San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan sent a letter this week signed by Mahan and four previous San Jose Mayors to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred that the South Bay is not San Francisco Giants territory and that MLB should allow an expansion team to come San Jose and the Giants should no longer have territory rights to San Jose and the South Bay (The Business Journals photo)

San José chances of Expansion are better than Oakland

That’s Amaury News and Commentary

By Amaury Pi Gonzalez

OAKLAND–Five of San Jose’s mayors send Commissioner Rob Manfred a letter asking MLB to permanently suspend territorial rights seeking an opportunity for an expansion team. Matt Mahan, the Mayor of San José, and four of his predecessors Sam Liccardo, Chuck Reed, Ron Gonzales and Tom McEnery — wrote in the letter that Santa Clara County territorial rights should not belong to San Francisco Giants.

With the Oakland A’s move to Las Vegas, the San Francisco Giants will be the one team playing in a market with the largest population, in the country, over 7.5 million people in the nine-county Bay Area. Ironically the Oakland A’s gave the San José territorial rights away in 1992 to the San Francisco Giants, who were ready to leave Candlestick Park for Florida.

The A’s intentions were for the Giants to stay in the Bay Area by building a new park in San José. San José is not only the most populous city in the Bay Area with over 1 million residents, more than San Francisco and Oakland but also with Silicon Valley, a major technology hub in California.

However, back in 1992 San José’s Silicon Valley was very young and the south bay city had not become the financial power that it is today. 2023 is another story. According to Consumer Affairs ranking the median household income in the City of San José is $126,377 per year.

Santa Clara County/San José is a thriving dynamic city headquarters to some of the largest technology companies in the world, as well as the home of the NHL San José Sharks and the MLS San José Earthquakes and the San José Giants, the California League Class Single – an affiliate of the San Francisco Giants.

The letter by the San José current and previous Mayors is a very good move into the possibility of the south bay city getting an expansion team. San José still a city growing, with tremendous potential and definitely should be taken seriously by Major League Baseball to rival such other cities seeking an expansion team like Nashville, Portland, Charlotte and possibility others.

Baseball is a summer sport, San José offers the best warm weather consistently over Oakland and San Francisco. Located is the southernmost part of The Bay, San José does not share the marine layer or the fog.

In the next few years BART will be able to complete the loop around the bay, and extend their service from the Berryessa station into downtown San José. Also, Cal-Trains, VTA, Amtrak all come thru/to San Jose. I believe San José is the biggest threat to Oakland in getting an expansion team, because of its size and less economic and social problems.

While it is very early in the process of MLB expansion teams, a “problem” that the Office of the Commissioner believes cannot even get started until the Oakland A’s and Tampa Bay Rays have new stadiums/cities to play in, there should be no doubt that San José is a serious player and can easily push Oakland’s plans to oblivious, if those plans are to get an expansion team.

This is not the 1968 San José that Dionne Warwick sang about her big hit “Do You Know the Way to San José”, because today everybody knows the way to San José.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Oakland A’s lead play by play announcer on the A’s Spanish radio network at 1010 KIQI San Francisco and 990 KATD Pittsburg and does News and Commentary on http://www.sportsradioservice.com