Joe Lacob brought his phone out to the golf course. He figured he’d be getting a call from Bud Selig. Only his phone never buzzed.
Left in the dark for four days by MLB’s commissioner, Lacob eventually found out his bid to buy the Oakland A’s was denied, as Selig went with an ownership group headed by his former fraternity brother Lew Wolff and John Fisher.
How different could things be for the A’s 17 years later? We can only guess.
John Shea of the San Francisco Chronicle recently co-authored a book called “Long Schott” which features former A’s owner Steve Schott. As part of his information gathering for the book, Shea interviewed Lacob, the Warriors’ owner. Shea recently shared details of his illuminating Q&A with Lacob, who did not sound happy about Selig’s decision to direct the sale to Wolff’s group.
“It got yanked from under me. I was really pissed at Bud Selig,” Lacob told Shea. “I easily qualified; that wasn’t the issue. Bud basically did what he wanted to do, and he didn’t know me. So I learned a little lesson from that, which is it’s not all about money. You’ve got to have the right friends in these leagues.”
The A’s were sold for $180 million. Five years later, Lacob spearheaded an ownership group that bought the Warriors for $450 million. Now the A’s are worth an estimated $1.2 billion and the Warriors are worth an estimated $5.6 billion, with the value of the franchise exploding due to the team’s greatness and marketability forged from four NBA championships the past eight years. The shiny new Chase Center on the Bay in San Francisco is also a money-printing machine for the organization.
While Lacob has been renowned for pouring in profits back into the franchise, Fisher has been criticized for his penny-pinching nature throughout his ownership tenure. Lacob said he still has interest in owning the A’s in 2022.
“I’ve had a standing offer to buy the A’s from John Fisher for I don’t even know how long. Over a decade,” Lacob told Shea. “It’s up to him; it’s his business. It would have been smarter to sell to me a long time ago because we would have been partners, and he would have been able to own a part of the Warriors as well. I tried to tell him that. I would have done a ratio deal.
“You’ve seen the increase in value we’ve created by building a stadium and building the business. I do think it’s sad that we didn’t get the A’s over any time in the last 17 years. I think we would’ve done a really good job with the A’s. But, look, obviously I’m biased.”
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Lacob also discussed the A’s efforts to build a new stadium over the decades. He called the Giants’ efforts to stop the A’s from constructing a stadium in San Jose a “screw job”. Lacob said he used to meet with Fisher regularly for lunch, suggesting Howard Terminal as the ideal site for a new stadium, though Fisher used to spurn the idea. Lacob said he would have handled the new stadium situation differently.
“Even that, I would’ve had this thing done a long time ago. I’d just pay for it all privately like I did with the Warriors,” Lacob told Shea. “And you know what? You get to say at the end of the day, ‘I didn’t take any money from you.’ You didn’t get the $300 million or $400 million in infrastructure money, whatever, but it’s easier for me to be able to take that tack.
“I think it’s the right thing in this world, in this place. I would’ve just gone and done it. Think of all the revenue you would’ve gotten if you had done it 10 years ago. Sometimes people want to strike the best deal, but this isn’t a business like any other. They know the numbers better than I do for their situation, but sometimes you’ve just got to get it done.”
Considering Fisher has only given one on-the-record interview – in 2020 when he had to issue an apology after halting $400 weekly stipends to Minor Leaguers at the onset of the pandemic – we’ve never heard him show such commitment to his franchise. All we see is the exodus of quality players every three of four years because Fisher refuses to open up his checkbook.
Maybe one day Fisher will sell the team to Lacob, for now we can only imagine how different the franchise would look with an owner who wants to win at all costs, rather than cut costs and make marginal profits.
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