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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
GLENDALE, Arizona — The last time I saw the Los Angeles Dodgers play a spring training game was in 2008 when the Dodgers spent their last spring training at famed Dodgertown in Very Beach, Florida.
Holman Stadium was overflowing with humanity and I scored two tickets to watch the game from beyond the left field fence during those post-berm days in the outfield.
Dodgertown was living history, the place where Hodges and Robinson, Snider and Koufax, Reese and Campanella used to spend the month of March to prep for their National League games.
But by 2008, the old ballyard was antiquated by spring ballpark standards of the time. It was time for the former Brooklyn franchise to move its spring training operations to the Cactus League.
The Dodgers and Chicago White Sox share a sprawling site, dubbed, “Camelback Ranch,” in the Glendale area, only a few miles from the NFL Arizona Cardinals stadium outside Phoenix.
So, here they are on the final Sunday of February hosting the Oakland Athletics, a charter member of the American League that is bound for Las Vegas in 2028 to move into a new stadium. The Nevada Legislature approved $380 million in government assistance to help A’s owner John Fisher build a $1.5 billion, 33,000-seat stadium at the Tropicana hotel site on the Strip.
The Dodgers are a perennial powerhouse team with one of the highest payrolls in the majors, while Fisher has reduced the A’s to a bare-bones operation that is coming off a ghastly 50-112 record and running on an annual $70 million broadcast rights deal with NBC regional and MLB revenue-sharing dollars. The Vegas over/under for A’s wins in 2024 is 55.
Athletics fans are heartbroken.
But the A’s move from Oakland to Las Vegas is hardly set in concrete because the shovels have not struck dirt at the Tropicana hotel site. And the Athletics have floated stadium sites around the Bay area, so A’s fans are holding out hope the team finds a way to stay put.
A’s team president Dave Kaval has told LVSportsBiz.com the team has already donated to Little Leagues in Las Vegas and it’s full steam ahead for a ballpark on the Strip.
LVSportsBiz.com talked about the issue with a fan named Jordan today before the A’s-Dodgers game.
There are not too many Athletics fans here at Camelback Ranch, where the first fans arrived at 8 AM to buy tickets for today’s game. Dodgers vs Athletics Sunday — the two teams met 50 years ago in the 1974 World Series when the A’s won their third consecutive World Series championship after winning the MLB title over the Reds in 1972 and the Mets in 1973.
While a developer in Utah has pitched a mixed-used development with a MLB stadium in Salt Lake City complete with a stadium drawing, Las Vegans are still waiting to see what the A’s have in mind in a stadium rendering. State lawmakers approved the $380 million stadium subsidy and Gov. Joe Lombardo signed the stadium funding bill in Nevada without even seeing the actual stadium in a plan.
The A’s want to build the stadium on nine acres of the Tropicana 35-acre site at the southeast corner of Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard, but the public does not know where specifically on the 35-acre site the stadium will go. Bally’s Corporation, which owns the Tropicana hotel-casino, has told workers the hotel is closing April 2. Gaming and Leisure Properties owns the 35 acres.
The A’s, Bally’s and Gaming and Leisure Properties are all coordinating the release of the stadium rendering because Bally’s also wants to include a new hotel on the site as part of the redevelopment.
he Athletics host the Arizona Diamondbacks at Hohokam Stadium in Mesa Monday. The Dodgers said attendance was 9,587 as the punchless A’s scratched our two runs on five hits in a 4-2 exhibition loss to Los Angeles in a game that lasted two hours and 31 minutes.