The Reason the A's Left Oakland? Lew Wolff Has Some Thoughts

In the article, Wolff even directed some of his frustrations toward the blue-ribbon panel (appointed by Bud Selig) to study the territorial rights issue, since they found in favor of the Giants.

"What I did not realize was that the amazing individuals comprising MLB … attract, employ or have around deceitful and dangerous sycophants,” Wolff wrote. “Not all, but some. And these sycophants assassinated the A’s!"

Wolff says this, and then doesn't want to reserve any blame for Selig. Instead, he says that it would have been helpful if he had understood the A's problem in a little more depth.

That screams an A's problem, not an MLB problem. If the people holding your fate in their hands don't understand the situation, then you should really make sure that they get it to ensure the result you want.

Wolff also bashed Jean Quan, the mayor of Oakland from 2011 to 2015, right in line with the timing of the blue-ribbon panel. She says that she was offering the A's the Howard Terminal site, but, "it was very clear to me that when I was there, he was going to kill that deal no matter what."

Wolff claimed that he didn't have any real estate in San Jose at that time, and also wrote that Quan was "a rather confused person in my estimation.”

Quan's account, that Wolff seemed dedicated to killing the Howard Terminal deal before it started, is exactly the kind of perception problem that sinks a negotiation. Whether she was correct in that assumption or not, the perception is what matters here, and the throughline of the entire A's relocation saga has been a bad perception problem.

Again, this is an A's issue. If this is how the person in control of your fate is thinking you're acting, then there is something wrong with how you're acting. It's obvious that the A's weren't doing the work they needed to in order to make people want to side with them. Again, this is a communication issue.

San Jose was a leverage play?

While Wolff blamed the Giants for using their territorial rights, it's not because the A's didn't get to move to San Jose. He says that was never the plan. Instead, he wanted to use the territorial rights as leverage to use against Oakland in order to get a better deal in their negotiations.

"People didn’t realize I needed that (leverage),” Wolff said. “They’re nice people, but three different (Oakland) mayors basically said, ‘Yeah, well, anything you need, but what choice do you have?’ And had the Giants been more cooperative on this, we would have had a choice, in my opinion."

If they needed the Giants to go along with them, why wasn't that communicated to them at any point in the ten-year period the A's were trying to move to the South Bay?

There are two ways this could have gone down. The first is that the Giants weren't going to lift a finger to help the A's in their quest for a ballpark anywhere in the Bay Area. That would make sense, given that it would leave the entire area open for San Francisco.

The second is that they should have pivoted to staying in Oakland much sooner than they did. Instead of blaming the Giants, or the mayors, or the league, they acted like they weren't at fault in any capacity. Wolff claimed that the A's didn't have the leverage needed in San Jose, so they were never able to negotiate with Oakland without that leverage.

The way mayor Quan tells it, this wasn't a leverage issue.

The lack of honesty and self-reflection from A's ownership has caused legitimate hurt, and fans have made that clear. There's a reason the A's had to shut off their replies on all social channels, and it's not because they were communicating too well.

The A's are going to Las Vegas, and maybe that works out for everyone involved—but they don't get to escape Oakland while passing the blame for their actions.