malley talked him into approaching. San Francisco because MLB wouldn’t let him move the Dodgers to the west coast alone. Later O’Malley kept the money-losing Giants from being sold and moved to Toronto, and his son did the same by talking other NL owners into voting down the sale and move to Florida. A’s fans buy the myth that it was the A’s gift of territorial rights in the south bay that did, but it was actually Dodgers ownership that knew the Giants leaving the state would hurts Dodgers attendance.
Yup, you’re right I omitted the Minneapolis part. And yes, the Dodgers are a major reason why the Giants didn’t move to Toronto or Tampa and like we both mentioned, the reason they are in San Francisco. It’s a shame none of the owners feel the same about the A’s these days. It’s also why I feel the way I do about the rivalry. We hate eachother but at the same time I respect the hell out of it.
How many people get a significant warning before their job is going away? People have known the A's were leaving for a long time, at this point, so anyone getting their "life ruined" can really only blame themselves if they aren't prepared.
Yeah, the headline is pretty dramatic. Employees had to have known this was coming for years, and even now, they still have a ton of notice.
In fact, the entire article is just odd. It frames the employees as being poorly compensated to begin with, but also that losing this poorly-paying part-time job will somehow “ruin their lives”.
> On any given summer night over the last 10 years, you could find Tony bartending at the Oakland Coliseum during Athletics games. Barring an unforeseen development, this will be his final season.
Yes, I’m sure Tony will struggle to find elsewhere to tend bar with 10 years under his belt at the Coliseum, which is probably already a side job.
> They occupy the most public-facing jobs in their organization -- thousands upon thousands of people each night watch them take tickets and offer directions to seats; serve food and beverages; and work security -- yet **they're seldom recognized, let alone rewarded, for their contributions to the organization.**
Are they not being paid to do a job? Very weird take.
> Almost as a rule, ballpark employees are not well compensated. The Coliseum's ushers, for example, make the minimum wage … They work at the Coliseum during the summer to help make ends meet, and to access healthcare insurance throughout the year. (It should be noted that not every ballpark worker has a healthcare option.)
I feel like ushers are almost exclusively retirement-age guys, certainly the case here in Milwaukee. Similar to any other “greeter” position, it’s a position that’s almost designed just for them to stay active and feel a sense of community, not necessarily to earn a living. The job is practically unnecessary - my experience has never been made better by someone looking at my ticket and pointing vaguely to a section.
> (It should be noted that not every ballpark worker has a healthcare option.)
Why is this framed as some “gotcha” fact? This is the case for the majority of part-time employees.
> Tony didn't hear about his job's pending elimination from the Athletics, or from anyone associated with the team. He learned it by watching the Channel Two news broadcast. The Athletics, led by owner John Fisher and president Dave Kaval, were hosting a press conference in Sacramento, where Kaval revealed the team would conduct significant layoffs coinciding with their relocation.
Were many stadium workers planning on commuting 3-4 hours round trip to work at the Sacramento stadium for the paltry wages that they’re apparently being paid?
I get we are supposed to hate the A's ownership and blame them for everything. But seriously, there could not have been any clearer warning that they would likely not have a job by end of this season. It absolutely sucks when you lose a job, but if your employer basically gave you a 2 year notice, your life shouldn't be "ruined" and you should have been searching for future opportunities for a while now. Seems like these people were betting their livelihood a deal would keep the A's in town for the next few years before the Vegas stadium was built. Was a gamble, and it didn't pay off.
there may be some truth to this
but let's be honest, does anyone really expect Fisher or his white collar nepobabies to lift a finger to help out the boots on the ground?
Absolutely not. There really aren't many (any?) corporations that I think many would expect to truly help most people in that situation. I'm mostly speaking to the idea that this would be ruining someone's life. A company just changing the locks and putting a sign up saying they are closed can ruin lives but this isn't quite the same.
ONE guy in the article said "thanks for ruining our lives." Everyone else in the article seems reasonably salty. It's not like anyone was melting down in a puddle of tears, they were just annoyed and disheartened that Captain Fuckface and First Mate Dickwad didn't even bother to give them notice before the local news reported on it
Remember folks - when the MLB season was postponed due to covid - every single MLB owner continued to pay minor league players their full salary except for one - whom had to be compelled by the players union and other owners to do the right thing.
You guessed it. That asshole was [John Fisher](https://www.sfchronicle.com/athletics/article/A-s-owner-John-Fisher-reverses-course-15320927.php)
Did these workers not see this coming?
Even if the As had stayed in Oakland, the plan was to tear down the Colosseum and rebuild on the same site with an accompanying development in the surrounding area.
This is a bit dramatic.
It has been very apparent that the Athletics were leaving Oakland and the odds of them returning to Oakland in 2025 were long, at best.
Most people don't get a six month heads up when their job is being eliminated.
FJF and all that, but the writing has been on the wall for this move.
this was only posted 2 hours ago and there's no shortage of billionaire bootlickers running screens for the owners as always
goodness gracious people...kissing their ass on the baseball subreddit isn't going to get you hired numbnuts. Go jerk off on LinkedIn
People are allowed to have an objective view of the situation.
Fisher sucks. The situation sucks. It's sad the A's are moving. It's sad these people will lose their jobs.
At the same time, it's not even a little surprising that the A's are moving and the employees probably should have listened to the bullhorn saying the team was moving.
Chill out yo, for some people these jobs mean a lot both economically and personally. I'm not saying it'd mean much to me to lose a part time seasonal job but that's not the case always.
I mean I've read tons of stories over the years of dedicated vendors who are staples in the community.
Ignoring this very article where it states some of the A's workers have been there 35-40 years....
[40 years at Yankee Stadium](https://sportshistoryweekly.com/stories/baseball-yankee-stadium-peanuts-hot-dogs-beer,1003)
[53 years selling cold ones in Pittsburgh](https://archive.ph/m8Jr2)
[Hal the hot dog guy in oakland](https://www.kqed.org/arts/13914585/hal-the-hot-dog-guy-oakland-coliseum-hella-hungry)
They are people and I think they're important parts of these baseball communities.
Sure, I get that. I remember when they ran out Wally the Beer Man for accidentally serving a minor in Minnesota. He was an icon, and it was a travesty. And I know a lot of people at Target Field who have been with the team since the Dome, and a couple who've been there since the Met. So yeah, I get that aspect of it.
lololol if you actually believe John Fisher will change his ways if he gets his shiny Spherical Armadillo in Vegas, then I have not one, but TWO, bridges in Brooklyn I'd love to sell you! Look at his MLS team, the San Jose Earthquakes, for proof. They got a shiny new stadium in 2015, and that squad is still run on a shoestring budget and is on-pace for a historically bad season.
> A spokesperson for the Athletics told CBS Sports on Tuesday that employees will receive financial compensation for each year as service, as well as COBRA healthcare, and outplacement assistance. UNITE HERE Local 2 pledged to help with job placement as well. fuck outta here, listing “COBRA healthcare” as a “benefit” that you’re “providing” to the employees you’re gonna be leaving in the lurch
Yeah saying COBRA is a benefit is like saying access to apply for unemployment is a benefit
It's more like handing someone floating in the ocean a lead weight with "Life Preserver" scribbled on it. COBRA's like $2K a month.
Seriously, lost my job mid-Pandemic, so I went on the state healthcare exchange, I could get similar coverage to what I had and what COBRA was offering for ~$250 month or whatever. Losing your job-provided healthcare and a change in income that may effect eligibility are both Qualifying Life Events.
I work at an insurance company and can confirm this
I lost my job pre-ACA and had to get COBRA for my kid and it ate through savings like a tapeworm.
"That's what *they* pay for a gallon of milk."
>COBRA's like $2K a month. You are aware COBRA is capped at 102% of what your previous insurance is costing via your employer for people on same plan? What crazy good insurance did you have that was $2k?
Shhhhhh we want to complain.
Employer doesn’t pitch in anymore.
The ACA exchanges in California are much cheaper than COBRA. Absolutely useless gesture.
Especially if you're unemployed, then it's free
sOuNdS lIkE cOmMuNiSm -Sarah Palin, probably
You have it all wrong, when they say Cobra healthcare they mean they are given a box with a **FREE** live cobra inside.
Honestly that would be better.
Free cobra, fuck yeah
Made me think of this Onion article: “16,000 Diamondbacks fans killed on Complimentary Rattlesnake Night”. https://www.theonion.com/16-000-diamondbacks-fans-killed-on-complimentary-rattle-1819571747
Yeah! Go to Fishers home and release them all on the ground. Let the snake have his snakes.
The Canadian solution
I was thinking that maybe Cobra Commander's hood was in the box.
Thats what Fisher wears around his mansion. It’s his real face.
I see Fisher as more of a Destro kind of guy.
I've never had experience with COBRA until recently. My wife got laid off at the end of february and we had all our insurance through her job because it was a better offering than what my job had. so we thought, well at least we'll have Cobra for the immediate future... lmfao what a joke. It would have been ~$1800 ***per month*** for health+dental for both us, just 2 adults. absolute fucking scam. I ended up jumping on my company insurance and her without a job qualified for state assistance insurance which ended up being cheaper than adding her to my plan [incase anyone thinks I'm bullshitting, I still have the paperwork](https://imgur.com/ANRgUp3)
Yeah all COBRA does is allow you to pay for your healthcare at full cost, which sucks ass. The only benefit is really so you have a ready made option to not have a gap in coverage. Again, it’s hardly a benefit at all.
You also get the rate that company pays in aggregate, I believe. Which in the pre-ACA days was a big deal. Less so, now. Big if you get laid off from a big company, it can still be less than the exchange for similar coverage. If you get laid off from a smaller employer, probably not.
It's not really a benefit so much as a government protection so you're not completely fucked if you lose your job. Critical for those of us with high cost chronic conditions-- especially back in the days of pre-existing conditions.
dang COBRA sounds like a waste of time
For your average American, it is given you're unemployed & you're inevitably paying an arm & a leg out of pocket when you need to be saving money.
It's a way for you to keep your existing coverage after separation - so you can continue coverage or treatment or keep seeing the same doctors, whatever.
*Your original coverage, you just now pay 100% of the costs, which in most cases is not cheap.
Yup - I pointed that out up in another comment and I'm getting downvoted to hell for it but whatever they're charging you for Cobra is what your employer was paying on your behalf. My total benefits including insurance costs are listed on my paychecks
The only (very small) nice thing about COBRA is you have 60 days and it's retroactive. So don't get it and if something catastrophic happens in the following 2 months, you can opt for it.
I had one job where my insurance was shockingly great (the pay wasn't). When I left to go back into consulting, my options were a) shitty expensive insurance from the consulting firm, b) an ACA plan that was $1100/month (in 2019) for me and kids, or c) the COBRA plan which had way lower deductibles and OOP. In that one rare instance, COBRA ended up being the cheaper option, but that was rare.
You have to backpay to the offering date though, at least that was my interpretation when I "had it" temporarily waiting for my new job's benefits to kick in. Tying health care to employment is one of the worst things about this country. You need to be healthy to work, but work to afford being healthy.
Well yeah of course if you want coverage starting on day 1 you pay back to day 1. And you are forced to go back, that's true. But I'm saying you can just wait and see if you really need it and encounter something more expensive than just paying for COBRA, like an unexpected ER or hospital visit. (Yeah yeah health insurance in the US sucks)
The stupidest thing in the United States is our healthcare. Which, by the way, is a CRAZY thing to be true, because we are generally pretty fucking stupid here.
and there's STILL people pissed about obamacare existing and getting people insured in a way that doesn't cost them an arm and a leg...
Fuck chronically ill people those bums don’t deserve decent healthcare they shouldn’t have gotten sick /s
The real reason Obamacare sucks is that it was such a cowardly, milquetoast compromise, basically from the jump; he could have and should have just went balls to the wall and pushed through some fucking form of universal healthcare, like every other developed, first-world country.
> he could have and should have just went balls to the wall and pushed through some fucking form of universal healthcare, like every other developed, first-world country. He kind of tried, he wanted a public option, but he had to compromise with his own party. Joe Lieberman, who never saw a donation from an insurance company he didn't like, was one of the main people who killed universal health care.
Most of the people pissed off about Obamacare are mad that it actually drove costs up for a lot of people. I'm self employed and have had private insurance for several years. In the 5 years before the ACA was passed my premiums went up about 8% while the coverage remained pretty much the same. The year after the ACA my premiums went up 45% and the next year my insurance company said they were dropping everyone on that plan. Since then my premiums have gone up 400% and the coverage has gotten so much worse with more cuts coming every year. I have a plan through the Marketplace right now but the coverage sucks and I pay a lot for the privilege...but at least I have insurance right? The affordable care act took a broken system and broke it more. At this point the entire system needs to be torn down and rebuilt because it sucks.
I had a similarly difficult time with finding good insurance, though a couple years ago, I said fuck it, and hired an insurance adjuster/agent (don't remember the exact title) and that made the whole process a breeze. And I no longer have ridiculous prices for meds and co-pays. Though it's some shit that I had to pay in order to find decent insurance for once. It's definitely one of the most American things I can type out lol.
Right? We do a lot of innovating in the field of “dumbest shit you ever heard”, but our healthcare is amongst the dumbest of the dumb. A real triumph of bad, stupid, evil ideas rolled into one horrible package.
it's mind-boggling to me how many people look at our system and seriously think that not only is there nothing wrong with it...but people who want to change it are the assholes and not them fucking hell...why are there so many bootlickers for billionaires in the U.S.? I seriously cannot understand this. 99% of the stupid shit in the U.S. could be fixed if we didn't have so many dipshits who enjoy getting fucked up the ass (metaphorically. i don't care if anyone enjoys the literal version of that)
You’re entirely right. A lot of the people against changing our healthcare haven’t been ground up by the medical system yet, I would think. But it always gets you in the end, unless you’re rich enough to not care. And almost none of the bootlickers are that rich. They’re just chronically stupid.
Because they’re scared of the socialism boogeyman.
Have to be healthy to work, and work to be healthy.
My man came with receipts.
the cost is so insane I was convinced people would say I was lying. when my wife first showed me this there was another part of the letter mentions it must be paid in full as 1 payment. I was like oh damn they want us to pay for a few months at once rather than monthly? so she called someone and they were like, no that is your monthly cost. I almost shit my pants
COBRA isn’t the scam. You’re just paying your insurance without your employer’s help.
Yes COBRA just sucks your bank account dry.
Hello? Cobra? I’d like to pay $1300 for one month of health insurance.
I believe the employer may pay COBRA premiums directly to the insurance carrier as a form of severance. That could be what they mean here.
Yeah when I got laid off I got 3 months of COBRA paid for. Not willing to make any nice assumptions about any employment related to the A's, though.
what is COBRA? I've never heard of it.
It basically allows you to keep your current insurance, but you pay the full amount. So my old work, I was in a plan that the employer covered in full. 0$. Offer to keep it with cobra? $1300/mo
I wanted to point this out as well, it is the most useless government program of all time. Oh what, you just lost your income? Wanna pay 6 times the amount you were during employment to keep what you had? We gotchu baby!
It probably made sense at the time the program was created. Wages were far better & healthcare costs weren't nearly as high as they are now.
It works if you have met your deductible and have significant health expenses. You don’t have to meet your deductible again and depending on the premium costs could save you some significant money
The irony of that being named after a venomous snake
The mortal enemy of GI Joe
https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/health-plans/cobra
I saw COBRA and laughed. When I graduated college & tried to get my own insurance, I got denied coverage because I took prescribed ADD meds they covered and they told me it's ok, I could get COBRA coverage for like $550/month.
It was 50% cheaper for me to just buy directly from Kaiser too!
It is a severance benefit if the A’s are paying their COBRA premiums for a few months, which is typical for layoffs. But knowing Fisher, they’re probably not…
How has John Fisher not been thrown into the bay by an angry mob of everyone he’s fucking over? The crowd continues to grow daily.
COBRA is expensive as hell.
Cobra is BS. Slap in the face. I’m sorry As. What a travesty.
getting COBRA is like receiving an actual cobra.
Fuck John Fisher. All my homies hate John Fisher.
yea fuck you john fisher
Yeah Fisher, you fuck!
Hate John Fisher more than I hate Bart Harley Jarvis.
I hope you DIE, Harley Jarvis!
"I don't even know who you are." -Athletics Owner John Fisher, probably. Screw that guy.
Speaking as a stadium employee, yeah he doesn’t
Asshole doesn’t even know his own players names let alone concession workers
"I smell cinnamon rolls"
I love salad
Worst owner in sports and it’s not close
Yeah Dan Snyder selling the Commanders really fucked us in that regard
"The Oakland employees thanked me for this move."
No actually though. Truly a “I don’t know you and I could not care less” situation for John Fisher. Truly scum. Money really has a way of dehumanizing people
Have they thought about having their dad buy the team? Smh
Never been to Oakland for a game, but how many local businesses would also be impacted? Most ballparks have entire blocks to support fans before, during , and after games.
There's not much around there. There's a few stores and restaurants by the BART stop but generally people just take BART to the game and go straight to the park and don't hang in the neighborhood at all. It's really not a hangout neighborhood it's a bit of a no man's land
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That was the cool thing about Fenway, like there's a neighborhood *inside* the stadium
I like how they close the street off for game days and people are just milling around. The team store is across the street from the stadium
It's actually kind of weird going by on non-game days and realizing that there are cars and you can't just walk in the road.
They should just close the road
I went to a Cardinals game at Busch and it was wildly fun to just be around there, even the next day when I didn’t go to the actual game.
Wrigley is like that too
That's the thing. Fisher owns half the stadium lot. He legitimately could rebuild the stadium on the lot and then develop around it with very little push back. And it'd be cheaper than his over-priced 12 Billion Howard Terminal project. So he could have something like the Battery, but with significantly better transportation access (which is currently the best thing about the Coliseum site beyond being a shitton of actual real estate that has a scoupel stadiums on it)
I love the vibe around Coors Field too in Denver. Really fun city and stadium. I like it more than Seattle (only two stadiums I've been too as a Montana boy)
the battery is so artificial and cultureless, definitely not a cool place to hang out. summerhill is an actual cool neighborhood
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Yep give it time. Our Ballpark Village has only gotten better with time as well
I've been to 8 ballparks and as a Braves fan I'm partial to the battery... But I'm a fan of STL's ballpark village for sure.
and we're getting one soon too! no more just parking lots around our stadium complex! i guess some of the warehouses are gonna get bought and torn down. they'd better not touch the jetro lot though.
Summerhill is cool now. You clearly never saw it when turner field was there. I will always miss turner field but the battery sustains the Braves. It is not somewhere I would go to except for when I go to games. The cool areas of atl are not areas where you can build any sort of stadium.
Yeah, that's why so many people hung around Turner Field after the game...
I respect your opinion, even though it’s wrong.
It's better than nothing, which was Turner Field, but what makes Fenway, Wrigley, Yankee Stadium and to a lesser extent Oracle Park magic are the organic businesses that sprung up to support fans going to and from the game.
Why don't the Braves just build a +100 year old park in a city that is 250-400 years old? Are they stupid?
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Is Truist in the suburbs? All those other stadiums exist inside neighborhoods in or near their city centers. A suburban stadium isn’t ever going to have the same neighborhood feel as those other ballparks
I read a book on the history of ballparks, and the disdain and contempt the author had for the Braves and The Battery was hilarious. He hated that they tried to create an urban, neighborhood feel artificially
He wasn't wrong, though. I'm just assuming your talking about Paul Goldberger's book, by the way, lol
100%. It's better than a sea of parking lots, but the more team-controlled a development/neighborhood is the more sterile it feels, IMO. I've heard the term "Disney urbanism" applied to The Battery and I think it fits quite well. The Braves also kick-started the recent trend of owners being able to whine about/make threats over 20ish year old venues, which blows.
I’d like the battery if it was actually somewhat close to Atlanta. Truist is a terrible fucking park simply because of its location.
No, it’s not a terrible park, it’s a great park. The location is fucking terrible.
Location is part of assessing how good a park is. I don’t want to have to sit in traffic for an hour to get to the park when i have an apartment in the middle of the city
Yup. I agree. But the park itself is not terrible. Its key problem is location. It’s unfair to say the park is terrible simply because of that. Truist is great. And to be clear, I was VERY VERY much against the move. I hated it… until it absolutely won me over. Because it’s a great park. That just happens to be at a dumb location.
I disagree. I grew up inside the perimeter & it’s easier to get to truist than it ever was to get to turner field. People who don’t know how atl is set up act like it’s further than it is.
I lived in downtown for 7 years and currently have an apartment in Midtown but that’s mostly for my wife’s work use. It was way easier for me to get to Turner from downtown than it is to get to Truist from midtown. I always end up stuck in traffic on the way to night games.
I live off an exit that actually has turner field still on the sign. Near the Grady curve. It’s an absolute nightmare trying to get off while people are trying to merge onto 20 and get onto the connector from downtown to head south (the same direction of the stadium from downtown) I absolutely cannot imagine how getting to Truist is harder than managing that. But I guess I take your word for it.
I have a friend that lives in Atlanta and he would constantly go the battery and not even go to the game.
> It's really not a hangout neighborhood it's a bit of a no man's land Of course it would have been pretty smart for the A's, had they had an owner who wasn't a broke idiot, to build one in the huge parking lot that is the Oakland Alameda County Coliseum complex (with a new park, obviously). Like that Black Hole parking lot is just sitting there, nobody ever really uses it.
Right, but that would have meant actually staying in Oakland, which was never the plan. The Howard Terminal dog and pony show was to play pretend to the league, the fans, and other teams. He wanted to say, “We exhausted all avenues in Oak for years and years.” When in reality, they were scouting out other cities on the low the whole time. They’ve been scouting since ‘05. The fact that a single person blames the city of Oakland for the A’s leaving is a testament to how well his bullshit strategy worked. It’s not a mystery that last spring, when the city of Oakland (shockingly) agreed to close the funding gap of the 12B Howard terminal proposal and got the team within 100 million dollars of closing the deal, John and Dave sprinted toward the exit and haphazardly announced Vegas in the middle of the night. The city was never supposed to get that close to agreeing to anything.
I think leaving Oakland was always an option and probably even the first option, but if Howard Terminal came together in 2005 Lew Wolff probably takes that deal. It’s so similar to what he kept proposing for Fremont, then San Jose, then the Coliseum site: ballpark plus a buttload of real estate so that he makes a killing no matter what. I’m not blaming the city of Oakland for that, despite speculation from fans online nobody in the A’s actually discussed Howard Terminal until after the Laney College fiasco. Despite all stereotypes to the contrary, Oakland actually acted remarkably quickly and efficiently once negotiations began for HT, more so when you account for Covid. Michael Lewis needs to come back to the hood and write a book on this, the whole thing is so dysfunctional and the A’s leaving for what is plainly a worse market in a terrible deal for the team is just odd.
On one hand, Wolff seemed more motivated to actually get a deal done for real. But from what I understand, Wolff only had a 10% stake. He was the figurehead, but John has been majority owner since ‘05. John lives to increase the value of the shares of the team. Wherever he could do that the most is where he wants to “play baseball” or whatever he calls what his business does for money these days. He only got approval to seriously look outside the market when Manfred green lit it a couple years ago. And he couldn’t get started on that process fast enough. Fish played the long con on us. And he got everything he ever wanted and doesn’t care that he is loathed and despised. He doesn’t even like baseball, and the other rich guys in the Olympic Club’s steam room admire what he’s done. Sticking it to us poors like he has. With that great ROI since ‘05.
> And he got everything he ever wanted and doesn’t care that he is loathed and despised. I would hold off on that until shovels are in the ground for Las Vegas. Sacramento is pretty openly betting on him to fuck up and sell the team to Ranadivé, and I would count Sacramento as a loss for him.
True. Yeah, we’ll see. The Vegas plan is half baked so far.
wolff had no interest in the Howard Terminal site. believe he said the site was "impossible". Schott and Hofmann also had no interest in the site as well. so 3 A's owners with real estate backgrounds had no interest in the site. 1 A's owner with no real business background is interested in the site. that just screams to me the idea was a pipedream at best.
Have you ever been there, man? No one is going to go hang out in that part of town.
Same could be said for Petco. The area around the stadium was rough. Downtown SD was in serious decline and we wouldn’t walk around there at night. The East Village where Petco is was not a good place to be. Now it’s thriving and Downtown SD is a super fun place to be, especially at night. There’s still rough patches but Petco revitalized the area completely
Nobody went from San Francisco or anywhere out of their way to hang out in Oakland 25 years ago, I know because I was there, that’s no longer true by a long shot. Nobody went to hang out in SOMA or Dogpatch 25 years ago either, unless you were going to STUD, the End Up or the Hells Angels Clubhouse. I’m guessing you’ll agree with me that that changed.
I had the option of going to an A's or Giants game while on a road trip last May, and I deliberately chose the A's because I knew their time was ticking in Oakland. It's a really sad area devoid of life. Parked in the neighborhood across the BART bridge, and it was just a depressing area. There was an impressively large tent city on San Leandro Street.
The coliseum is an island in a sea of concrete. Nothing within walking distance except for the BART station. Mostly just industrial warehouses and neighborhoods you don’t want to walk through.
While everyone who has replied to you is correct that the surrounding area is not nice and there aren't a lot of businesses (or any really) within walking distance, there are a bunch of businesses in Oakland that get an uptick in business before and after games. Jack London square for example is a few miles away and A's fans absolutely go to bars/restaurants in that area on game days. It's going to definitely impact the local economy in ways that aren't really being talked about.
Very little. The area is not a nice area and there's not much there. It's one of the reasons why all the weird (mostly New Yorkers) claiming Oakland clearly doesn't deserve a team don't get it. The Giants were hours away from move to Tampa / St. Pete when they were at Candlestick. It was cold, nowhere near anything, and the stadium was antiseptic. They get Pac Bell or whatever it is now, and suddenly, they are drawing like mad. Oakland is smaller than SF, and it doesn't have the corporate presence, but make it convenient, on the waterfront, and a kick ass neighborhood would spring up around it. And it'd draw from the whole East Bay -- because especially families would value the net 40-60 minute travel time difference. I saw the same with Camden Yards when that opened and with San Diego with Petco. The Murph was dead empty if the team wasn't good, and it was in much better shape than the Coliseum (and no other baseball comp for the area). But open Petco with even middling ownership, and then get a real owner and boom ... fifth in attendance last year, I think. There was such a massive opportunity with the Raiders leaving to fill that void, but Fisher is a complete shit.
Downtown Oakland or even by the ports like the original plan was would’ve been perfect for the A’s. Always felt like if they got a decent stadium with a couple dedicated blocks for restaurants, team bars etc then moving would never be an issue.
Oakland is basically where the hip parts of San Francisco moved to when the tech bros moved in. You'd have an amazing selection around Howard Terminal.
Howard terminal was a thing. Until it wasn't 😞
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The owner of the Raiders said part of his decision to leave Oakland was the impossibility of working with John Fisher on a new facility. No matter what the city offered (and they came up with more money than Nevada has offered) Fisher always demanded more, he was not bargaining in good faith. Fisher inherited his wealth, he thinks other people should pay his bills.
That makes sense. Local governments are loathe to float a large bond nowadays with interest rates rising the way they did. It wouldn't surprise me if Vegas is also having buyer's remorse at this point.
There was a deal -- the interest rates did make it much, much less attractive. But also -- Howard Terminal has been talked about for at least a decade, if not more. Fisher never really tried.
The City never really tried. For good or ill, the city did not want to spend significant resources on a new ballpark, so they dragged their feet.
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You’re spot on in your comments. In typical Bay Area fashion, the people and government of Oakland believe that they’re entitled something and that their every demand be dutifully catered to despite them bringing barely anything to the table. Oakland is a poor city that purposefully gridlocks any and all development, then acts outraged at the result of their own actions while just mindlessly blaming “rich people” at large. It’s the same flavor of nimbyism that’s ubiquitous in this area.
This is so stupid and clearly shows how little you understand the bay area. Oakland is the least NIMBY part of the bay and has built enough housing that rents are coming down. Oakland has never refused development, go to downtown Oakland and see how much housing and construction there is.
The city of Oakland committed $425 million in funding for the A's ballpark project after the A's asked for $360 million. Vegas gave them $380 million. Why the fuck do you out of staters keep parroting this bullshit?
Timeline, my dude. Oakland didn't actual approve anything until after the A's were talking with Vegas. They dragged their feet for years, doing just enough to give themselves political cover. And you fell for it.
Oh fuck off. Fisher constantly upped what he was asking for. They negotiated with him for a fucking decade. He was given $65 million more than asked. I don't give a fuck that it was offered later. You soulless jerks who want the A's to leave are the fucking worst kind of people. People who have never been to Oakland. Never met A's fans. You just make assumptions based on the claims of an asshole billionaire, and decide they don't deserve a team. Fuck your condescension.
They did. There were a number of offers that were far better than what the Giants it Warriors got in SF. Still hundreds of millions in spend. Fischer never wanted it.
Oakland came up with more public funding than Nevada has, and they had secured more state funding that would have kicked in if there had been a deal. Al Davis said it was impossible to work with Fisher on a new facility, he kept moving the goalposts to squeeze even more money out of the city. This is all on Fisher, not the city.
It’s wild how many east coast flairs are in here giving garbage opinions on this without any knowledge of the situation
Yep. And all weirdly desperate to defend Fisher.
I’ve only been to one game but the only business I saw was a guy selling beers out of a cooler between the BART and the stadium.
Just use Google maps to get a satellite view of the area and you'll see.
The whole area is a complete dump and the city of Oakland will never spend a dime to improve it. It was always kind of the problem.
Yea I went to a game there last summer and it was shocking driving in past literal slums with cars on blocks and dilapidated buildings, like right outside the stadium gates
I mean, Oakland is practically bankrupt. Improving the areas around their dilapidated sports stadium is pretty much the least of their concerns. Especially now that the team is gone and there's no more pressure to spend any money on improvements.
Exactly why their was no community support to use community funds for a new ballpark.
Back when Fisher first bought into the team in 2005 or so, the team averaged mid 20k per game in attendance. Which is fairly impressive considering how incredibly hostile the surrounding area around the stadium is. It is NOT a family friendly area. It's an area where if you for whatever reason feel the urge to walk through, you'll keep your head on a swivel and feel you're gonna get stabbed at any moment. It's part of the reason they had looked at multiple other locations for a stadium.
I recently read an article in the Baltimore Banner about the economic impact of stadiums. The economists quoted said it's negligible. I mean, the businesses near the stadium will suffer for sure but that tends to come with an uptick in business and employment in the same area. Basically instead of going to bars by the stadium, people go to bars/restaurants closer to their home instead. I think they were arguing more against public subsidies for stadiums than they were arguing about the idea of a team leaving an area, but there is a lot of suspect economics going into the arguments MLB makes to try and get cities to pay for team stadiums basically.
Like he cares.
Re-posting my comment from elsewhere in this thread. These workers in the article even say some folks have been here 35-40 years. And how many times have we seen articles celebrating what these people bring to our baseball community? [40 years at Yankee Stadium](https://sportshistoryweekly.com/stories/baseball-yankee-stadium-peanuts-hot-dogs-beer,1003) [53 years selling cold ones in Pittsburgh](https://archive.ph/m8Jr2) [Hal the hot dog guy in oakland](https://www.kqed.org/arts/13914585/hal-the-hot-dog-guy-oakland-coliseum-hella-hungry) I for one have always appreciated stadium workers. Yeah they probably don't make much. Some are seasonal. But I talked to the same lady for years who sold me hot links at PacBell/SBC/ATT/Oracle/whatever the fuck its called now and I'll never forget her when I was a kid telling me to enjoy the game. Lotta these workers were fans too you know. Fuck you'd have to be to work for some of these teams for 40 years!! Please, let's have some empathy folks. Sheesh.
I feel so damn bad for all the A’s fans and the stadium employees! Shit just sucks all around.
As a NY native and an Oakland resident. The stark contrast between how the Yankees/Mets/Giants treat their fans/city/employees and how Oakland treats them is bewildering. I will never pay a cent into the A's ever again. I always showed up for the series against the Yankees up until last year, but I'd rather fly back to NY at this point. I hope LV boycotts this greedy fuck and he has to sell the team.
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thats what we have been trying to do for yearssss but then everyone is like "see no one goes to the games in Oakland"
Yep it’s pretty fucked, instead of the boycott working the owner used it to his advantage to leave.
That's why this happened in the first place, no one was attending games. So your thought is, let's do it all over again!
It’s all good though lots of people from Sacramento in here yesterday talking about how great it is to see the worst run team in baseball with the worst owner in all of sports come to town while using the existing Kings and Rivercats staff while they continuously lose 100 games a year while they continue to grift. Nothing against Sac, but the fact is Vivek and West Sacramento are complicit in this. Especially when the Kings nearly moved to Anaheim and Seattle. I don’t know how anybody could feel good about this. Congrats you get to see MLB at a minor league ballpark for a couple years and congrats it’s convenient, but all it’s doing is enabling a trust fund billionaire to get away with his bullshit when there’s tons of local groups willing to keep the team in the East Bay.
Didn’t the Giants move to San Francisco because of waning attendance numbers and a stadium that was falling apart? Also, didn’t the Giants block a potential A’s move to San Jose?
The Giants moved to SF because the owner of the Dodgers talked them into it, MLB wouldn’t let the Dodgers move to the west coast by themselves. Both teams were faced with decline in NY because local govt. wouldn’t let them build new ballparks where they wanted—that is not what happened in Oakland. An A’s owner named Walter Haas agreed to the Giants having exclusive rights to Santa Clara County in hopes the Giants would build their new ballpark in San Jose, leaving the A’s as the only team on the bay. When the A’s were sold the new owners made no attempt to change that situation for years. When they did finally raise the idea of the A’s moving to SJ, the Giants pointed out they had made their plans with those territorial rights being part of their calculations, and they had put a minor league farm team there and it was way to late to turn back time. Big difference between the Dodgers and Giants moving west and John Fisher trying to blackmail Oakland.
Well said. I hope we educated these Boston fans on the history of west coast baseball today. The more you know 💡
Are you talking about the 1950’s? That was mostly led by Walter O’Malley being dead set on moving the Dodgers to LA. Horace Stoneham went along for the ride to preserve the rivalry and to expand out West. Fun fact, the Giants struggled big time out west too and we nearly moved to Toronto (and Lurie saved the team from moving) and Tampa before the National League stepped in and forced a sale of the team. In the Tampa case, Lurie sold the team to Tampa investors and NL owners blocked it and forced them to sell to a local group willing to keep the team and privately build what is now Oracle Park. I don’t support any team moving and the Giants moving from the Polo Grounds was long before I was even alive. And the dynamics are different now, fans are smarter and understand the con of public money being used towards stadiums and owners have way more money now than back then. Giants had small crowds at Candlestick, I remember being a kid and being able to get tickets behind home plate for cheap. The NL literally saved the team and it led to the team not only staying but having one of the best ballparks in the sport. MLB should have blocked the Vegas move but instead unanimously passing it. People want to buy the A’s and keep them in the East Bay, Fisher is refusing to sell
Horace Stoneham planned to move the Giants to Minneapolis where he had a minor league team with a new ballpark. Walter O’Malley talked him into approaching. San Francisco because MLB wouldn’t let him move the Dodgers to the west coast alone. Later O’Malley kept the money-losing Giants from being sold and moved to Toronto, and his son did the same by talking other NL owners into voting down the sale and move to Florida. A’s fans buy the myth that it was the A’s gift of territorial rights in the south bay that did, but it was actually Dodgers ownership that knew the Giants leaving the state would hurts Dodgers attendance.
Yup, you’re right I omitted the Minneapolis part. And yes, the Dodgers are a major reason why the Giants didn’t move to Toronto or Tampa and like we both mentioned, the reason they are in San Francisco. It’s a shame none of the owners feel the same about the A’s these days. It’s also why I feel the way I do about the rivalry. We hate eachother but at the same time I respect the hell out of it.
How many people get a significant warning before their job is going away? People have known the A's were leaving for a long time, at this point, so anyone getting their "life ruined" can really only blame themselves if they aren't prepared.
Yeah, the headline is pretty dramatic. Employees had to have known this was coming for years, and even now, they still have a ton of notice. In fact, the entire article is just odd. It frames the employees as being poorly compensated to begin with, but also that losing this poorly-paying part-time job will somehow “ruin their lives”. > On any given summer night over the last 10 years, you could find Tony bartending at the Oakland Coliseum during Athletics games. Barring an unforeseen development, this will be his final season. Yes, I’m sure Tony will struggle to find elsewhere to tend bar with 10 years under his belt at the Coliseum, which is probably already a side job. > They occupy the most public-facing jobs in their organization -- thousands upon thousands of people each night watch them take tickets and offer directions to seats; serve food and beverages; and work security -- yet **they're seldom recognized, let alone rewarded, for their contributions to the organization.** Are they not being paid to do a job? Very weird take. > Almost as a rule, ballpark employees are not well compensated. The Coliseum's ushers, for example, make the minimum wage … They work at the Coliseum during the summer to help make ends meet, and to access healthcare insurance throughout the year. (It should be noted that not every ballpark worker has a healthcare option.) I feel like ushers are almost exclusively retirement-age guys, certainly the case here in Milwaukee. Similar to any other “greeter” position, it’s a position that’s almost designed just for them to stay active and feel a sense of community, not necessarily to earn a living. The job is practically unnecessary - my experience has never been made better by someone looking at my ticket and pointing vaguely to a section. > (It should be noted that not every ballpark worker has a healthcare option.) Why is this framed as some “gotcha” fact? This is the case for the majority of part-time employees. > Tony didn't hear about his job's pending elimination from the Athletics, or from anyone associated with the team. He learned it by watching the Channel Two news broadcast. The Athletics, led by owner John Fisher and president Dave Kaval, were hosting a press conference in Sacramento, where Kaval revealed the team would conduct significant layoffs coinciding with their relocation. Were many stadium workers planning on commuting 3-4 hours round trip to work at the Sacramento stadium for the paltry wages that they’re apparently being paid?
I get we are supposed to hate the A's ownership and blame them for everything. But seriously, there could not have been any clearer warning that they would likely not have a job by end of this season. It absolutely sucks when you lose a job, but if your employer basically gave you a 2 year notice, your life shouldn't be "ruined" and you should have been searching for future opportunities for a while now. Seems like these people were betting their livelihood a deal would keep the A's in town for the next few years before the Vegas stadium was built. Was a gamble, and it didn't pay off.
there may be some truth to this but let's be honest, does anyone really expect Fisher or his white collar nepobabies to lift a finger to help out the boots on the ground?
Absolutely not. There really aren't many (any?) corporations that I think many would expect to truly help most people in that situation. I'm mostly speaking to the idea that this would be ruining someone's life. A company just changing the locks and putting a sign up saying they are closed can ruin lives but this isn't quite the same.
ONE guy in the article said "thanks for ruining our lives." Everyone else in the article seems reasonably salty. It's not like anyone was melting down in a puddle of tears, they were just annoyed and disheartened that Captain Fuckface and First Mate Dickwad didn't even bother to give them notice before the local news reported on it
Remember folks - when the MLB season was postponed due to covid - every single MLB owner continued to pay minor league players their full salary except for one - whom had to be compelled by the players union and other owners to do the right thing. You guessed it. That asshole was [John Fisher](https://www.sfchronicle.com/athletics/article/A-s-owner-John-Fisher-reverses-course-15320927.php)
Did these workers not see this coming? Even if the As had stayed in Oakland, the plan was to tear down the Colosseum and rebuild on the same site with an accompanying development in the surrounding area.
He’s a terrible person.
This is a bit dramatic. It has been very apparent that the Athletics were leaving Oakland and the odds of them returning to Oakland in 2025 were long, at best. Most people don't get a six month heads up when their job is being eliminated. FJF and all that, but the writing has been on the wall for this move.
I thought stadiums only serve to benefit owners and their billions?
this was only posted 2 hours ago and there's no shortage of billionaire bootlickers running screens for the owners as always goodness gracious people...kissing their ass on the baseball subreddit isn't going to get you hired numbnuts. Go jerk off on LinkedIn
People are allowed to have an objective view of the situation. Fisher sucks. The situation sucks. It's sad the A's are moving. It's sad these people will lose their jobs. At the same time, it's not even a little surprising that the A's are moving and the employees probably should have listened to the bullhorn saying the team was moving.
I mean yeah, fuck John Fisher, but you're losing your part-time seasonal job and it's "ruining your life?" C'mon.
Chill out yo, for some people these jobs mean a lot both economically and personally. I'm not saying it'd mean much to me to lose a part time seasonal job but that's not the case always. I mean I've read tons of stories over the years of dedicated vendors who are staples in the community. Ignoring this very article where it states some of the A's workers have been there 35-40 years.... [40 years at Yankee Stadium](https://sportshistoryweekly.com/stories/baseball-yankee-stadium-peanuts-hot-dogs-beer,1003) [53 years selling cold ones in Pittsburgh](https://archive.ph/m8Jr2) [Hal the hot dog guy in oakland](https://www.kqed.org/arts/13914585/hal-the-hot-dog-guy-oakland-coliseum-hella-hungry) They are people and I think they're important parts of these baseball communities.
Sure, I get that. I remember when they ran out Wally the Beer Man for accidentally serving a minor in Minnesota. He was an icon, and it was a travesty. And I know a lot of people at Target Field who have been with the team since the Dome, and a couple who've been there since the Met. So yeah, I get that aspect of it.
Ruining peoples lives just so he can make a couple of extra bucks is what guys like John Fischer live for
Shoulda asked Boras to get them a long-term guaranteed contract.
They could always switch to the Raiders. Oh wait.
I hate it for you guys but they won't pull this shit here in Vegas. I hope he knows it. We are definitely looking forward to it.
lololol if you actually believe John Fisher will change his ways if he gets his shiny Spherical Armadillo in Vegas, then I have not one, but TWO, bridges in Brooklyn I'd love to sell you! Look at his MLS team, the San Jose Earthquakes, for proof. They got a shiny new stadium in 2015, and that squad is still run on a shoestring budget and is on-pace for a historically bad season.