The Oakland A’s have been ruining baseball for Oakland for many years. Now they’re threatening to ruin Oakland for Oakland.
In the latest development, the city of Oakland failed in its bid to land a $182 million federal grant it hoped to use for infrastructure on the A’s proposed development at Howard Terminal.
The team and the city have long been negotiating over who pays for what, to the point where the deal seems to be hanging by a thread. The grant rejection stretched that thread thinner.
Oakland City Council members were already practically to the point of busking at BART stations for spare change to make the deal work, to keep the project alive and keep the A’s in Oakland. Now they might have to throw in a few bake sales to close the massive shortfall.