Sewage system's problem hardly provides avenue to San Jose

You generally don't associate the words "sewage" and "baseball," but that combo is now all the rage.

On Sunday, the plumbing backed up at the O.Co. Coliseum and stuff invaded the home and visiting clubhouses. The A's and visiting Mariners had to shower upstairs together in the Raiders' locker room.

You would have thought the end of the world had arrived.

ESPN writer Buster Olney tweeted to his hundreds of thousdands Twitter followers, "It's only a matter of time before the A's move to San Jose."

Wait a minute there, Buster.

Olney, who has little experience of things Bay Area, was suggesting the 47-year-old Coliseum is a dump and long has been a dump, and the A's, and probably the Raiders, need new stadiums that are no dumps. To this, we wholeheartedly agree.

It's his next argumentative leap, his illogical leap, we object to: Because the Coliseum is a dump, the A's will move to San Jose, in fact, have a divine right to that move.

To which we say, "No way, Buster."

The San Jose do-gooders have seized upon the sewage crisis to push their never-ending agenda for relocating the A's to San Jose, which on Tuesday included suing Major League Baseball so the A's could move down south. It's bad enough the San Francisco 49ers will play in Santa Clara.

Back to the do-gooders in a moment, but first this. A's front man Lew Wolff did not use the sewage argument to push for a San Jose Stadium. He said he does not endorse lawsuits. He merely said the Joint Powers Authority, which runs the Coliseum, needs to clean up the mess and the A's will go on from there.

On Olney's podcast, Wolff said of the sewage and a San Jose ballpark, "I don't think it's going to make a huge lot of difference." Wolff acted like a gentleman.

Others did not. Others used this episode to bring up all the old arguments. The Oakland Tribune ran a column on the front page saying the A's should move to San Jose, and this sewage spill proves it.

Why, you may wonder, did the Oakland Tribune run an article which advocates taking Oakland's team away from Oakland? Because the Trib, as it says on the front page, is "an edition of the San Jose Mercury News."

This kind of burns me up. It means the Trib is not its own paper. It's the little brother of the Merc. I live in Oakland. I don't feel like the little brother of San Jose. If the Merc wants to run an article advocating taking Oakland's team, run it in the Merc, but leave it out of the Oakland paper.

I quote from the pro-San-Jose propaganda in the Trib/Merc: "Wolff and co-owner John Fisher first proposed a San Jose solution five years ago after they kept running into dead ends in Oakland. Instead of boldly carving a path for such a sensible move, (Commissioner Bud) Selig has chosen to be intimidated by the San Francisco Giants claim of territorial rights to the South Bay."

Whoa! Where to start?

Just because the A's need a new ballpark - and they do - that doesn't mean the park should or will be in San Jose. The argument is not logical. Sewage does not equal a move to the South Bay. The A's could get a new park in Oakland or someplace else. So the San Jose do-gooders are off base here - or maybe they are running from first to second too soon and risk getting picked off.

And the Giants are not intimidating Selig or doing anything underhanded or wrong. Please take the phony moral outrage out of this discussion. The current Giants' ownership bought the team and kept it in San Francisco with the explicit understanding they had rights to the South Bay. It was a condition of the sale.

San Jose do-gooders may consider this wrong - and they may have a point - but it also is wrong to change the Giants' arrangement years after the fact. The Giants have built a beautiful park which they routinely sell out. They have given back to baseball.

The A's have routinely cried poor and never gave back anything, despite having a fabulously rich ownership. They eagerly have taken money from other teams including the Giants in the form of revenue sharing. Why should Major League Baseball reward the team that has done nothing at the expense of baseball's model franchise?

Apparently, MLB believes the A's get no reward. MLB created a panel four years ago to study the A's situation and the panel never has made a recommendation one way or another. That silence is a form of speaking. The silence says the A's dilemma does not rise to a sufficient level of importance, certainly does not merit a vote of owners. And I'll tell you something else. If it ever comes to a vote, the Giants will win.

And while we're asking questions, think about this one. Why should the Giants feel sorry for the A's about sewage in the clubhouses? That's not the Giants' problem. It's not like Larry Baer said to his wife over dinner, "Gee, those poor A's had sewage in the clubhouses. Let's just give them San Jose."

Here is what the A's need to do. And I offer this in a helpful spirit. Before the sewage backup, the carpets in both clubhouses were dull and worn. Call the style "cheap motel." The A's need to install brand-new carpets. That would be a good temporary solution.

After that, they could give the bleeding-heart do-gooders a tour of the carpets and ask for their approval.