When Chris Cohan sold the Warriors, the job was there for the taking. And Ron Dellums and Al Davis aren’t around anymore to vie for the title.

That leaves Wolff, the frontman for the A’s ownership group and a commercial real estate man at heart.

Wolff’s efforts to move the team out of Oakland have been a disaster. The Giants own the rights to the South Bay, and everyone knows it. Instead of working on a solution with the city that has housed the team for 44 years, through four championships and plenty of lousy seasons, Wolff and his fellow owners chose to play the waiting game with Major League Baseball.

They tarped the upper deck and started selling off talent, season after season. They figured if their revenue sharing envelope kept getting smaller, the rest of baseball just has to give them San Jose. Looks like Wolff’s game of chicken isn’t paying off. Commissioner Bud Selig, a former classmate of Wolff’s at Yale, told the A’s this week to look elsewhere if they want. But the subtext was clear: San Jose shouldn’t be on their itinerary.

That leaves the team in limbo, the ownership in the dark and the fans up the creek. The only ones with their heads on straight, it seems, are the players and coaches who are putting on a good show of it this season, keeping pace with their rich cousins in San Francisco. The joy of having a two-team market is on full display this weekend at ATT Park, with huge crowds to see the cross-bay rivals do battle.

The good times in San Francisco make A’s fans sick. Out at the Coliseum recently, I spent some time with a guy named Steve Eigenberg. His first Oakland A’s game was the Oakland A’s first game: April 17, 1968. He’s been coming ever since, but he’s a card-carrying member of the Wolff hating party.

“Winning should be a commitment, as well as making money,” said Eigenberg, 59. “Instead, this current ownership is hell bent on getting out of here. I hope this is not a long-term ownership group. I hope the other owners will tell them to sell the thing.”

Wolff says they’re not selling, so there, Mr. Season-Ticket Holder.

Down the way, Dave Filipek, 68, and John Einstos, 58, were enjoying their umpteenth game together at the Coliseum, two buddies whose love for the A’s is shared. As season-ticket holders, they have seen the crowds dwindle and the teams decline. And they’re angry.

“I was really upset four or five years ago when Wolff announced they were moving to Fremont,” said Filipek. “It cost the team thousands of season-ticket holders.”

His friend Einstos is unequivocal in his stance as well: “Everybody in the organization has to be committed to winning. If your priority is real-estate investment, that’s not good.”

“Nobody forces anyone to buy a baseball team, but these guys sure do love their antitrust exemption,” said Einstos, who sits right behind the plate with his friend every chance they get. “A baseball team is the heart of a municipality. It’s more than a business. But they treat it like a business.”

This is no way to run a ballclub, folks. Wolff and his silent majority partner, John Fisher, need to give up on San Jose. They need to partner up with city government and local business leaders, who both say and make a plan that will work in Oakland. This is a city that needs all the help it can get. As the wealthy curators of this public trust, you owe the city and the team’s fans that much.

Find a way to get a beautiful new stadium built in Oakland. If you can’t do that, sell it to someone who will.

Bay to Breakers to London: If you’re out at today’s Bay to Breakers race, keep an eye out for a really fast centipede.

For the past few years, a group of world-class distance runners from the Bay Area have tied themselves together to compete in the wacky road race as a team.

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/19/SP3J1OKBQF.DTL