The Phoenix Press Conference On Bringing Baseball to San Jose:
The Mayor and the County Assessor (me) have been widely ridiculed by people posting on San Jose Inside and the San Jose Mercury editorial regarding the press conference at the Phoenix Municipal Stadium prior to a Giants vs. A’s game. I have to admit some of the commentary was very funny, like the good-natured ribbing I got from my old friend Jude. Some of it, however, was pretty rough.
The photographs initially appeared only on the Mayor’s website until the Merc editors essentially lifted Jude’s blog, and reprinted one photo along with a critical editorial. While the event visually appeared kind of goofy in the photos, the results of the press conference exceeded everyone’s expectations. I prefer to focus on the positive results which have received no attention from the local media or San Jose Inside bloggers.
The purpose of the press conference was to gain national media attention regarding San Jose’s initiative to secure a major league baseball team, and to convey to MLB owners, the inequity of the territorial rights strangle hold the San Francisco Giants have on San Jose. By any measure that objective was accomplished with news articles or briefs in the following publications: [followed by a list of 23 publications]
(Via San Jose Inside.)
Of course this story doesn't mention how many publications covered San Jose's bid for a major league team and how many covered the city's "bus league" approach. You would think that the leaders of the "Capitol of Silicon Valley" would know about spell checking.
Our leaders of the nearly, soon to be "tenth largest city in the US", are green with envy that the other big city's have baseball teams. What they don't understand is that San Jose is a big city by area. It's population is spread out in hundreds of thriving neighborhoods. Most of our population couldn't afford to live in a top 10 city. As is, they face high housing, food and gas costs with little available for major league season tickets.
San Jose is a collective of diverse neighborhoods, not a real city. We have the population, but not the concentration needed to support a big league team.
We can and do support neighborhood-friendly baseball. The minor league San Jose Giants have the highest attendance of any north division California league teams. San Jose Giants fans see top prospects on their way up. It is not the major leagues, but it doesn't have the major league headaches of $25 seats, $10 parking, and $5 hotdogs. But it is still baseball.
While our leaders stumble to bring a major league team to San Jose, they ignore what we already have. Neighborhood-friendly baseball fits San Jose. We are a city of neighborhoods. The sooner our "leaders" see this, the better.
11:42:10 AM 
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