San Jose sues Major League Baseball over stalling in Oakland A’s bid to move there

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed said Tuesday that the city filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against Major League Baseball after giving up on MLB Commissioner Bud Selig’s effort to study a proposed move by the Oakland A’s to San Jose.

Reed said the city felt it was time to file suit against MLB as a committee Selig set up in March 2009 had yet to come to a decision to let the A’s transfer to San Jose, about a five-year process.

“After waiting for four and a half years for Major League Baseball for an answer, it is clear we are not going to get an answer,” Reed said at a news conference at City Hall flanked by City Council members and local business leaders.

“I just decided it was time,” Reed said. “I just know what they did was not right and we’re going to fix that.”

Had MLB approved a plan by the A’s back in 2007 to invest about $500 million into a privately-funded ballpark in downtown San Jose, it would be operating by now and generating millions in tax revenues for the city and local governments, Reed said.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday morning against MLB and Selig in U.S. District Court in San Jose, claims the league violated federal and state antitrust laws by stalling the A’s proposed move.

Under a 1922 Supreme Court decision, MLB has been exempted from U.S. antitrust laws, but the city is challenging the exemption, claiming that MLB’s method of operation is an “unlawful exercise of market power.”

The suit asks that the court declare that MLB had violated antitrust laws and bar the league from blocking the relocation of the A’s to San Jose.

San Jose wants to build a baseball stadium near its downtown Caltrain station and has earmarked a site for the project. A’s owner Lew Wolff has professed his interest in moving to San Jose, with strong support from Reed.

Reed, who said that he has never spoken directly with Selig, said he notified A’s owner Wolff about the suit last week.

“I informed Lew of what we are doing, I didn’t ask for his permission,” Reed said. “We don’t need his support. He’s been working this issue long and hard without success and I decided it was time for us to stick up for our rights.”

MLB, in trying to uphold the Giants’ rights to San Jose’s fan base, is “interfering” with an options contract Wolff signed with the city to buy land for the proposed stadium site, the city claimed.

The league’s actions are restraining trade in violation of federal anti-trust laws and blocking the A’s from making a prudent business move to San Jose from Oakland, the city argued.

The A’s have had the fifth-worst fan attendance at games in MLB since the 1990s, the city claimed.

While the Giants’ had an average attendance of 41,695 fans a game during the 2012 season – the fourth best in MLB — the A’s averaged only 20,728, or 27th out of 30 MLB teams, according to the suit.

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