A's Begin Pouring Concrete at Las Vegas Ballpark Site

In the distance, you can see Mandalay Bay in the picture on the left, which does seem to mean that the concrete has been poured in the correct corner of the Tropicana site for the A's ballpark. That said, for the scope of how much concrete has been laid, here is a photo from the A's live cam where you can track the progress of the ballpark's construction.

The concrete work that was done is in the upper-left corner of this photo, in between the two cranes, to the left of the giant pile of dirt. So while concrete has been used, this gives you a sense of just how much cement was actually poured on Friday. The A's 33,000 seat ballpark is also set to take up just nine acres of the 35 acre plot of land.

Still, it's the early days of this project, so they're not going have the ballpark's portion of the site overflowing with concrete, either.

The question hanging over this entire project has always been how it will end up getting financed, with A's owner John Fisher on the hook for roughly $1.1 billion of his own money plus any overruns over the $2 billion projected cost for the project. A lot of the skepticism is also based on Fisher's reputation for not being terribly thorough as well as continually not spending money on the A's roster.

Shortly after the A's sent out their tweet announcing that concrete work was being done, we visited the ballpark live feed and were met with a notice that read, "access restricted" which felt like a weird time to cut off the view of the progress they'd just announced. The feed returned after about an hour and has been working well since.

We reached out to the A's for a reason for why the cameras went down, and they provided an answer off the record, and from what we were told, it sounded routine and not for nefarious reasons.

The true believers in this project will point to the groundbreaking, the concrete being poured, and John Fisher's purchase of a house in Nevada last December as tent pole reasons for why this ballpark is happening.

The skeptics will point out that none of those factors are permanent. The groundbreaking was a show (which they all are), while concrete can easily be removed. Houses are sold all the time. You could argue that Fisher bought the house as a stunt for potential investors, and if he ends up having to sell the house for a slight loss, then oh well. But if it ends up securing funds for his ballpark plan, then it was all worth it.

We don't know where this A's ballpark saga will end up, but with construction seemingly underway, we should get a firm answer one way or another before long.