The world according to Jim:
• This was entirely predictable, and it might say as much about the state of baseball as any statistics about the frequency of warning track fly balls in the first two weeks of the season. The Oakland A’s opened their home schedule against the Baltimore Orioles this week and drew 28,383. Total. For four games.
Their opener Monday night in the Oakland Coliseum – or whatever corporate name their dump of a ballpark goes by these days – drew 17,503. That’s a respectable crowd for a game between teams in various stages of tanking, one of which in particular seems to have done everything to alienate its community. The next three days’ crowds: 3,748 on Tuesday, 2,703 on Wednesday, 4,429 on Thursday. …
• That’s not mere disinterest, but a boycott. It’s a reaction to a heavy-handed campaign for an exorbitantly-priced waterfront ballpark development, not-so-veiled threats of relocation to Las Vegas, the silence of owner John Fisher and apparent smarminess of club president David Kaval, and yet another offseason salary dump (and the departure of Manager Bob Melvin to San Diego). Oh, and don’t forget higher ticket and parking prices.
Why wouldn’t East Bay fans revolt? Ryan Thibodeaux, curator of the popular Hall of Fame tracker, spoke for many when he added to his Twitter bio: “Brokenhearted ex-A’s fan. Enough’s enough.” …
• If this sounds familiar to some Dodger fans, it should. The end of the Frank McCourt reign of error in Los Angeles finally drew near when Dodger fans stopped going to games. The crowd count never got to four figures, but lots of tickets went unused. The most striking example was a Saturday afternoon game against the Padres in July of 2011 when Fox’s Joe Buck noted the crowd – the announced tickets sold figure was 29,744 but maybe half that many actually in the park – and called it “pathetic.”
Ten months later the Dodgers had new owners. If only it were that simple everywhere. …
• Remember when the 99-day lockout ended and the new collective bargaining agreement included measures designed to discourage tanking? Almost before the ink was dry, the A’s and Cincinnati Reds were dumping salary and joining the Orioles, Pittsburgh Pirates, Miami Marlins and Cleveland Guardians in that race to the bottom.
It’s discouraging, all right. …
• Still, with their $47.7 million Opening Day payroll (the second-lowest in the game), the A’s entered Friday’s games 8-6 and a half-game behind the first-place Angels. It’s early, and we’ll get more evidence going forward about the cause/effect between solitude and performance. …
• Meanwhile, the Reds are 2-11 (and a truly bad team, as we saw at Dodger Stadium last weekend), and the son of the owner, team president Phil Castellini, ripped the fans for voicing their frustrations and then threatened relocation. He later issued what seemed like a rote apology, but I suspect Reds fans will save their money until their team is competitive. …
• As they should. I applaud fans for staying home in such cases. If organizations can’t earn the customers’ trust by at least trying, they don’t deserve the support. …
• From the “kids, don’t try this at home” file: You might have seen the clip on Twitter or YouTube from a Texas community college baseball game this week. Hitter rounds the bases after hitting a home run, and as he rounds third the pitcher applies an open-field tackle worthy of any defensive back (though it might have drawn a flag for targeting).
According to KHOU-TV in Houston, the pitcher, Owen Woodward of Weatherford College, was suspended for four games by the Northern Texas Junior College Athletic Association. But the hitter, Josh Phillips of North Central Texas College, drew a two-game suspension because he yelled an expletive at Woodward as he approached third base.
The pitcher is said to be a University of Houston baseball recruit. With that form, the football coach might intercept him. …
• Speaking of football, the contrast between USC and UCLA is as stark as ever, and we’ll get proof on Saturday. UCLA will play its spring showcase in Drake Stadium, basically a glorified practice to be aired on the Pac-12 Network. USC, riding the high of the Lincoln Riley honeymoon, plays its spring game in the Coliseum on ESPN. Which one do you think will get all the attention? …
• Along the same lines, UCLA announced without embarrassment this week that UC Davis has been added to its 2027 football schedule (the Bruins were already down to host HBCU Alabama State this September). Unless Davis somehow joins the upper tier of college football between now and then, USC fans presumably will remind their UCLA counterparts that the Trojans will be the only Division I-A (or Bowl Subdivision) program that has never faced a Division I-AA (now Football Championship Subdivision) opponent. Notre Dame, the only other program that has never played an FCS squad, has scheduled Tennessee State, another HBCU program, for early 2023. …
• But Trojan fans might want to keep the bragging to a whisper. The previous USC athletic administration reached a deal in 2019 to schedule UC Davis for the 2021 season opener. Mike Bohn arrived as athletic director and heard the fan uproar, and USC canceled that game in February of 2020, scheduled San Jose State instead, and paid UC Davis $725,000 to go away.
That gave new meaning to the saying, “Lose a game, get a check.” …
• Item: The Dodgers have hired a firm to explore not only ad patches on the jerseys for 2023 but also selling naming rights to the field at Dodger Stadium.
Comment: The best idea I’ve heard is for someone with tons of money to buy the rights in perpetuity and name it after Vin Scully. Then again, Koufax Field would work, too.
@Jim_Alexander on Twitter