Bill Neukom Asserts Santa Clara County Is Still Giants Territory

Neukom Says There Is Misunderstanding About Baseball's Territorial Rights

MLB Giants Managing General Partner Bill Neukom Thursday "left little doubt that the Giants would not accept a move by the Oakland A's to San Jose without a fight," according to Mike Swift of the SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS. Speaking to a crowd of about 130 at the Los Altos Rotary Club, Neukom said that there is a "'misunderstanding about the facts' relating to baseball's territorial rights, adding that the Giants established their formal claim of rights" to five counties -- Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco, Marin and Monterey -- as long ago as '94. The Giants financed AT&T Park themselves in the late '90s, and Neukom said, "We're the only team in Major League Baseball that has $20[M] in debt service built every single year into our budget." He said in undertaking that "huge financial commitment," Giants investors "relied explicitly on the fact that we could have Santa Clara County, along with San Mateo, San Francisco, Marin and Monterey, as our market." With San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and other San Jose political leaders "working on plans to help the A's build a new downtown ballpark, the Giants have been particularly visible in Santa Clara County this year." While Neukom "praised the A's as a 'remarkable organization,'" he said that they "can't have the South Bay." Neukom: "It's our territory. We care a lot about it." Neukom said that the panel appointed by MLB Commissioner Bud Selig to explore options for the A's has been "'impressed' by potential ballpark sites for the A's in Alameda and Contra Costa counties." But A's Owner Lew Wolff "insists he won't revisit a stadium site in Fremont, where the team abandoned plans to build a ballpark early this year" (SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, 7/10).