In the movie Point Break, there is a character named Johnny Utah played by Keanu Reeves, and at one point Gary Busey's character, Pappas, says, "Utah! Get me two." It's a classic line from a classic movie. With Johnny Fisher potentially interested in using a minor league facility as the Oakland A's temporary home, Utah has given him seven...billboards.
While this is interesting on its own, there was a previous version of the tweet that had been sent out which read, "With A's to Vegas on the ropes, team execs visited Salt Lake City last week. Today, seven billboards were posted courtesy of Big League Utah, who hope to demonstrate the market is ready for MLB."
Those are two fairly different tweets, but the original speaks to the public perception we talked about earlier this week when we said that Johnny Fisher is losing the messaging battle.
It also doesn't help that a room filled with people in the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce reacted with pure silence when asked how they felt about the "Las Vegas A's" on Wednesday. There has also been online speculation that the A's need a new site in Vegas, which would negate the $380 million in public funding they are set to receive that is tied to the Tropicana site.
So things aren't going great in Vegas, which is why John Fisher could take a real hard look at becoming Johnny Utah. The Deseret News has also posted an opinion piece on why Utah needs the A's. They tout Utah's rapid population growth among a number of other facets, saying that there could be 5.5 million people in the state by the year 2060. There are an estimated 7.55 million in the Bay Area alone.
Deseret is a little over two hours south of Daybreak, where the A's would be playing minor league games if they did choose to move the franchise there for the interim period.
If it comes down to either Utah or Sacramento as the A's interim home, the Beehive State has a lot to offer, and by the look of it, they're also willing to roll out the red carpet to welcome any Major League Baseball team. They could also be trying to land the A's for the 2025-27 seasons because if Las Vegas falls through, then the team would already be in Utah, and "all" they would have to do is approve some public money and get a ballpark built in order to land their big-league team.
It's a smart play. At the very worst, they would have a chance to prove that they're a viable market for a future expansion franchise. If the A's are in Vegas, then Salt Lake City may offer the best western option (that MLB would consider) to offset Nashville in the east. They would have also helped MLB out of a pretty tough spot with the entire A's relocation, so they'd have some political goodwill with the league, too.
It may just look like seven billboards on the side of the road, but this feels more like a concerted effort to land a baseball team, whether it's the A's, or one that's Beehive Born.
Big League Utah did not respond to a request for comment.
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