Read the entire article here on the San Jose Mercury website.

Sorry -- deal with Giants should keep A's out of S.J.

By Skip Bayless
San Jose Mercury News Staff Columnist
Posted on Fri, May. 07, 2004

By all means, give us a Schott. Give us the San Jose A's, owned by San Jose native Steve Schott. Give us a Silicon Valley stadium that would make the Giants' SBC Park look obsolete.

I would love nothing better, selfishly and civically, than seeing the A's move to a location in or around San Jose. It would be a home run for my newspaper. It would be a Barry Bonds home run for a South Bay that, according to A's research, has a larger population than 15 major league cities.

Of course, I'd also love to own Google.

The point being, in all objectivity, Major League Baseball won't and shouldn't allow the A's to move to Santa Clara County. Continue to root, but the point is moot. Baseball guaranteed Peter Magowan's Giants ownership group -- and more important, its lenders -- territorial rights through the South Bay when it privately financed its $357 million stadium project in 1996.

That was the condition under which the stadium money was loaned because, according to the Giants, the majority of their season-ticket holders come from San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. Magowan has said that ``around 80 percent'' of what is now baseball's largest season-ticket base comes from ``the San Mateo County line south.'' Other sources say that figure is closer to 60 percent.

But for an ownership group with a $20 million-a-year stadium debt, that's still a frightening chunk. How many Giants customers in Santa Clara County would immediately or even slowly turn into A's fans if the A's moved to a talk-of-the-town palace that cut their drive to SBC in half? Many.

Even if they were Giants die-hards, civic leaders would feel it was their civic duty to own an A's luxury box. Some of the Giants' most important patrons and stadium advertisers such as Hewlett-Packard and Intel surely would align themselves with Silicon Valley's new team. While San Jose power-brokers are treated no differently than tourists at SBC Park, they could be big shots at the new see-and-be-seen park they helped get off the ground.

The San Jose A's would hurt the Giants' business as sure as Bonds will be intentionally walked.

Bonds won't play forever. Giants management is already seeing disturbing turnstile signs with the team's shaky start. More and more fans suspect Magowan is short-changing the player payroll at the expense of the greatest offensive force ever. Magowan argues the team will lose money this year.

All of which is why Giants investors met with Commissioner Bud Selig during spring training seeking reassurance he has had no second thoughts about their territorial rights. Team sources say Selig hasn't once wavered during his tenure. After touring Network Associates Coliseum on Thursday, Selig told reporters that the A's obviously need a better facility, but he dodged questions about their possible move to Santa Clara County.

Selig obviously is standing by the promise made to the Giants.

The A's continue to argue -- speciously -- that Network Associates is far closer to SBC Park than a San Jose ballpark would be. But it obviously would be far closer to Giants' season-ticket holders and corporate sponsors, in a county whose income is about 15 percent higher than Alameda's.

Schott has done a phenomenal job of running a franchise that has produced four consecutive playoff teams on one of baseball's lowest budgets. But he bought the team in 1995 knowing the Giants had rights to the South Bay and he signed a long-term stadium lease without protecting himself against joint occupancy.

Before he knew it, Al Davis was moving his Raiders back from Los Angeles and the Coliseum was being expanded as a football facility. Congrats, Steve, you've been had. If only Schott were more like Davis.

Davis surely would have challenged the Giants' territorial rights in court. Schott has said he wouldn't relish the role of challenging baseball's ownership fraternity. Davis also has this advantage: Pro football doesn't have baseball's anti-trust exemption.

That's why no baseball team has successfully changed cities since the Washington Senators moved to Texas after the 1971 season. That's why, after Santa Clara County voters twice voted down tax hikes to fund a new stadium for Giants Owner Bob Lurie in 1990 and 1992, Lurie wasn't allowed to move the team to Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla.

And that's why Schott surely knows he might not be able to beat baseball in court.

Schott told me two years ago that Magowan had mentioned at a preseason baseball luncheon that he might be interested in selling the territorial rights for something like $50 million. Magowan all but laughed at Schott's version of whatever was said. Now, $50 million would be a bargain.

Schott is making good money in Oakland. He could make great money selling luxury boxes in San Jose. And of course, he and his family would dearly love to eliminate the commute up Interstate 880 or by helicopter to Oakland Airport.

So I'll root for the new group revealed in colleague Mark Purdy's column -- Baseball San Jose. I hope they know something I don't about how to get a big league team past the county line and how to build a new stadium with mostly public and corporate funding.

But as great as San Jose would be for the A's, and the A's for San Jose, a deal was a deal. We belong to the Giants.

Contact Skip Bayless at sbayless@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5430.