Bud’s blue ribbon Oakland A’s committee had a “secret meeting” with Oakland officials

I guess it’s not fair to say that the committee Bud Selig put on the Oakland A’s-to-San Jose case three years ago is doing nothing. Because they’re apparently having cloak and dagger meetings with Oakland officials in an effort to come up with some alternative to Lew Wolff’s designs on the south bay:

Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig’s blue-ribbon committee snuck into town Wednesday for a top secret meeting with East Bay officials and boosters at a downtown Oakland law office to discuss a new plan for an A’s waterfront ballpark ...

... For months, [Oakland mayor Jean] Quan and company have been publicly touting the idea of building the new ballpark next to the Oakland Coliseum as part of a huge sports, housing and retail complex. But this meeting focused on a waterfront ballpark - most likely at Howard Terminal at the Port of Oakland.

I’ll defer to APBA Guy or other bay area people who follow this more closely, but I had always been of the impression that the various Oakland plans that have been tossed around over the years are more pie-in-the-sky things. Mostly because (a) the Oakland economy is awful; (b) there is zero appetite for public dollars to be spent on ballparks in the bay area; and (c) A’s owner Lew Wolff has no desire to explore the possibilities at all.

But hey, at least Bud’s committee actually did something. And now they can turn in expense reports and everything like they’re a real working entity and stuff.

UPDATE: Rhamesis Muncada (a.k.a. Marine Layer) at his website, newballpark.org, has a take that sounds about right:

“The cynic in me looks at this trip with a simple explanation. Summer owners’ meetings are scheduled for next week, and while there will be more pressing matters on the agenda (Padres sale, national TV deals, Nats-O’s-MASN deal) it’s expected that there will be some sort of update on the A’s-Giants ongoing saga. What better way to look like you’re doing something than to have a couple of meetings right before the owners’ sessions? It seems unlikely that Selig will be able to render a decision or bring up a vote based on whatever new information was gathered based on the trip since it’s so fresh, so it’s just one more opportunity to kick the can down the road...”