Marty Lurie Talks San Francisco Giants Baseball
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Oakland Turned Us Down, Cries Wolff

Rick Kaplan
Staff Writer

OAKLAND (November 7) – "We have spent more than two years scouring the city for a suitable location for a new ballpark. The latest NSA and NASA spy satellite imagery–not even Google’s maps–failed to turn up a single new site within Oakland on which we could plan our new park."

When asked why the potentially picturesqe Oak-to-Ninth site along the Estuary, or the empty, enormous former Oakland Army Base, did not receive consideration, Wolff replied that "We never saw them on the satellite pictures."

Click below for more! And what about the proposed and much-ballyhooed 66th Ave. site that Mr. Wolff was so enthusiastic about? "Everybody knew that wasn’t a realistic idea, with more than one hundred businesses having to pick up stakes to make it work," admitted the A’s owner.

"After being unable to find another site, all that we asked for was filling in Lake Merritt to create suitable space for a ballpark village where the lake now lies, and naming rights to the city."

"Oakland has an image problem. Imagine ‘Beanetown Athletics,’ or even the ‘Cisco Kids.’ Either one could have been a new identity for the city and a hell of a brand name for us."

"We thought it was a generous offer, but the city didn’t agree. They forced us to go to Fremont. We didn’t have any choice," lamented the A’s principal owner.

Meanwhile, the speculation and excitement around Bud Selig’s rumored visit to the Bay Area on November 14 continues to grow. The Commissioner’s office denied that he was coming here to rubberstamp the team’s imminent move, claiming instead that Selig would be announcing an important change in the balk rules.

However, Selig, who championed the outright elimination of the Oakland club just a few years ago, may really be coming to the East Bay just to squirt Lewis Wolff with champagne. The commissioner has made his position clear on a new park for the A’s :"Luxury boxes and greater revenues would be great. But the biggest goal for MLB is just to get out of Oakland."

"And to my great joy, that’s exactly what Lew Wolff has accomplished."

TOMMY JOHN 2.0

Francisco Liriano, the Twins’ young phenom will miss the 2007 season as he rehabs from Tommy John surgery.

Expect him to win the AL Cy Young Award in 2008. Most pitchers who are now having the surgery, which replaces the damaged ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) in the pitching elbow, are returning to the mound with GREATER velocity than before their arm was injured.

Is this performance enhancement? Of course it is.

Now, seeing the sprightly success that aging stars such as John Smoltz, Mariano Rivera, and Tom Gordon have had following the surgery, are healthy pitchers are going to start to mysteriously pop up on the DL and sign up?

Damn right they are. Maybe I will too.

Joel Zumaya now throws 103 MPH. What would a UCL-enhanced Zumaya be capable of?

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