San Jose asks MLB to remove Giants’ ‘territorial rights’ over Bay Area expansion

SAN JOSE — Oakland A’s fans may be feeling depressed over the imminent loss of their team to Las Vegas but, in the South Bay, San Jose hasn’t given up hope of getting a team of their own.

Over the years, San Jose has tried to lure professional baseball to the city — first, the Giants then the A’s — without success. Now, the Bay Area is poised to become a one-team market and San Jose is sending Major League Baseball one more pitch.

The very day Nevada approved public funds for a new A’s stadium in Las Vegas, San Jose sent a letter to Commissioner Rob Manfred calling on the MLB to remove the Giants’ grip on the city’s baseball fate.

“Given that the A’s are likely moving, this really feels like the moment to make our case to MLB that the territorial restrictions placed over the South Bay need to go,” said San Jose mayor Matt Mahan. “They don’t make sense. There is no other city in any major professional sport that faces the imposition of territorial rights like the ones that constrain San Jose.”

Mahan and four former mayors — Sam Licardo, Chuck Reed, Ron Gonzales and Tom McEnery — signed the letter asking that San Jose be eligible for any future team looking for a home.

“You know, it wouldn’t be the A’s but it would be an expansion team,” said Michael Ulmer, a baseball fan living in San Jose. “And yes, we need that because we’ve already lost the Raiders. They went to Vegas. Now, we’re losing the A’s.”

Ulmer remembers when, 12 years ago, the A’s tried to move to an area west of downtown, adjacent to the Diridon transit station and the SAP Center — HP Pavillion at the time.  

“I remember, they wanted to put it right there and that would have been a beautiful ballpark because you had the Caltrain, you got the bus station, you got everything coming right here!”

That deal was quashed by the Giants, who exerted their territorial rights. The irony is that the only reason the Giants have those rights is because A’s owner Walter Haas agreed to it in 1990 — for free — as a way to keep the Giants in the Bay Area and not relocate to Florida. At the time, Santa Clara County — including San Jose — was considered neutral territory for the two teams.

“The A’s ownership at the time was incredibly magnanimous,” Mahan said. “Then the whole idea was that the Giants were looking to build a stadium in the South Bay — which never happened — but they held on to the territorial restriction.”

“And Major League Baseball needs to stop that, OK?” Ulmer said.  “They need to stop it because it’s a monopoly. It’s like playing a game of Monopoly. OK, I own Boardwalk.  You can’t own it but yet, still, you ain’t gonna be able to put nothing here unless I say so!”

As the tenth-largest city in America boasting the economic strength of Silicon Valley, San Jose is eager to get out of the minor leagues. And the mayor thinks that shouldn’t be dictated by their “smaller neighbor to the north.”

“It’s past time to remove the restriction and that, at least, creates the opportunity for a future expansion team or a team that’s relocating to take a look at San Jose,” Mahan said. 

In other two-team markets — Los Angeles, Chicago, New York — both teams share their region. That’s what San Jose is asking for.  As for Michael Ulmer?  He just wants to see baseball there. He’s getting tired of Monopoly.