LOUISVILLE, KY. (WDRB) — I wiped the Otomax from my keyboard, massaged some betamethasone on my tired fingers and decided to look away from Bob Baffert’s barn for the next 850 or so words.
It is baseball season. Indulge me.
The good folks in Las Vegas made my day Tuesday and Wednesday. Apparently, the Oakland A’s are grumbling about the working conditions at their ball park in the Bay Area.
Ownership is making eyes at finding a new home for the franchise that Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, Mark McGwire, Rickey Henderson and Sean Manaea have made famous.
Guess who made the cut as a possible destination — at least with the oddsmakers?
Louisville.
On Tuesday, Louisville was listed as the sixth most likely future destination for the A’s, tied with Vancouver, which I have consistently been told is a wonderful, vibrant city.
According to www.BetUs.com, you can win $1,200 if you wager $100 on the A’s relocating from Oakland to Louisville.
By Wednesday, the competition apparently got stiffer. Louisville took a hit.
We dropped to 12th on the list of the Athletics’ most likely destinations, with odds of 16-to-1 at SportsBet.ag. The favorite, at 7-to-4, is Las Vegas.
Here is my betting strategy: I would not risk losing $0.01 on a payoff of $1.2 million wagering on the likelihood of the Athletics moving to Louisville.
It isn’t happening.
We don’t have the facility. We don’t have an ownership group pursuing the team. Our market is not large enough to support an 81-game home schedule at major-league prices.
We’re too close to Cincinnati. There’s more but you get the picture.
Former mayor Jerry Abramson, the force behind getting Slugger Field built downtown, told me that during his 20 years in office he never heard a word about an MLB team moving here.
“The College World Series was in play and we made a push for that, but it stayed in Omaha,” said Abramson, the executive in resident at Spalding University.
As for 2021, I wish it was as possible as the wagering sites apparently believe that it is.
Look for the Athletics to either A) use the leverage to get a new stadium in the Bay Area; B) move to Las Vegas; C) move to Nashville (which, as usual, has a group organized to recruit a franchise to join their NFL and NHL franchises) or D) pick another city, like Montreal, Charlotte or San Antonio.
But … as several followers of my Twitter account (@rickbozich) quickly reminded me, there was a time when there was serious talk about the Athletics coming to Louisville.
Or at least as serious as anything could be that came out of the mouth of Charles Finley, the bombastic businessman who owned the franchise in the 60s and 70s.
Finley was based in northwest Indiana, where I grew up. He’s buried in the same cemetery as my parents.
He was always in the news, buying uniforms and equipment for high school teams in Gary, Indiana. He was a man of ideas. He suggested using orange baseballs. He gave players bonus money for growing a mustache but pinched pennies with contracts.
Some ploys never change. Finley wasn’t happy with his lease or the team’s playing facility. In 1964, Finley threatened to move the franchise from Kansas City.
There were several months when Louisville was his preferred destination.
There were no months when Louisville was the preferred destination of American League owners, who failed to give Finley authorization to move the team here. According to news reports, at least one official vote was 9-to-1 against the move.
Of course, that didn’t stop Finley from doing what he did well, keeping his name in the headlines. He came to Frankfort in January 1964 to negotiate with Kentucky Gov. Ned Breathitt and Louisville mayor William O. Cowger.
On Jan. 6, Finley announced that he signed a 2-year lease to move the A’s to Louisville. They would play at Fairgrounds Stadium. He said the state and city were committed to spending a half-million dollars to upgrade and expand the facility from 20,628 seats to more than 30,000.
Don’t bother checking Baseball-Reference.com. The A’s, like the NBA’s Vancouver Grizzlies, Charlotte Hornets and Houston Rockets, never made it to Louisville.
As directed by the American League, the Athletics remained in Kansas City for four more seasons before jumping to Oakland.
By 1972 they were the best and most entertaining team in baseball, driven by Hunter, Jackson, Vida Blue, Rollie Fingers, Joe Rudi, Sal Bando and, of course, Finley to win back-to-back-to-back World Series.
What a fun time it was in Oakland — and what a fun time it would have been in Louisville.
The fun has ended in Oakland. The A’s are consistently one of baseball’s lowest payroll teams. Their rival San Francisco Giants have the most desirable ball park in the major leagues. The Athletics play in a dump.
They’re looking to leave town. It would be wonderful if Louisville was a legitimate destination. But only the wise guys in Las Vegas think there is any chance of that.
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