Lew Wolff, who once served as the most visible face of the Oakland Athletics ownership group, says the team’s exit from the Bay Area was driven in large part by the San Francisco Giants’ refusal to give up territorial rights to Santa Clara County. In a new 128-page memoir, the 90-year-old writes that the A’s are no longer in the region “100 percent due to the nasty, shameful, and continuing opposition of the Giants.”
Wolff, who owned a partial share of the club for about a decade, says the Giants’ stance blocked the A’s effort to pursue San Jose, the most populous city in the Bay Area, as a relocation site. The Giants declined comment.
The former team executive spends much of Moments on the A’s failed search for a new stadium in the Bay Area, an effort that ended with the club being pulled out of Oakland after the 2024 season. Oakland had been the A’s home for 57 seasons.
Wolff says he still owns a reduced share of the club, even after John Fisher bought him out in 2016. Fisher has held the largest share of the A’s since 2005 and is now building a new ballpark in Las Vegas. In the meantime, the team is playing this season in a minor-league stadium in nearby Sacramento, Calif., for a second straight year, a stopover that will last at least one more season before the planned move.
Wolff dedicates the book to Fisher and former MLB commissioner Bud Selig, and calls Fisher “a dear and long-term friend and partner.” He also says Fisher should not be carrying all of the blame for the A’s departure. “John Fisher gets blamed for things he doesn’t deserve to be blamed for,” Wolff writes.
What Wolff insists mattered most was leverage, or the lack of it. “We tried everything we could think of, but the real key was we had no leverage,” he says. “The Giants’ position really, really messed us up in trying to even negotiate with Oakland.” For Wolff, the fight was not just about a stadium site. It was about a 57-season history in Oakland that ended with the club scattered between Sacramento and a future in Las Vegas.