Joe Lacob wanted to buy the Oakland A’s. After Bud Selig rejected him, he went on to buy the Golden State Warriors. Four titles and a new arena later, things are looking pretty good for him.
The San Francisco Chronicle’s John Shea joined Murph & Mac to discuss Lacob’s failed bid for the A’s at a time when the team is threatening to move if it doesn’t get a new waterfront stadium at Howard Terminal.
Shea quoted Lacob in a piece this weekend as saying, “I had the A’s done. It was taken away from me… I think we would’ve had a stadium a long time ago if I had bought it. That’s just me.”
He was denied the opportunity to buy the team because of then MLB Commissioner Bud Selig wanting to scratch the back of a friend, Lewis Wolff, a fraternity brother of Selig at the University of Wisconsin.
According to Shea, Selig didn’t know Lacob, so pushed for a group with Wolff, who sold his ownership shares to John Fisher in 2016.
Lacob’s failed attempt to buy the A’s led him on his path to buy the Warriors. Shea said he learned a “valuable lesson” about the internal politics of professional sports executives.
So Lacob resolved to get involved and let people know who he was by entering a minority stake with the Boston Celtics. That got him in with the NBA, allowed him to develop connections, so that when the Warriors were for sale, he was able to capitalize on that goodwill.
“He gets to know everybody…” Shea said. “So a few years later, when the Warriors come up, instead of buying the A’s for $180 million, he buys the Warriors for $450 million. Now they’re worth $5.6 billion. Joe Lacob, what a transparent man, a creative guy, and a good-deed doer. The A’s wish John Fisher was any of the above. And he hasn’t been…”
“He doesn’t get the Warriors if he doesn’t get rejected by the A’s.”
What’s even more interesting, though, is that Lacob still wants the team.
Shea said that Lacob’s offer to buy the Oakland A’s has remained open for about a decade.
“He says ‘I’ve had a standing offer for I don’t know how long, maybe 10 years to buy the Oakland A’s. So John Fisher knows it. And I assume baseball knows it. Because everyone now knows who Joe Lacob is,’ ” Shea said.
Despite being friends, according to Lacob, there were shots taken. Shea described how Fisher is trying to get the city of Oakland to pay $350 million for the surrounding infrastructure for the project.
Lacob doesn’t get it.
“Joe Lacob says, ‘Why are you nickel and diming this infrastructure nonsense?’… You know what Joe Lacob up says about that $350 million in infrastructure? ‘I would have paid for it myself years ago, just to say I did it. I got it done,’” Shea said. “He’s saying this could have been done so many years ago, if you just put up the money like Lacob did in San Francisco.”
The future of the Oakland A’s remains in the balance, as the team continues to make steps towards the Howard Terminal project, while simultaneously wielding support from Major League Baseball to move to Las Vegas as a point to threaten to move.
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