San Jose and Pro Sports

There's been a lot of interesting south bay/pro sports developments recently. There's been a lot of speculation that the Oakland A's would move to Fremont, and that seems to be coming true. I was near the proposed site of the new ballpark, just a few weeks ago. I was eating at what used to be my favorite restaurant when I was in college. It should be a great place for a ballpark. Their is already a lot of progress in widening 880, the freeway that would run by the park, and BART is being expanded down there, too. There is speculation about a name change for the A's, to either the Silicon Valley A's or San Jose A's. I like the latter. I don't know of any pro sports team named for a region instead of a city (or a state, and the California A's seems unlikely.)

The more surprising news was that the San Francisco 49ers want to move to Santa Clara. I'm not sure if this is just a scare tactic to getting a new stadium in San Francisco, but really it makes sense for them, just as it makes sense for the A's. The San Jose/Silicon Valley area has more people than San Francisco or Oakland, and more importantly, they are more affluent. There's a lot more land in the valley. There's a lot of rich companies who could be corporate sponsors for stadiums, scoreboards, whatever. More money and more people ... what's not to like about that? The Sharks have been very successful in San Jose. Now we just need the Warriors to move down here, since Larry Ellison failed to bring the Sonics here. I'm guessing the 49ers might want to keep their name, but I like the sound of the San Jose 49ers.