Wolff wanted to put the team in San Jose.
The former owner of Major League Baseball’s Oakland Athletics franchise, Lew Wolff, has no use for the owners of MLB’s San Franchise Giants franchise. Wolff in his book called “Moments” criticized Giants ownership for not waiving its territorial rights to San Jose within the Bay Area and blocking Wolff from moving to San Jose. Oakland is much closer to San Francisco than San Jose. The problem started in 1990, the Giants ownership was looking to build a new stadium somewhere in the San Francisco Bay Area or the franchise might be sold to investors out of the market, a place like St. Petersburg, Florida which had a stadium available. The A’s franchise owner Walter Haas did a favor for the Giants franchise owners. He granted the Giants’ owners territorial rights to San Jose and Santa Clara County to help them find a new stadium site and keep them from moving out of the Bay Area. It should be noted Giants ownership struck out in its quest for a San Jose stadium and would eventually get land in San Francisco to build a venue. Giants ownership with backing from Major League Baseball never returned the favor.
In the book, Wolff wrote that the Athletics’ departure from Oakland after the 2024 season was “100 percent due to the nasty, shameful, and continuing opposition of the Giants”. MLB franchises can protect their territorial rights because in 1922 the Supreme Court of the United States gave the National and the American Leagues of baseball an antitrust exemption creating a monopoly. The reasoning? Baseball was a game not an interstate business. The city of San Jose sued Major League Baseball on antitrust grounds in June 2013, alleging a conspiracy to block the Oakland Athletics from relocating to San Jose. San Jose claimed MLB’s territorial rules violated antitrust laws. The city lost. Courts upheld the 1922 ruling.
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