Five of San Jose's mayors, current and former, have sent a letter to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred urging for the suspension of territorial rights granted to the San Francisco Giants over the South Bay region, a move that would open a path for an MLB expansion team to call San Jose its home, which the mayors are keen to emphasize is a unique market opportunity for an MLB team, according to a San José Spotlight article.
The controversial move follows the news that the Oakland Athletics are closer than ever to finalizing their relocation to Las Vegas, after receiving approval from Nevada lawmakers for $380 million in public financing to help construct a new stadium on the Las Vegas Strip, a decision which is yet to be approved by MLB's 30 owners; only in the Bay Area are territory rights divided by counties, unlike in the two-team markets of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago where teams share the region, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.
The letter, dated June 15, was penned by Mayor Matt Mahan along with former mayors Sam Liccardo, Chuck Reed, Ron Gonzales, and Tom McEnery, and they made a strong case for San Jose, emphasizing the population and economic power of the city in a bid to secure their place in the MLB landscape, as another Mercury News article elaborated.
Now, let's travel back in time to 1990, when a well-intentioned and seemingly innocuous act led to these issues, the then-A's owner Walter Haas granted permission for the then-Giants owner Bob Lurie to have territorial rights to Santa Clara County so he could pursue a ballot measure for a ballpark proposal in San Jose; the measure was rejected and the Giants stayed in San Francisco but retained the territorial rights, and to this day, the mayors remain baffled, with the San José Spotlight reporting that the mayors believe the San Francisco Giants have exploited Haas' goodwill for their own gain.
When the A's tried to gain momentum for moving the team to San Jose under Lew Wolff's leadership, the Giants resisted and were backed by MLB, a development that saw Wolff replaced as president by Dave Kaval whose pursuit of a stadium at Oakland's Laney College was shot down, leading to the current attempt to relocate the A's to Las Vegas, as the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
These events have frustrated San Jose officials who maintain that San Jose should not be the only major American city in any professional sport to be legally barred from hosting a team, especially considering the uncertain future regarding the possibility of bringing another baseball team to the region, which has prompted them to take action to remove any hurdles that stand in the way of an MLB expansion team, and Mayor Mahan himself stated the matter was urgent and timely, as the San José Spotlight highlighted.
San Jose even went as far as to sue MLB in 2013 for conspiring to block the team's potential relocation, alleging that the territory rules violated federal antitrust laws, but the courts sided with MLB and the city's appeal to the Supreme Court was rejected in 2015, as Mercury News mentioned.
Determined not to back down, the mayors now want to open communication with MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred to expedite the release of San Jose and Silicon Valley from the constraints of territorial rights, leaving the next move up to him, while they highlight the economic prosperity and growth potential of San Jose thanks to its booming tech industry, a fact which they believe ought to weigh heavily in their favor, as reported by the San José Spotlight.
