Three years ago, baseball commissioner Rob Manfred stated that his top priority was to have every team settled into a decent stadium. He emphasized that two clubs in particular — the Oakland Athletics and the Tampa Bay Rays — were in need of new playpens. Hmmm. Didn’t somebody write a poem about the best laid plans of mice and commissioners? If not, this might be the time to compose one. Today, both of those franchises are far worse off than they were three years ago. One has been ravaged by a blockhead owner, and the other by a hurricane that was followed by an election upheaval. Manfred was powerless against any of those forces. The Athletics are no longer the Oakland Athletics. They are merely the Athletics, or maybe just the A’s. They will play their home games in Sacramento for at least the next three years, but they will do it without a geographical designation in their name. They’re making plans to become the Las Vegas Athletics and have plans to build a new palace right on The Strip. Maybe. Las Vegas has agreed to contribute a large sum of money to help with the stadium construction. The state of Nevada has appropriated an additional stipend. The understanding was that the A’s would pick up the rest of the tab. There’s the rub. The A’s say they can’t kick in their share because they don’t have that much money. Any reference to “the A’s” is actually a reference to only one man. John Fisher, Princeton-educated man who inherited billions from his parents, owns all the stock. His finances are private, so we don’t know what happened to those billions. We know only that he’s pleading poverty when it comes to the stadium deal. He says he’d be willing to raise his share of the stadium package by selling 25 percent of the team’s stock, but that offer seems dubious. There aren’t a lot of people out there who are willing to invest several hundred million dollars into what they will have no say about how its run — especially since the man who will be running the operation has yet to make a decision that suggests he has any idea what he is doing. The A’s probably could have negotiated continued use of the Oakland ballpark, but instead Fisher seemed to go out of his way to alienate himself from that city and its authorities. As a result he’s been banished to Sacramento, where he will share a Triple-A ballpark with a Triple-A team. Sacramento can be very hot in the summer. The average daytime high temperature in July is 95 degrees. Triple-digit thermometer readings are common. The Major Leaguer Baseball Players Association has expressed concern about player health under such conditions, bit Fisher says it’s cooler at night and that’s when he plans to play most of the games. That’s the only part of this saga that seems cool. Compared to the A’s, the Rays are a very efficiently run organization. However, since their inception they’ve had to play their home games in Tropicana Field, a hideous domed stadium in St. Petersburg where the roof is the same color as the baseball. At least the roof was the same color as the baseball. There no longer is a roof. In October, it was blown off the dome by Hurricane Milton, which devastated the stadium and much of the surrounding area. On Tuesday, it was determined that the cost of repairing the stadium would be $55 million and would take at least a year to complete. It remains to be determined whether or not those repairs will be undertaken. The ballpark might simply be abandoned. To fully comprehend what’s going on, we need to back up a bit. Long before anyone had heard of Milton, the Rays were agitating for a new stadium and threatening to move elsewhere if they didn’t get it. They picked out a site in St. Petersburg, and the city not only approved the plans but agreed to finance part of the construction cost. The Pinellas County Board of Supervisors pledged an additional sum. Thus, the Rays were expecting to occupy their new structure in 2028 and agreed to play in “The Trop” until then. After Milton struck it was obvious the Rays would need an alternate home for 2025. Orlando, Montreal, San Juan, Salt Lake City and even Oakland were mentioned as possible solutions. The Rays also contemplated the use of one of several spring training facilities located in the area. And then … Election Day brought change to both the St. Petersburg City Council and the Pinellas County Board of Commissioners. New people will be seated on both of those bodies in January — people who have made it clear that in the wake of the storm’s devastation they regard a new ballpark as a very low priority. There’s a very real possibility that the pledges will be withdrawn. The Rays might have no choice but to look for a new home, but at least they have a little bit of time to figure that out. They don’t have much time to figure out what they’re going to do in the immediate future. They are scheduled to host the Colorado Rockies on March 27. As of today, no one knows where that game will be played. We don’t even know what country it will be played in. There will likely be numerous factors impacting that choice, but it’s a decision that needs to be made very soon. It isn’t quite what Rob Manfred had in mind. A FEW HISTORIC NUMBERS: In 1952, Virgil Trucks of the Detroit Tigers posted a 5-19 won-loss record. Two of those five victories were no-hitters — the only no-hitters thrown in the major leagues that season … In 1916, the New York Giants set a record with a 26-game winning streak in September. Earlier in the year they won 17 in a row. Nevertheless, they finished fourth. The following year their longest winning streak was six games, but they won the National League pennant by a wide margin … New York Yankees Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio batted .357 with 30 home runs in 1941. He struck out only 13 times … Owen Wilson batted exactly .300 for the 1912 Pittsburgh Pirates. His 175 hits included 36 triples, which remains the record for three-base hits in a single season … 1933 was the only season in which there were triple crown winners in each league, and they both came from the same city. Jimmie Foxx of the Philadelphia Athletics and Chuck Klein of the Phillies led their respective leagues in batting average, RBIs and home runs. A year later New York nearly matched that feat. Lou Gehrig of the Yankees won the triple crown and the Giants’ Mel Ott missed only because his .326 batting average wasn’t good enough … Eddie Yost of the Washington Senators batted .231 in 1956, collecting only 119 hits in 152 games. Nevertheless, he managed to score 94 runs, primarily because he drew 152 walks … Dizzy Dean won 30 games for the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals. He made 36 starts and pitched in relief 14 times. On 43 occasions he took the mound with less than four days’ rest … In 1930, Hack Wilson of the Chicago Cubs established a record that still stands when he drove in 191 runs. He also scored 146 … Dick Hall pitched nearly 1,260 innings in his 16-year career. He threw only one wild pitch the whole time. Former Hall of Fame voter Jay Dunn has written baseball for The Trentonian for 56 years. Contact him at [email protected]