Vegas may beware more than abused A’s fans think . . .

The way things aren’t happening with John Fisher’s bid to hijack the Athletics out of Oakland and into Las Vegas, you shouldn’t be shocked if the Orphan Athletics becomes the team’s semi-official name for a spell or two.

At this writing I don’t know which thought is the more profound thought: A’s fans in Oakland desperate to see Fisher sell the team to someone willing to keep them in Oakland, or baseball fans in Las Vegas who don’t seem all that anxious to have them here.

Hear me out. Having their Triple-A team, the Aviators, playing in that lovely little ballpark up in the Summerlin area is one thing, and a very nice thing, too. But wanting major league baseball by Fisher’s ways and means is something else entirely.

You couldn’t ask for more proof of my suspicion that Las Vegas isn’t in as big of a hurry to welcome the A’s as first believed than its mayor’s own publicly expressed ambivalence.

Earlier this week, Mayor Carolyn Goodman said she thought the A’s should stay and work things out in Oakland. Until she didn’t. On Tuesday morning, she said, “You have the fan base there. We already have the Raiders. Each city needs to have that spirit of sports . . . I love the people from Oakland. I think they deserve to have their team.” On Tuesday afternoon, after the you-know-what hit the you-know-what, she said, whoops.

“I want to be clear that I am excited about the prospect of major league baseball in Las Vegas,” she began her backpedal, “and it very well may be that the Las Vegas A’s will be come a reality that we will welcome to our city.”

. . . [I]t is my belief that in their perfect world the ownership of the A’s would like to have a new ballpark on the water in Oakland and that the ownership and the government there should listen to their great fans and try to make that dream come true.

Should that fail, Las Vegas has shown that it is a spectacular market for major league sports franchises.

Translation, in part: Fisher should renew his oft-failed efforts to strong-arm Oakland into building him a new ballpark for which he’d have to pay little to nothing, but if he still can’t by all means he should continue putting the bite on Las Vegas and on Nevada whole to do it. For a team his ten-thumbed, toeless touch has reduced to what was once just their official emblem—a white elephant.

“Goodman was not speaking with any real authority on this matter,” writes The Athletic‘s chief of Bay Area coverage, Tim Kawakami. “But just take her skepticism—she literally said the A’s should figure out how to build in Oakland—as a representation of the Las Vegas demographic that never seemed too excited about the A’s relocating to Nevada.”

Just like with every other demographic, business or fan: The more you get to know Fisher’s operation, the less faith you have in anything good happening.

To me, the most telling point wasn’t Goodman’s comments. It was that her clear ambivalence about the A’s in Las Vegas was met with nearly total silence among powerbrokers in that region. Ambivalence on top of ambivalence. Where was the rallying cry from all those businesses and fans supposedly lining up to welcome the A’s? Where was the energy? Why didn’t anybody with clout step up to bellow that the mayor was wrong and the A’s will take this town by storm in 2028, which is the new theoretical finishing date?

Maybe Las Vegas won’t get really excited about possibly being the new home of the A’s until or unless Fisher sells the team. But Oakland’s going to insist that, if he does, he sell the A’s to Oakland interests who’d be more than happy to keep the A’s there and maybe build a ballpark for which they, not the local or county or even state taxpayers, will pay.

And the rest of MLB’s owners “don’t want to force Fisher to sell the team,” Kawakami writes. “But if anything’s going to get them thinking about it, or at least to suggest quite strongly to Fisher that it’s well past time to pass this team to someone else, it’ll be if he blows this Las Vegas situation.”

Don’t bet against that, either.

Fisher’s track record includes blowing two significant proposals back in the Bay Area, one at Laney College (with or without bothering to check with California’s Board of Regents to be sure property at the campus was available in the first place), one at Howard Terminal. (Where Fisher said, essentially, “Build me a delicious real estate complex and let’s throw a ballpark in for good measure.”) Not to mention blowing whatever chance the ancient and decrepit Coliseum had to be rebuilt.

Speaking of which, the A’s Coliseum lease experies after this season. Where will they go from there until, in theory, their intended Las Vegas ballpark gets built? In fact, there’s still no plan other than just plopping one onto the property of the soon-to-be-history Tropicana Hotel. There’s also no known, firm, secured plan coming from the Fisher camp to play A’s home games anywhere else, though speculation includes Sacramento, Salt Lake City, and the Aviators’ Las Vegas Ballpark.

Somehow, I just don’t think turning the A’s into what Kawakami describes as a barnstorming AAAA-level team is the best way to make friends, influence people, and turn Las Vegas ambivalence into Las Vegas popping champagne and partying hearty over the pending A’s relocation.

Remember, as Kawakami does: The A’s have lost 214 games over 2022-2023. Their television lucre by way of MLB is going to be cut short big enough if they end up playing their home games on the road, pardon the expression. That’s not exactly going to inspire Fisher to invest in improving the major league product or the farm system.

“I can’t imagine how the A’s will be any better than they’ve been the last two seasons, and they might be worse,” Kawakami writes. “Until 2029 or 2030.”

Meanwhile, the Nevada State Education Association, one of the state’s teachers’ unions, has filed suit to challenge how legal was and is that $380 million in taxpayer money state lawmakers voted and Gov. Joseph Lombardo signed to hand the A’s to build the ballpark that might never be. The suit argues the gift is illegal because it failed to undergo the required two-thirds majority vote in both state legislature houses, getting approved by simple majority instead.

The money’s actually contingent on building at the Trop prop. The NSEA suit follows their appeal after a court struck down a ballot initiative forcing the $380 million to a public vote of approval.

Meanwhile, Oakland fans continue their efforts to persuade someone, anyone to force Fisher to sell the A’s. Fan groups Last Dive Bar, the Oakland 68s, and others have called for boycotting Opening Day against the Guardians. The A’s answer is offering possibly-unprecedented buy one-get one tickets for the game.

That’s only slightly less absurd than the prospect of thinking about ballpark announcers hailing before first pitch time, “Ladies and gentlemen, your Orphan Athletics!”