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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
He was 22 and just out of Stanford in the summer of 1998.
He was a Cleveland Indians/Guardians fan who just didn’t love baseball. Oh, his fanaticism was next level. So enamored with the sport and its array of ballparks, he and his best friend packed a 1996 Nissan Pathfinder and embarked on an ambitious 30-stadium, 38-day, 14,000-mile journey to visit every Major League Baseball stadium in the U.S. and Canada 26 years ago.
Dave Kaval and his bud, Brad Null, soaked up a baseball summer of a lifetime during their Baseball America Tour. Before the duo left, Kaval worked the phones, snagging free tickets, meals and comps at many of the stadiums.
The baseball-loving pair even crammed in visits to the Baseball Hall of Fame in upstate New York, the Louisville Slugger bat museum, the Iowa cornfield/ballfield from the Field of Dreams movie in 1998 and the sites of historic stadiums like Ebbets Field in Brooklyn.
The intrepid baseballophile kept a handy map to follow the trail of stadiums from Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland to New York, Baltimore and Saint Petersburg. That map had powers. Kaval, known for his chatterbox ways with folks at the stadiums he and his pal visited, often showed fans and even stadium workers the map. It was signed by dozens at the ballgames and was an ace up Kaval’s sleeve at the stadiums to start conversations and make friends.
Those were fun, carefree times for Kaval, that summer of stadium hopping. He and Null even wrote a book about the stadium tour titled, The Summer That Saved Baseball.
These days, Kaval, 48, is president of the Oakland Athletics and there are not too many maps out there to help a person navigate the daunting and tricky journey of moving a major league franchise that is beloved by intense local area fans to a new city with a world-famous boulevard of entertainment.
The move from Oakland to Las Vegas came about for one simple reason: the Nevada Legislature in June approved a state law (SB1) earmarking $380 million in government assistance to help build a new $1.5 billion, 33,000-seat Athletics stadium on the Strip at Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard.
At his first meeting before the Las Vegas Stadium Authority Board last year after SB1 was passed, Kaval introduced himself as the point man on the A’s stadium project at the Tropicana hotel-casino site.
Stadium board chairman Steve Hill , the LVCVA public tourism head who appeared before state legislative committees in June to argue for the A’s stadium subsidy bill, told Kaval at that meeting that his introduction to the stadium panel would be his easiest appearance before the board.
As a hardcore fan who created an independent baseball league in California five years after his stadium tour, there’s no doubt that Kaval loves baseball.
It’s against that backdrop that places Kaval in an awkward role — moving a historic ballclub from its home in Oakland that is breaking hearts of so many loyal A’s fans and transplanting it into the Las Vegas market where there was not even a grassroots group calling for an MLB team like you see in Salt Lake City, Utah, for example.
It’s an uncomfortable task to rip an MLB team out of its market and move it into another city. And adding to the pain for A’s fans in Oakland is that it’s a slow-motion move because the A’s are not suppose to christen their new stadium on the Strip until 2028.
On Saturday Feb. 24 a week ago, Kaval was in Mesa, Arizona to watch the Athletics play their spring training home-opener at Hohokam Stadium. Kaval was on social media to mark the occasion with this photo, while back in Oakland on the very same day thousands of fans of the team he oversees staged their own “Fans’ Fest” because the club did not. That’s awkward.
Two days later on Monday, Kaval celebrated an A’s win during spring training in Arizona.
Two days later on Feb. 28 — as Kaval works on a new stadium plan for Las Vegas — he also was preparing the Coliseum for the 2024 season by removing the “Rooted in Oakland” sign at the A’s stadium and replacing it with new signs showing Athletics scenes from the team’s 58-year history in Oakland.
On the very same day Wednesday, Kaval also posted a message about the A’s beating the San Francisco Giants at Hohokam Stadium.
These Kaval social media posts with the replies off, which did not allow any fans or readers to respond, were upsetting to local ABC 7 broadcaster Casey Pratt. In response, Pratt posted this YouTube video titled, “A Message to A’s President Dave Kaval.”
It began, “Dave, what are you doing? If you have to have your replies turned off to posts on social media, then just don’t post.” Pratt pointed out to Kaval. The team president, who began his A’s job in 2016, used to meet with fans in person to hear their comments. The video also suggested to Kaval, “Explain your plans.”
Kaval’s social media post saying, “Always nice to bear the @SFGiants,” prompted new San Francisco Chronicle Giants beat reporter Shayna Rubin to make this crack on social media:
Before last Saturday’s Athletics’ spring home-opener, Kaval chatted with LVSportsBiz.com on the field at Hohokam Stadium and it was clear that he loved baseball.
He talked about bringing to the new stadium in Las Vegas the fun of former baseball promoter Bill Veeck, the former Cleveland, St. Louis Browns and Chicago White Sox owner known for his zany fan promotions.
Kaval can be a chatterbox about baseball. His stadium tour buddy, Null, wrote frequently about Kaval’s chatty ways during the ballpark trek.
That’s why the public silence about the Athletics’ planned stadium in Las Vegas is strange. Despite the fact that the state of Nevada is providing $380 million to help A’s owner John Fisher build the stadium on the Strip, the Athletics have not shared any details about the stadium in a public forum in Las Vegas.
On Nov. 30, the A’s announced they were showing the stadium renderings in only a few days.
The announcement said the A’s lined up Gov. Joe Lombardo, major South Nevada officials and their architect, Bjarke Ingels, for the rendering unveiling.
But then the A’s on Dec. 1, scrubbed the stadium drawings forum, saying it was canceled in respect for the deaths of two Nevada state troopers at an Interstate 15 stop in Las Vegas in November.
Thing is, the A’s never rescheduled the stadium drawings meeting.
Fisher, the team owner, later explained after a Jan. 25 Vegas Chamber of Commerce event that the team wants to move forward together on the redevelopment of the Tropicana hotel-casino site with Tropicana hotel owner Bally’s Corporation. In addition, the A’s and Bally’s are working on the site’s redevelopment with the landowner — Gaming and Leisure Properties, Inc. (GLPI).
During a GLPI earnings call this week, a company executive said the A’s stadium and Bally’s new hotel are on schedule and called the criticism of the stadium project and the Athletics’ lack of information on the stadium as “noise.” The A’s are working on a stadium with a fixed roof for only nine of the 35 acres at the southeast corner of Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard.
The Athletics’ search for a new stadium could make for its own tour of locations in the Bay area because the franchise has presented proposals for ballparks at Fremont, San Jose, a community college district in Oakland, the current Coliseum site and the Howard Terminal site.
Kaval was hired as A’s president in November 2016, so he was connected to attempts at an A’s stadium at three of those sites — the community college district, Howard Terminal and the Coliseum.
Now, Las Vegas is Kaval’s current stadium stop.
And that does not make Kaval a popular guy in the Bay area.
But it’s his job to carry out the duties set forth by owner Fisher, who rarely talks publicly about the stadium project in Las Vegas.
Any impartial observer could conclude that Fisher looked uncomfortable when talking about the A’s stadium project during his debut public appearance at the Vegas Chamber of Commerce preview event last month. He did not talk in a joyful manner and it was unclear why nobody at the Athletics advised Fisher to not say he grew up as a fan of the San Francisco Giants, the Athletics’ rival in the Bay area. Not once did Fisher say he rooted for the A’s. It appeared as if Fisher was reciting bullet points.
He did not discuss any specific details about the proposed stadium and mentioned after the talk that he was looking to draw investors to help him fund the ballpark.
It will be interesting to see if Fisher attends the Athletics’ preseason games March 8 and 9 here in Las Vegas at the stadium owned by their Triple-A affiliate, the Las Vegas Aviators. The 10,000-seat stadium in suburban Downtown Summerlin will host the A’s vs Brewers spring training games on Friday night and then Saturday afternoon.
The Triple-A stadium in metro Las Vegas will not host the Athletics from 2025-2027 after the MLB team’s lease expires at the Coliseum in 2024. The A’s are talking with the city of Oakland about playing at the Coliseum in 2025, 2026 and 2027 while the stadium on the Strip is built.
It’s been a winding journey for Kaval, who still remembers well that 1998 stadium tour across America. He told LVSportsBiz.com that features of stadiums he saw on that trek 26 years ago resonate with his current stadium project in Las Vegas.
“Many aspects inspired by the trip,!” Kaval texted to LVSportsBiz.com earlier this week.