Today City Attorney Dennis Herrera wrote to Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig, advising him in a six-page “sternly-worded letter,” as his press release calls it, that San Francisco is not pleased by the notion of another franchise moving into Giants territory.
Herrera made it clear that San Francisco is interested in protecting the millions of dollars in rent and tax revenues generated by the Giants franchise, and he walked Selig through the promises San Francisco had to make to keep the Giants in town and build AT&T Park, all with the understanding that major league baseball wouldn’t do anything to undercut the financial viability of the franchise.
Stern words can hurt, after the jump ...
“Tampering” with the Giants’ rights to its territory, Herrera wrote, “would be just the sort of action that the city believed Major League Baseball was in effect promising it would not do.”
The buck stops with Selig, reportedly an old college fraternity brother of A’s owner Lew Wolff, who wants to move his team to San Jose.
A coalition of San Jose residents who oppose the A’s move, including friends of the minor-league San Jose Giants, has Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman senior associate Todd Smith working for them, addressing an environmental impact report on the proposed stadium for the A’s.
Photo credit: Tage Olsin/via Wikimedia Commons
— Kate Moser
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