Oakland’s top farm team plays in Las Vegas.
The Oakland Athletics will play the Cincinnati Reds in a two-game series in Las Vegas in March as part of the 2023 spring training schedule. The Oakland Athletics baseball team has played spring training games in Las Vegas before and in April 1996 played six regular season games in the Nevada city because the Oakland Coliseum renovations were not done by the time the regular season started. One other thing, Oakland’s Triple A minor league affiliate is based in Las Vegas. But what has raised curiosity with the Athletics two-game series in Las Vegas is this. Oakland Athletics owner John Fisher is still looking for a new stadium in Oakland and has been using Las Vegas as some sort of Plan B to do two things. One, put pressure on Oakland elected officials to find money to help Fisher build a stadium surrounded by office and retail space and housing on the Oakland waterfront across from San Francisco. Two, to see if Las Vegas is interested in putting together a stadium deal so that Fisher could take his business to the Nevada city. Time seems to be running out on Oakland as Fisher has just two years left on his lease with the city.
But there is no Las Vegas Major League Baseball state-of-the-art stadium and even if a shovel was put into the ground today, it would be unlikely that a Las Vegas stadium would be finished in time for the 2025 season opener. There is no Las Vegas stadium proposal on the table and any plans for a Las Vegas baseball stadium will have to wait until Joe Lombardo is sworn in as the state’s governor in January. Fisher is in a holding pattern in Nevada, waiting for a new governor, and in Oakland waiting for a new mayor in his stadium quest.
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