Oakland Fans Seem to Be Missing Out on a Good Thing

The Oakland Athletics are making their surprising playoff run amid comparative privacy at the Network Associates Coliseum.

They ranked 12th in attendance among the American League’s 14 teams through Tuesday, having drawn 1,168,366 fans for 65 dates, an average of 17,975.

“It’s their choice and not something I personally get hung up in,” General Manager Billy Beane said of the response. “The people who aren’t coming, baseball fans and otherwise, are missing something special, but my responsibility is to put the best team I can on the field. If we win and people don’t come, pretty soon they’re not going to have a team.”

That issue could come to a head when major league owners conduct a quarterly meeting in Cooperstown, N.Y., on Sept. 15-16. A group fronted by former A’s marketing executive Andy Dolich and financed primarily by Bay Area grocer Robert Piccinini has an agreement to buy the team from current owners Steve Schott and Ken Hofmann for $120 million. The agreement binds the A’s to Oakland through 2004, but if major league owners do not approve the Dolich group by Sept. 20, Schott and Hofmann--in an arrangement with the Coliseum Authority--could then sell to any person or group free to move the team at any time.

Dolich, currently executive vice president of sports marketing for Tickets.com, said that his group has met all of the ownership committee’s criteria and he is confident the full ownership will approve the purchase next month, but some industry officials aren’t convinced. They point to the fact that Commissioner Bud Selig publicly endorsed a group that included Chicago Cub telecaster Steve Stone and Arizona banker Lyle Campbell before the Coliseum Authority selected the Bay Area-based Dolich group to go forward--the first step in the process.

Selig said his positive comments regarding the Stone group do not mean he opposes the Dolich group, but he would not say whether a vote will take place at Cooperstown, although he expected the ownership committee to make a report and possible recommendation.

Schott and Hofmann bought the A’s from the family of Levi Strauss heir Walter Haas for a reported $85 million in 1995. The A’s set a franchise attendance record of 2.9 million in 1990 but have not surpassed 2 million since 1993, a period corresponding to the club’s six-year streak of sub-.500 seasons while rebuilding from the farm system up.

Although East Bay fans have been slow to respond to the A’s current playoff bid, Dolich said the Oakland “market potential is extraordinarily positive” and the club’s “talent pipeline is charged for the future.” He said the A’s could easily return to the 2 million attendance level soon and the fact that the San Francisco Giants will be moving into a new and virtually sold-out park next season figures to energize baseball enthusiasm throughout the Bay Area.

Dolich, who spent 14 years with the team, added that it took “guts and foresight” for the A’s to commit to a long rebuilding process in 1993, but “they’ve made it work. They’re one of baseball’s most positive stories.”

Whether Dolich and his partners, including Reggie Jackson, will become part of the story--or whether the A’s will be sold to a group intent on moving--should be determined at the September owners’ meeting.

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American League Attendance

Through Aug. 24 *--*

Dates Total Average Baltimore 61 2,610,258 42,791 Cleveland 63 2,691,402 42,721 New York 64 2,555,785 39,934 Texas 62 2,181,495 35,185 Seattle 65 2,247,168 34,572 Boston 64 1,913,180 29,893 Anaheim 62 1,788,989 28,855 Toronto 65 1,713,267 26,358 Detroit 63 1,439,592 22,851 Tampa Bay 61 1,297,442 21,270 Kansas City 60 1,256,688 20,945 Chicago 59 1,055,336 17,887 Oakland 65 1,168,366 17,975 Minnesota 61 972,282 15,939 AL Totals 875 24,891,250 28,447

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