A few thoughts on the whole situation with the #Athletics, ownership, and the move to Vegas. TL;DR: #SellTheTeam, but sell it to the fans. Dave Zirin made the case for fans buying teams years ago in his 2010 book “Bad Sports.”
So…how about selling the A’s to the fans? Impossible? Maybe.
Sometimes you pick up a book and it’s the right one for the moment. Zirin’s “Bad Sports” is the book I needed to read during this whole debacle with the #Athletics, John Fisher, and MLB.
I think Zirin was onto something powerful. He was making the argument for fans buying teams about a decade ago. What’s going on with the #Athletics is just one more case in a long, long line that makes it clear that things need to change.
And this isn’t just about one team; it’s about the future of baseball. I’m not sure if the PR folks at MLB are concerned, but they should be. What’s going on with the A’s–and your team could be next–is going to drive fans away from the game.
If you haven’t read “Bad Sports,” you should. It’s a book that exposes the hypocrisy and corruption of pro sports…but also makes the case for reclaiming them.
We don’t have to just sit back, stay quiet, shell out all that money for tickets and overpriced beers, and take it. We can and should take baseball back. That's what Zirin essentially argues in his book.
The book was written just after the financial crisis of 2008. At the time, teams like the Dodgers and the Mets were in big financial trouble. The Mets ownership, Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, had invested with Bernie Madoff, of all people.
That obviously did not work out well for the Mets or their fans. But, as Zirin wrote, “Tragically, there is no criminal statute against using and abusing an entire fan base.”
The Mets’ ownership ended up with lawsuits between $300 million and $1 billion dollars from people who were bilked by Madoff. As Zirin outlines, Wilpon was using all the money he made via Madoff to pay off some $500k in debt he’d racked up building Citi Field.
Madoff went bust, and Wilpon and Katz were looking to sell their 25% stake. “One hopes they will,” Zirin wrote, because of all the debt they'd accrued. People, including players, needed to be paid back.
But Zirin argued that the Mets fans and community were also owed something too. And not just because of ownership’s involvement with the Madoff scam. The fans and community were owed something because taxpayers had paid for one-third of the $600 million it took to build Citi Field.
How could they be paid back? Well, here’s what Zirin had to say: “Maybe we are owed the team. Why shouldn’t the Mets follow the model of the Green Bay Packers and allow fans to buy shares?”
“We should repossess the Mets,” wrote Zirin. “Once we do, I will be the first in line to buy my shares of the club.”
But how would that even work? The answer to all this, Zirin argued, can be found in “the sparsely populated tundra of Green Bay Wisconsin,” which happens to have “the only publicly owned, not-for-profit, major professional team in the United States.”
Zirin isn’t the only person making this argument, of course. Stephen R. Keeney makes a detailed case for fan ownership in baseball in his piece “Democracy at the Ballpark: Looking Towards a Fan-Owned Future,” which you can read here:
Some of you out there might balk at the idea of a fan-owned team. How could that possibly work or compete against these billionaires? Well, the Packers are among the most successful teams in the NFL, so there’s that. And, in Europe, some of the most successful teams (like Real Madrid) are fan-owned.
Keeney argues: “This success, combined with the fact that German soccer continually has the best league-wide attendance numbers across Europe, shows that fan ownership can deliver trophies, fan empowerment, and financial stability.”
So great, let’s do this in baseball, right? Well, the only problem, as Zirin explains and Keeney corroborates, is that fan-ownership is strictly forbidden in MLB’s bylaws. This isn’t exactly shocking; that’s how MLB rolls. It’s all about the owners.
Change can happen, but it would take pressure, Zirin argued, including “popular, fan-based pressure” on MLB and “political pressure” on elected officials and politicians.
Zirin wrote: “People should rally, fans should hold up signs, politicians should be questioned, and we should cast off our passivity and realize that as fans, our teams–and our cities–hang in the balance.”
The #ReverseBoycott on 6/13 was a tremendous show of loyalty and force. I have never seen anything like it in baseball. It was a moment when the fans of a team with especially egregious ownership stood up and said ENOUGH.
And they’re clearly not done yet.
Zirin argued then that the fans should repossess the Mets. That didn’t happen. In fact, the new owner bought the team for $2.4 billion from the Wilpons in 2020. So it goes with baseball and MLB. But at some point, there needs to be a break in the pattern.
Maybe Oakland could be just that. The break in the pattern. Zirin had the right idea. Maybe it’s time for the fans to repossess the A’s.