As negotiations get underway on a new location for the Las Vegas Athletics, let's look back at how we got here so soon after the franchise moved from Oakland back in 2025.
Most of the relocation chatter has centered around the unsuitability of the A’s’ ballpark situation. Discussions began shortly after the team received its $380 million from the state of Nevada and ground was broken on the $33.2 billion domed stadium, up almost immediately from the original estimated cost of $1.5 billion. Due to cost overruns and changes in the original plan insisted upon by the team, the cost of the project skyrocketed within a few months of ground being broken. The stadium, which was to be built near McCarran International Airport after the nine previously planned sites all fell through due to neighborhood concerns about desiccated property values, was to seat up to 30,000, though the capacity repeatedly fluctuated amid plans by the team to replace the outfield bleachers and seats beyond the infield dirt down both lines for gaming tables and a small theater for country star Morgan Wallen.
As the project continually changed and fell behind schedule, A's ownership—first John Fisher, then the Fisher Family Trust when John was ousted in a contentious Thanksgiving weekend gathering that came to be known as The Great Cranberry Sauce Revolution, and then creditors JP Morgan Chase—began asking for increased subsidies from the state and Clark County, including a seven percent respiration tax that passed the legislature by a voice vote two Christmas Eves ago when assemblypersons were nailgunned to their chairs until they agreed to vote yes.
The project stuttered repeatedly as the citizens became more enraptured with the Golden Knights' third Stanley Cup victory in five years, the Aces' WNBA dynasty, the Raiders keeping a wild card game a two-score game for most of the first half, and the NBA expansion team. The Athletics, initially playing in the Aviators' minor-league park in Summerlin, continued to struggle amid payroll and budget reductions and as seats were removed and sent to the new stadium site for reasons of economy, fewer and fewer fans saw the value in standing in dusty lots, especially after the A’s started charging them for bringing their own lawn chairs.
As construction lurched, ownership started suggesting through media leaks that the club's future might be elsewhere, though discussions with Reno, Carson City, Elko, Pahrump, and West Wendover never went very far. Eventually, the A's' chief negotiator, a set of novelty chattering teeth, entered into brief talks with the Navy about the construction of a gigantic floating ballpark off the Oregon coast paid for in part by mandatory blood donations by all citizens above the age of 8. The Navy eventually declined the offer, issuing only a short statement that read, "Are you mental?"
As Nevada's already minimal taste for baseball diminished as the team went 28-134 after signing the members of the Truckee Meadows Community College baseball team to NIL deals that the lawyers were somehow able to pass off as 10-day major-league contracts, the legislature opened hearings to consider forcibly returning the team to Oakland under cover of darkness, but the California city responded by issuing a declaration of war against Nevada that was averted only when California threatened to legalize gambling.
The stadium project was finally abandoned when the state, having already spent $12.4 billion of the promised $380 million, announced there were some pastimes even the entertainment capital of the world did not need to compete with other gambling meccas like Macao, Dubai, and Medicine Hat, Alberta. The A's are currently operating with Major League Baseball as its only traveling team, though talks to have their name changed to the Washington Generals have hit predictable snags. Commissioner Rob Manfred is optimistic a solution to the A's conundrum can be found by his successor's successor, because neither he nor anyone currently in the MLB offices who might consider taking the commissioner's role wants to touch what insiders privately call "this Kuiper Belt of shitshows."
When asked to comment, a spokesman from the Oakland mayor's office was hospitalized after a fit of hysterical laughter that caused her backside to violently detach and roll down a flight of stairs. The A's begin a three-game series Friday with the West Virginia Orioles at their new state-of-the-art 880-seat ballpark/drive-in theater/nail parlor emporium in Morgantown.
