Many well-known baseball faces filled the Oakland Coliseum on Wednesday for the AL Wild Card Game including MLB commissioner Rob Manfred.
In between signing autographs for fans, there were more pressing issues including the future home of the A's.
Manfred reportedly told Oakland officials they need to drop the lawsuit of the land site against the A's or there would be a risk the team relocating to another city, specifically Las Vegas.
Tuesday morning, Oakland mayor Libby Schaff confirmed the report on KTVU:
Just now Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf confirmed MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said A's might move to Las Vegas as a result of Oakland filing lawsuit against the team.— Sal Castaneda (@sal_castaneda) October 8, 2019
The lawsuit was against the A's to develop the 155-acre Coliseum site to help pay for a privately financed ballpark which has been proposed to be built at Howard Terminal near Jack London Square in Oakland.
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In the suit, the city argues the county violated the Surplus Land Act, which calls for extra land owned by public entities to first be considered for public housing. The city said the county did not negotiate "in good faith" for the required 90-day period. Rather, they skipped it and began working on the deal with the A's.
The feel from Manfred was that he wasn't messing around. He made it clear if this wasn't dropped, A's fans could be joining the Raiders and cheering on their beloved teams in Sin City.
The commissioner hasn't ruled out the possibility of an MLB expansion team moving to Las Vegas, and with the success of the A's Triple-A Aviators have had in attendance this season after developing their new stadium, and the legal gambling in the area, that could help boost the reasoning to relocate.
[RELATED: Manfred 'very concerned' over A's stadium lawsuit]
In addition to the Raiders, Oakland already said goodbye to the Warriors who relocated to San Francisco at the state-of-the-art Chase Center.
This is not great news and adds yet another hurdle to what was appearing to be promising progress into integrating a new ballpark for the A's.
