Possibly thanks to the involvement of Netflix, the MLB Opening Day game at Oracle Park Wednesday night featured a drone pyrotechnic show during the national anthem, with the American flag — ironically? — going up in smoke.

If you noticed a certain loud fighter jet flyover across the city Wednesday evening around 5:14 pm, you may have thought, "We're under attack from Iran," or you may have put two and two together and figured out that this was part of the opening ceremony for the Opening Day game of Major League Baseball, which was being played between the San Francisco Giants and New York Yankees at Oracle Park.

The game, for the first time, was being carried only on Netflix, which definitely irked some fans. But it might have been that Netflix money that provided the pyrotechnic drone show that produced this terrific, if unintentionally symbolic, disappearing smoke image of the American flag over McCovey Cove.

Here's a more up-close version, apparently shot from a kayak in McCovey Cove, in which you hear someone shout, "Awesome! Thank you, Netflix!"

As noted by Yahoo Sports, reactions on social media include "Was that the greatest national anthem of all time?” and “Straight chills. Best way to start the 2026 season!"

It wasn't the most auspicious start for the Giants' 2026 season, however, with the Yankees trouncing them 7-0.

And The Athletic notes that among the fans who did tune in — and who didn't just go on social media to complain about needing a Netflix subscription on top of five others to watch baseball games this year — many noticed glitches in Netflix's airing of the actual game that need to be fixed. These included "the tiny scorebug, the ad overlays causing jerseys to glitch and weird in-game cuts."

But the broadcast featured appearances by Giants legend Barry Bonds, WWE superstar John Cena, and NFL QB Jameis Winston, in addition to the flashy pre-game show, and the anthem sung by retired US serviceman Generald Wilson.

Wilson's rendition got good reviews, which is more than we can say for original-cast George Washington from Hamilton, Christopher Jackson, who seemed to forget the order of the lines in the anthem when he sang it Thursday at the Mets' Opening Day game.

Major League Baseball is investigating allegations of abuse and infidelity made against SF Giants reliever Sean Hjelle by his estranged wife, Caroline Hjelle. The claims were made public Friday in a viral TikTok post that garnered over 3 million views before it was deleted.

As SFGate reports, Caroline appears in the video with the couple’s two sons, accompanied by overlaid text stating that Hjelle abandoned the family on Mother’s Day, shortly after she learned of his alleged affairs and “stopped putting up with his abuse.” The post is captioned: “Yeah I’ve had to be silent for too long about this,” and includes hashtags referencing divorce, infidelity, and solo motherhood.

TikTok user @hopeyoufindyourdad featured the video in a recent post:

@hopeyoufindyourdad @Caroline Hjelle man of the year trend has been ruined by angry men #womenempowerment #manoftheyear #drama #greenscreenvideo #greenscreen ♬ original sound - Andra

While the couple’s current marital status is unclear, Caroline’s account has previously featured content referencing single parenting and personal distress dating back to late 2024, according to SFGate. One post from April included the hashtag #divorce and a reference to “lies” that left her “devastated.”

In response to the viral post, the San Francisco Giants issued a statement on Saturday acknowledging the seriousness of the allegations, as reported by KRON4. “We are aware of these serious allegations. We have been in contact with MLB. These types of allegations fall under their jurisdiction, and we won’t be commenting further,” the team said.

Manager Bob Melvin told reporters that Hjelle had informed him about the situation Friday night. “We talked to MLB,” Melvin said. “At this point, it’s in their jurisdiction… I really can’t comment on it further.” Melvin added that Hjelle would be available to pitch in Saturday’s game, though he ultimately did not appear in the 3-2 win against the Boston Red Sox.

Hjelle has not publicly denied the claims. Speaking to ESPN after Saturday’s game, he confirmed that he and Caroline are in the process of finalizing a divorce. “I feel confident in saying that I will have one [a statement] eventually,” he said. “I’d like to meet with the people handling the situation with me before I make an official statement.”

Image: SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - JUNE 18: Sean Hjelle #64 of the San  Francisco Giants pitches at Oracle Park on June 18, 2025 in San  Francisco, California. (Photo by Suzanna Mitchell/San Francisco  Giants/Getty Images)

Hall of Fame Left Fielder Rickey Henderson recently passed away at the age of 65, according to a statement from the Oakland A's made on behalf of Henderson's family, who are asking for privacy at this time.

"A legend on and off the field, Rickey was a devoted son, dad, friend, grandfather, brother, uncle, and a truly humble soul," wrote Henderson's wife and daughters. "Rickey lived his life with integrity, and his love for baseball was paramount."

Henderson's nine-team MLB career spanned over two decades, a tenure that included three separate stints totaling 14 years spent playing for the A's. Henderson retired in 2003 and was elected near-unanimously to the Hall of Fame in 2009.

A two-time World Series Champion, 10-time All-Star, and 1990 American League MVP, Henderson is the all-time leader in career runs scored, leadoff home runs, stolen bases, and unintentional walks. Henderson is also the only player with at least 5,000 plate appearances to bat right-handed but throw left-handed.

"If you could split [Henderson] in two, you’d have two Hall of Famers," wrote Bill James, the sportswriter and statistician whose ideas served as the foundation for modern baseball's seismic shift towards the use of advanced analytics.

Nicknamed the "Man of Steal," Henderson is widely considered both the greatest base stealer and leadoff hitter of all time. In 1982, he set the single-season steals record of 130, which was just one out of three seasons in which Henderson eclipsed 100 steals, a feat no other American League player has achieved even once.

Over the course of his stellar career, Henderson managed to steal an astronomical 1,406 bases, greatly eclipsing the next closest player's total of 938.

“Rickey was a teammate, a competitor, and someone I was lucky enough to work alongside and ultimately call a friend," said longtime A’s executive and former teammate Billy Beane in a statement. "He was the greatest Oakland A of all time and will deservedly be remembered that way by fans of baseball across the world."

Outside of the field, Henderson was also known for having several eccentric quirks, such as how he almost exclusively referred to himself in the third person.

Henderson once infamously received a million-dollar bonus check but did not cash it, opting instead to keep it framed and on the wall, which would eventually cause a minor panic for A's accountants during routine audits performed later that year.

"I took the million-dollar check and put it on the wall. So each and every day, I passed by that wall and it reminded myself,  ‘I am a millionaire," said Henderson in 2009.

Photo by Ken Levine/Allsport/Getty Images

Rich with history, the SF Giants and Oakland A’s ‘Bay Bridge Series’ will play out its final iteration on Saturday and Sunday, as the A’s will play in Oakland for only another six weeks.

No matter how good or bad either team was, there was always something special about your San Francisco Giants playing the Oakland A’s, a contest that has come to be known as the Bay Bridge Series. It all harkens back to the Giants-A's 1989 World Series, whose Game 3 was notoriously interrupted by the Loma Prieta earthquake. The A’s and Giants never played before those days, until Interleague games started in 1997, and Major League Baseball curated these regional rivalries that had not before existed.

Since then, the A’s and Giants have played in the regular season 146 times, according to the Bay Area News Group. (The A’s lead the series 75-71.) But Saturday and Sunday will be the last time it’s ever a San Francisco-Oakland game, as this weekend will be the last time the Giants ever play in Oakland, as The Athletic reminds us.

Oh sure, the Giants and A’s will play again. But the A’s will be the Sacramento A’s next season (though in a massive insult to Sacramento, they will simply be known as “the A’s,” without Sacramento in their moniker). And then they’re supposedly moving to Las Vegas in 2028, but we’ll see if that proposed Las Vegas ballpark of theirs actually ends up getting built.  

Both of this week’s games are away games for the Giants, at the Oakland Coliseum. Saturday’s game is at 4:07 pm, Sunday is an afternoon game at 1:07 pm. Tickets for both games are currently going for between $53-$170 on the official MLB site, third-party resellers may be offering a better (or worse) deal.

This is not a particularly epic final Bay Bridge Series. Both teams are ten or more games below .500, with little chance of even making the Wild Card race. Though there is perhaps one historically fitting thing about this last-ever SF Giants-Oakland A’s matchup: the Giants are coached by Bob Melvin, the only manager who has coached both that A’s and the Giants in the era since they first faced off in the 1989 World Series.

Related: Oakland A’s Are Officially Moving to Sacramento for the Next Three Seasons [SFist]

Image: OAKLAND, CA - AUGUST 5: Joc Pederson #23 of the San Francisco Giants bats during the game against the Oakland Athletics at RingCentral Coliseum on August 5, 2023 in Oakland, California. The Athletics defeated the Giants 2-1. (Photo by Michael Zagaris/Oakland Athletics/Getty Images)

Like it or not, facial recognition cameras are coming to gates at Oracle Park, in what Major League Baseball calls “hands-free” ticketing, but others call a “nuclear bomb of privacy.”

Friday is your San Francisco Giants’ Home Opener, and so for this moment the Chronicle wrote a nice article about the technological upgrades coming to Oracle Park this season. As we’ve noted, these include new LED lighting effects and a sound system. The Chronicle headline describes these upgrades as “Dramatic lights, amplified sound, facial recognition.”

What, what’s this now, facial recognition? The Chronicle calls this a “nifty doodad.” It’s a new “feature” in the The MLB Ballpark app, that not-exactly convenient app which you’re forced to use to get into Oracle Park on many occasions that are not even baseball games, like a Lady Gaga concert or an outdoor movie night. (I always delete it right after entering, because I don’t want it tracking my location, mobile browsing history, or god knows what else.)

The Giants are one of four Major League Baseball (MLB) teams now using the facial ticketing scanner this season. MLB describes this as “A new free-flow facial authentication technology, resulting in a fast, hands-free, eyes-up entry into the ballpark for fans.” It’s supposed to make it quicker and easier to get into the park, and will apparently only be used, at first, at the Lefty O’Doul Gate and the Second & King Gate.

“It takes maybe five seconds to register,” Giants chief marketing officer Rachel Heit told the Chronicle. (Uhh, I can tell you from experience that downloading and signing up for the MLB Ballpark app definitely takes more than five seconds.) “For me, I’m always struggling to get my phone out, bring up the tickets and usher my family through and this is very, very seamless.”

A quote from a “chief marketing officer” is always trying to sell you something, and that something may be a lemon. I have yet to meet anyone who prefers the MLB Ballpark app to a normal PDF or bar code, so that was no great technological advance. The move is meant to get fans into the stands quicker, and it does eliminate the need to get out a phone. But there’s no guarantee it won’t have glitchy days, and it may open a Pandora’ box of privacy nightmares.

Above we see what the camera scanners look like. And yes, this is an opt-in program: you sign up for the facial scan ticketing system. But are those cameras taking pictures of everyone who walks through the gate, regardless of whether they’ve opted in? MLB took great pains to explain to ESPN that the facial data of people who sign up for the system is subject to strict privacy rules; their submitted verification selfies are not stored, and their biometric data is not sold.

But they didn’t say anything about what happens to the footage those cameras are taking, which may photograph everyone who walks past them. And that’s the real risk here.

“Face recognition is the nuclear bomb of privacy,” ACLU senior policy analyst Jay Stanley told USA Today. “It has a very real potential to be expanded. People need to ask themselves whether they want to live in a world where their face is scanned at every turn.”

Yes, San Francisco banned facial recognition for government agencies in 2019. But that ban only applied to government agencies, and voters undid those restrictions for SFPD in last month’s election. Can SFPD access footage from the Oracle Park facial scanners? Would Trumper Giants owner Charles Johnson use it to track perceived political enemies?

Sure, you could just avoid the two gates where they’re putting the scanners. But those scanners may be coming to every gate someday. And even with the promised privacy measures, there’s no knowing whether MLB would discreetly roll back those measures in the years to come, perhaps only saying so on the 100,000th sentence of some lengthy “We’ve updated our terms” horseshit.

"Trust this, trust that -- they're all pinky promises that I just don't trust," digital rights advocacy organization Fight for the Future managing director Caitlin Seeley George told ESPN. "Pinky promises by companies that are, in the end, driven by making money. That's always their priority."

Related: Oracle Park Gets More Like Being In the Club This Season With New Soundsystem, Lighting Effects [SFist]

Image: Front view of the entrance to Oracle Park, a baseball park in San Francisco, California, November 19, 2020. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

This will in fact be the final season that the Oakland A’s play in Oakland, as the team officially announced Thursday morning that they’re moving to Sacramento to play in a rinky-dink minor-league ballpark while their Las Vegas stadium gets built.

The biggest complication for the Oakland A’s proposed move to Las Vegas was that the bizarre-looking stadium they want to build there won’t be completed until 2028 at the earliest. And their lease at the Oakland Coliseum expires after this season, which left in limbo where the team would play in 2025, 2026, and 2027. The City of Oakland played hardball with the A’s request to play at the Oakland Coliseum for three more years, demanding $97 million from the team for that three-year extension.

Oakland may have played a little too hard. The Bay Area News Group reports that the A’s took a deal to play those three years in Sacramento instead.

The news first broke Wednesday night, from Sacramento radio host David Weiglein. Weiglein also has the odd Thursday morning revelation that the team won’t go by the name “Sacramento A’s” for those three seasons, but simply as “the A’s.”

ESPN has the detail that A’s president Dave Kaval notified Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao’s chief of staff Leigh Hanson at 7:36 am Thursday morning to say the team was leaving for Sacramento. A’s owner Owner John Fisher called Thao five minutes later, and about ten minutes after that call, the A’s officially announced the move on Twitter in the post seen below.

(In true A’s management fashion, the comments are disabled on that tweet. But the quote-tweets are fucking brutal.)

The A’s will be playing in a “rinky-dink” facility called Sutter Health Park, the current home of the Giants’ Triple-A minor league team the Sacramento River Cats. Sutter Health Park has merely 10,600 seats (the A's current Coliseum seats 63,000), though the park can add a couple thousand more temporary seats on a “party deck” area.

A’s owner John Fisher put out a Thursday morning statement saying, “We explored several locations for a temporary home, including the Oakland Coliseum. Even with the long-standing relationship and good intentions on all sides in the negotiations with Oakland, the conditions to achieve an agreement seemed out of reach. We understand the disappointment this news brings to our fans, as this season marks our final one in Oakland.”

KGO’s Casey Pratt has the additional nugget that during Tuesday’s negotiations, Oakland actually lowered that lease-extension price to $60 million if Oakland could get some expansion team guarantees. But the team brass still went to Wednesday's negotiations with Sacramento officials, and hammered out this arrangement curiously quickly.

“Oakland offered a deal that was fair to the A’s and was fiscally responsible for our city,” Mayor Thao said in her own statement to the Bay Area News Group. “We wish the A’s the best and will continue our conversations with them on facilitating the sale of their share of Coliseum site. The City of Oakland will now focus on advancing redevelopment efforts at the Coliseum.”

Oakland’s most potent wild card in their favor was the A’s $67 million-a-year TV contract with NBC Sports Bay Area. That station will surely cut that amount substantially, though it’s not yet determined by how much.

The deal was reportedly brokered by Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadivé, who also owns the River Cats, and is close friends with Fisher. A’s fans are cursing that man to hell today, which is understandable. And Ranadivé clearly has dreams to own a Major League Baseball team, though the Chronicle speculated last week that Ranadivé could also be part of an ownership team with Warriors owner Joe Lacob to bring an expansion team to Oakland. So that may be his play instead.

As the Bay Area News Group points out, the A’s have flirted with leaving Oakland since almost immediately after moving here from Kansas City in 1968.  Previous team owners have threatened to move to Toronto (in 1970), Chicago (1975), Denver (1978), San Jose (2000 and a few times after that), and Fremont (2006, though they still would have been called the “Oakland A’s”).

The A’s proposed move to Las Vegas could still fall apart. But this certainly seems to mean that the A’s as currently constructed, at least, are finished in the city of Oakland once this season is over. And as of 2025, Oakland will have lost all three of its major pro sports teams in the span of six years.

Related: Las Vegas Mayor Comes Out Swinging Against the Idea of the A’s Moving to Vegas [SFist]

Image: OAKLAND, CA - AUGUST 5: Fans of the Oakland Athletics in the right field bleachers during the game against the San Francisco Giants at RingCentral Coliseum on August 5, 2023 in Oakland, California. The Athletics defeated the Giants 2-1. (Photo by Michael Zagaris/Oakland Athletics/Getty Images)

The Oakland A’s need a ballpark for the next three years while their proposed Las Vegas stadium is getting built, but the City of Oakland hopes to charge them nearly $100 million if they want to play those three years at the Oakland Coliseum.

It was an embarrassing start to the Oakland A’s 2024 season, and not just because they lost their first three games to the Cleveland Guardians. As Oaklandside reports, thousands of fans showed up in the parking lot on Opening Day to protest the A’s proposed move to Las Vegas, refusing to pay admission and instead just watching the game on a makeshift projection screen. Meanwhile, attendance for those three games averaged fewer than 7,600 people, in a stadium with a capacity of 63,000.

Do the A’s have the appetite for three more years of empty stadiums and hostile fans? That may actually be their best course of action, as their proposed Las Vegas stadium won’t be done until 2028 at the earliest, and their lease at the Oakland Coliseum runs out after this season. So the two sides are in negotiations for a Coliseum lease extension, and ESPN got their hands on the City of Oakland's offer for a five-year lease extension that would cost the A’s $97 million.  

It’s perhaps a less-than-subtle insult toward the A’s and their possibly unrealistic Las Vegas stadium plan that it’s a five-year lease offer, even though the A’s only need a stadium for three years. (The team would get a three-year opt-out clause if they take this offer). It seems the City of Oakland is taunting the A’s with the distinct possibility that the Las Vegas stadium gets delayed, or doesn’t even get built at all.

And that $97 million price tag is far, far heftier than what ESPN reports is a current $1.5 million annually in rent. The A’s reportedly offered “a two-year deal and payments of $7 million and $10 million,” per ESPN. But the City of Oakland did drop their demands that the A’s name and colors remain in Oakland for a future expansion team, and their demand that Major League Baseball guarantees them an expansion team.

Oakland is also demanding that the A’s sell their half-ownership in the Coliseum, and according to KTVU, they’re requiring the A’s to pay for the costs of switching the field from baseball game to soccer game uses.

"I remain committed to doing everything in my power to keep the A's in Oakland," Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao told ESPN in a statement. "The terms we have proposed for a lease extension at the Coliseum are clear, reasonable and achievable. Having Major League Baseball in Oakland is what is best for the owners, the league, the players and most importantly, the fans."

The reason the City of Oakland may have the A’s by the short and curlies here is the A’s have a lucrative, $67 million a year contract with NBC Sports Bay Area (actually their parent company NBC Sports California). But that big chunk of change will get substantially reduced if the team plays their home games outside the Bay Area. According to the Chronicle, the A’s are considering short-terms stints in Sacramento or Salt Lake City. Both of those options would mean a serious reduction in the team’s NBC Sports Bay Area money, plus the ignominy of playing Major League Baseball in very small minor league ballparks.

Last month, the A’s released renderings of their proposed Las Vegas ballpark, at the site of what is currently the Tropicana Resort & Casino. That resort would be demolished to make room for the ballpark, but a Nevada teachers’ union is trying to thwart that plan with a ballot measure and lawsuit.

Related: A’s Negotiating to Stay In Oakland Three More Years, Because They Have Nowhere Else to Play [SFist]

Image: OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA - MAY 26: The Oakland Athletics play the Texas Rangers at a nearly empty RingCentral Coliseum on May 26, 2022 in Oakland, California. Attendance at Oakland Athletics baseball games have dwindled to historic lows as the team has traded away fan favorite players and continues to explore moving the team to Las Vegas if they can't reach a deal to build a new stadium near the Port of Oakland. The Athletics have the lowest attendance of all 30 Major League Baseball (MLB) as well as the league's lowest single game attendance for a May 2nd game that only drew 2,488 fans. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

New SF Giants manager Bob Melvin has some freshly added weapons in reigning Cy Young winner Blake Snell and Korean superstar Jung Hoo Lee, as the Giants start their 2024 season Thursday against the San Diego Padres.

The big complaint about your San Francisco Giants' offseason was that they missed out on free agent superstar Shohei Ohtani, and then on Japanese pitching phenom Yoshinobu Yamamoto, losing out on both to their despised in-division rival LA Dodgers.

So let’s check in on Ohtani and Yamamoto! Shohei Ohtani is currently embroiled in baseball’s most massive gambling scandal since Pete Rose in the 1980s, and could well be looking at a suspension of a year or more. Yamamoto got absolutely shelled by the San Diego Padres in his Major League Baseball debut, lasting all of one inning while giving up five runs, and currently holds (I swear to god I am not making this up) an ERA of 45.00.

Hmmm, maybe the Giants were wiser in their more measured and patient approach to free agency? They managed to sign the reigning NL Cy Young winner Blake Snell last week, and I am still trying to figure out how a reigning NL Cy Young was still available barely a week from Opening Day. In early March they added third baseman Matt Chapman, who was a 2023 Gold Glove winner. And their prize addition is Korean superstar Jung Hoo Lee, who immediately becomes their leadoff batter and everyday center fielder.

Will this reverse the Giants' below-.500 fortunes of 2023? We’ll begin to find out Thursday, when the Giants open their season against the San Diego Padres at 1:10 pm at San Diego’s Petco Park.

The Giants have a new manager in Bob Melvin, whose specialty is turning around terrible teams, which he’s done with the Oakland A’s and the Padres. He's taken his teams to the playoffs eight times in his 18 seasons as a manager, but has never won a pennant.

The Giants’ pitching rotation would seem fearsome with Snell and Logan Webb (who was the runner-up to Snell in last year’s Cy Young voting), but maybe not so fearsome beyond those two. Yes, they added 2021 Blue Jays Cy Young winner Robbie Ray, but he’s out with Tommy John surgery until probably around April. New acquisition Jordan Hicks (who can throw 105 mph) will take his place in the starting rotation, though Hicks has traditionally been a reliever, so we’ll see how he handles the transition.

The team will surely hit better with new cleanup batter Jorge Soler (from the Marlins), who was an All-Star last season. And we should note that five-year Giants and fan favorite Mike Yastrzemski will be going off on paternity leave for a bit starting this weekend, so congratulations are in order. But don’t get distracted by that fuckin’ baby, Yaz!

But speaking of fan favorites, our giddiness for the return of Pablo Sandoval will likely be short-lived. Yes, he hit a single in Tuesday night’s 3-1 Bay Bridge Series exhibition game loss to the Oakland A’s. But as the Chronicle explains, Panda is likely to be sent to the minor leagues, if he doesn’t get cut outright, and may never play in a Giants uniform again.

But the most infuriating situation with a fan favorite is the loss of PA announcer Renel Brooks-Moon. Fans are irate, and will likely be even moreso with today’s SFGate revelation that the first of Brooks-Moon’s replacements (and they’ll try out a few) is a die-hard Dodgers fan. Oracle Park’s new nightclub-style lights and sound system are not going to make up for the PR fiasco of letting go of the beloved Renel.

Either way, the Giants play the Padres in San Diego at 1:10 pm Thursday, and their Home Opener is Friday, April 5 at Oracle Park at 1:35 pm, also against the Padres.

Related: The Giants Are Dumping That GM Cruise Patch on Their Uniforms That Fans Hated [SFist]

Image: PEORIA, ARIZONA - MARCH 10: Bob Melvin of the San Francisco Giants stands in the dugout during the spring training game against the Seattle Mariners at Peoria Sports Complex on March 10, 2024 in Peoria, Arizona. (Photo by John E. Moore III/Getty Images)

After a journalist posted a picture of San Francisco Giants' infielder Casey Schmitt at spring training this week, the photo went viral for being rather … revealing.

Baseball players have been wearing a new MLB uniform to training this year, designed by Nike and sports gear retailer Fanatics, but they've haven't been too happy about it. Players have gone on record saying they don’t like the designs, and now, fans have noticed one major change — it seems like the new white pants are essentially see-through.

Alex Pavlovic, a reporter with NBC Sports Bay Area (which is co-owned by the Giants), shared an Instagram story of Schmitt wearing the new uniform during a photoshoot on Thursday, per Sports Illustrated. Unfortunately, the pants left little to the imagination in terms of what’s underneath.

Even though Pavlovic deleted the story, screenshots have surfaced on Xitter and other platforms, as SFGATE reported (and as a head’s up, it should go without saying, but some of these links are not quite safe for work).

These new uniforms were supposed to be lighter and thinner, but fans are raising some concerns about the design of the jerseys. Many are reportedly blaming Fanatics for the noticeable drop in quality, although it’s been making the MLB jerseys for the past four years. In fact, the MLB is insisting that the pants haven’t been changed. In an official statement, the leagues said, “The uniform pants have the same material and thickness as the uniform pants used last season … There were changes to the fabric of the jersey, not the pants,” per WSJ reporter Lindsey Adler.

It all seems like a bit of a mess, with all this hubbub before preseason has even started. But hey, hopefully it’s the start of a good, interesting season for the Giants.

Feature image of Oracle Park via Unsplash/Ruari Bell.

A’s owner John Fisher faces his biggest hurdle yet this week, as Major League Baseball owners will vote on whether or not to approve his scheme to move the team to Las Vegas, but his plan still faces many potential curveballs even if the owners vote yes.

The Oakland A’s ownership has been playing footsie with the idea of moving to Las Vegas for more than four years, in hopes of finally getting out of the dilapidated Oakland Coliseum that has been at times overrun with feral cats, plagued by possums, and even backed up with raw sewage flow. And A’s owner John Fisher made his Las Vegas intentions official in April of this year, abandoning Oakland’s new Howard Terminal ballpark plans on which the City of Oakland had been working on for years.

Despite a summer of Oakland Fan protests and a hastily reworked Las Vegas stadium location, the Nevada legislature in June approved a plan for the A’s proposed $1.5 billion stadium, with $380 million in public funding. Now the Bay Area News Group reports Fisher and the A’s brass face their biggest hurdle this week, as Major League Baseball (MLB) owners will vote this week on whether to approve the A’s relocation to Las Vegas.

The A’s need a supermajority vote from the owners to get approval — that is, 75% of owners, or 23 of the 30 team owners, must vote yes for the move to pass. They are expected to win 75% or better of that vote. The vote will be at the annual winter owner’s meeting, which opens Tuesday, and the vote is expected by the end of the week.

Still, it’s only the first of many owner votes on the matter.

“It’s the next step,” former Montreal Expos president David Samson, who successfully got the Expos moved to Washington, D.C. to become the Washington Nationals, told the News Group. “It’s a step. It’s not the final step. Even with a relocation approval vote, that doesn’t mean Oakland is losing its team.”

“What they will approve is for the A’s to relocate to Las Vegas. But that’s not baseball approving the finished documents.”

One matter at issue is the A’s move from the Bay Area (sixth-largest TV market in the country) to Las Vegas (44th largest). There is also the highly inconvenient matter of where the A’s will play before the opening of that Las Vegas ballpark that’s not expected to be completed until 2028 at the earliest.

The A's could re-up their lease in Oakland for a couple more years (for which Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao would try to ransom a deal to keep the A’s name and logo in Oakland for a possible expansion team), they could share SF’s Oracle Park with the Giants, or they could play in Las Vegas’ minor league ballpark, a plan owners would likely reject because it only seats 10,000, and does not have MLB-quality locker rooms and facilities.

There is also the matter of the Nevada teachers' union trying to get a “Schools Not Stadiums” ballot measure to block the $30 million in taxpayer money that A’s need for the ballpark. While a Nevada judge blocked that voter referendum last week, the union has vowed to appeal the decision.

Related: Oakland A’s Fans Teaming Up With Nevada Schoolteachers to Block Team's Move in ‘Schools Over Stadiums’ Campaign [SFist]

Image: OAKLAND, CA - JUNE 13: Fans of the Oakland Athletics take part in a reverse boycott before the game against the Tampa Bay Rays at RingCentral Coliseum on June 13, 2023 in Oakland, California. The Athletics defeated the Rays 2-1. (Photo by Michael Zagaris/Oakland Athletics/Getty Images)

Former Major League Baseball pitcher Danny Serafini, 49, and an accomplice, Samantha Scott, 33, were taken into custody separately in Nevada for allegedly shooting Serafini’s father-in-law and mother-in-law inside their Tahoe home two years ago.

The shootings were a notorious unsolved mystery in the region for years. On June 5, 2021, police responded to a North Lake Tahoe residence where they found Robert Gary Spohr, 70, had died from a single gunshot wound, and although his wife, Wendy Wood, 68, recovered from her wounds, she died by suicide a year later, as the Chronicle reported. One of their children blamed Wood’s death on Sphor’s murder, telling the Chronicle in July, “she couldn’t handle it, the loss.”

The only publicly known clues reported were surveillance video that showed a hooded man wearing a face covering and a backpack entering the house, and waiting for five hours until the couple returned.

Now, police say they believe the identity of the man to be Serafini, the husband of one of the couple’s daughters, Erin Spohr. Serafini, who regularly lives in Reno, was found and arrested in a small Nevada town more than 150 miles away called Winnemucca at 5:45 a.m. Friday, according to KGO. (In early 2022, the couple’s other daughter Adrienne Spohr also offered a $150,000 reward for information that helped capture the alleged shooter, per KCRA.)

Around the same time, federal authorities reportedly arrested Scott in Las Vegas.

The motive isn’t fully clear at this time, but Placer County sheriff’s authorities conducting the two-year investigation said that “both suspects are known to each other and to the victims.”

The Chronicle reported that sources said detectives had suspicions about Serafini’s business debts, which at one point totaled hundreds of thousands of dollars, connected to the attack. Serafini, after his decade-plus MLB career, which included stints with the Minnesota Twins, the Chicago Cubs, and San Diego Padres, reportedly opened a bar in Sparks, Nevade, near Reno. Originally hailing from San Mateo, Serafini had even played on the San Francisco Giants’ minor league team in 2000, before failing a drug test that ended his athletic career. His bar was called the Bullpen Bar, and was apparently popular and even featured in Jon Taffer’s “Bar Rescue” TV show in 2015, but later closed.

Serafini’s accomplice, Scott, also knew the couple, possibly as a nanny for the family, as CNN reported.

According to authorities, the sheriff’s office is now awaiting Serafini’s and Scott’s extradition from Nevada into Placer County.

Feature image via Placer County Sheriff's Office on Facebook.

Tuesday night’s MLB All-Star Game heard A’s fans chanting “Sell the team!”, but we’re also now learning of a secret meeting between Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred before the game — though Manfred balked at Thao’s case.

If you watched Tuesday night’s Major League Baseball All-Star Game, you surely noticed that those uniforms were absolute trash, and that Giants closer Camilo Doval earned the win by throwing a scoreless ninth inning. But Oakland A’s fans may have noticed a few other things. The A’s elephant mascot Stomper was not included among team mascots, and that plucky A’s fans had engineered a couple of “Sell the team!” chants directed at team owner John Fisher at various points in the game.

One of these chants was indeed audible on the Fox television broadcast (seen below) when A’s outfielder Brent Rooker batted in the sixth inning. The chants were far louder inside the stadium.

But there was another All-Star weekend development that was not on television, and we’re just learning of it now.

As the A’s proceed with their plans to move to Las Vegas, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao apparently had a secret meeting with MLB commissioner Rob Manfred on Sunday in Seattle, the site of the All-Star Game. And as seen in the tweet below, she brought 30 bound copies of a report detailing everything Oakland had done to build the A’s a new ballpark at Howard Terminal, a response to Manfred’s demonstrably bullshit claim last month that “There is no Oakland offer, OK? They never got to a point where they had a plan to build a stadium at any site.”

Thao sat with the Chronicle for an interview after the secret meeting, and described that the 30 copies were for the 30 MLB owners, who would have to approve the relocation. “I think with the recent comments in the public from the commissioner about Oakland not having a proposal or not having anything, that’s just false,” Thao told the Chronicle. “So, for me, it was important that all the owners — and specifically the relocation committee and the commissioner himself — heard from me directly that there was a proposal, showing them a proposal, and giving them the copies.”

As for the meeting itself, Thao said, “it was a private meeting, so I’m not going to get into the details.”

But it does not sound like Thao made any progress. At a Tuesday Baseball Writers’ Association of America luncheon, Manfred was asked about the proposed relocation. “My single biggest disappointment is that because of the kind of political process in Oakland, we didn’t find a solution to keep the A’s in Oakland,” he said.

Manfred seems to be confusing a “political process in Oakland” with the A’s determination to leave. A separate Chronicle op-ed declares that “Manfred is not acting as ‘Commissioner of Baseball’ in all this. He is functioning as John Fisher’s defense attorney, filtering the facts."

Oakland’s best hope here is for the Las Vegas deal to fall apart (which it still could). But Mayor Thao is perhaps trying to work a different set of umpires — the 29 other team owners — who may prefer Fisher sell rather than run the consistently lowest-payroll team in baseball that he has since taking ownership in 2016.

Related: A’s Announce Agreement for New Vegas Ballpark, One Week After Bailing On Previous Vegas Ballpark [SFist]

Image: OAKLAND, CA - JUNE 13: Fans of the Oakland Athletics take part in a reverse boycott before the game against the Tampa Bay Rays at RingCentral Coliseum on June 13, 2023 in Oakland, California. The Athletics defeated the Rays 2-1. (Photo by Michael Zagaris/Oakland Athletics/Getty Images)

It’s not the Field of Dreams game, but Major League Baseball is planning some “Specialty Games” to honor the legacy of the Negro leagues, and one of them will feature the SF Giants playing on the very field where Willie Mays played for the Birmingham Black Barons.

Last week, the Chronicle had a pretty nice (though unconfirmed) scoop that your San Francisco Giants would be playing in the 2024 Field of Dreams game, the annual Major League Baseball game played in a cornfield with a baseball diamond in Dyersville, Iowa where the 1989 Kevin Costner movie Field of Dreams was shot. Except it would not be at that Iowa cornfield, but instead at Birmingham, Alabama’s Rickwood Field, which is the oldest surviving professional baseball stadium in the United States. The scoop was not confirmed at the time.

But it’s confirmed now, as the New York Times reports the Giants will be playing the St. Louis Cardinals at Rickwood Field in June 2024. But it won’t be the Field of Dreams game. Instead it will be a “Specialty Game” honoring the history and legacy of baseball’s early Negro leagues. It will be a real game that counts in the standings, not an exhibition game, and the Giants and Cardinals will both be wearing throwback Negro league uniforms.

As the Times explains, Rickwood Field has been around for 113 years, and is where Willie Mays played professionally for the Birmingham Black Barons in 1948 (when he was only 16 years old!). He took the team to the Negro World Series that year, and further, Mays grew up five miles from the stadium.

"I can’t believe it. I never thought I’d see in my lifetime a Major League Baseball game being played on the very field where I played baseball as a teenager," Mays said in an MLB press release. "It has been 75 years since I played for the Birmingham Black Barons at Rickwood Field, and to learn that my Giants and the Cardinals will play a game there and honor the legacy of the Negro Leagues and all those who came before them is really emotional for me. We can’t forget what got us here and that was the Negro Leagues for so many of us."

The Giants-Cardinals game at Rickwood Field will be played on June 20, 2024, exactly one year from today. That will be a Thursday night, and the game will be broadcast nationally on  Fox starting at 4 p.m. PT.

Related: HBO Drops Trailer for Willie Mays Documentary, Premiering November 8

Image: UNITED STATES - MARCH 06: Rickwood Field, Birmingham, Alabama (Photo by Carol M. Highsmith/Buyenlarge/Getty Images)

The elephant of Oakland Athletics fandom will roar Tuesday night, as an A’s-Rays game will see a “reverse boycott” intended to show Major League Baseball that Oakland has better fans than Las Vegas ever will.

It is a very normal thing for a Major League Baseball team to print up 7,000 t-shirts to hand out to fans for free at some sort of theme night game. But it is a very unusual thing for a group of fans to pay for these 7,000 t-shirts out of their own pockets, and then hand the shirts out for free, shirts which are emblazoned with the message “SELL” because the fans so thoroughly despise the team’s current owner.

Yet that is exactly what is happening for Tuesday night’s contest between the Oakland A’s and Tampa Bay Rays, as KPIX reports A’s fans are planning a “reverse boycott” at Tuesday night's game. They hope to pack the Oakland Coliseum with a visibly enthusiastic crowd, to protest the team’s proposed move to Las Vegas, to show the viability of Oakland as a Major League Baseball town, and to demonstrate that the team’s financial and attendance woes are the fault of A’s  owner John Fisher and team president Dave Kaval.

"We hope to make a statement to not only ownership but to MLB and the whole world that this isn't our fault, that we are here,” lifelong A’s fan Gabriel Hernandez told KPIX. “Stop blaming us as fans for someone who is basically telling me to stop coming by trading our players, raising prices, taking away season ticket benefits like 50% concessions, 25% (merchandise), $10 parking. We aren't going down without a fight."

Is this going to work? Advance ticket sales numbers are not publicly available, but StubHub has some clues. Tuesday night’s A’s-Rays game is the only A’s game listed with the red text addition “This event is selling fast for Oakland Athletics." SFist checked prices for tonight’s game in Oakland featuring the exact same two teams, and the lowest ticket price is currently $9 apiece. The lowest-priced tickets for Tuesday night’s “reverse boycott” game are currently $28 apiece. Ticket resale prices can obviously vary wildly, but it does appear that fan demand has moved the needle here.

And meanwhile in Las Vegas, we reported at the end of last week that the A’s proposed Las Vegas stadium deal does not have the votes in the Nevada legislature to get the $380 million in taxpayer money the team wants for that proposed stadium. And NBC Sports Bay Area reported Monday morning that Nevada state senators are proposing “at least” one amendment to the A’s preferred proposal, so the momentum for the A’s move could be going against the move rather than for it.

Related: A’s Don’t Have the Votes In Nevada Legislature to Get Their Las Vegas Stadium [SFist]

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

We will still get a full 162-game season after all, as the MLB and the players’ union strike an unexpected and sudden tentative labor agreement, and the Giants' Home Opener looks likely to be April 8 against the Miami Marlins.

Whoa, this was out of the blue! Not even 24 hours ago this time, the ongoing Major League Baseball lockout negotiations were going so badly and contentiously that MLB commissioner Rob Manfred announced that games were now canceled through April 14. But we now know that was clearly a bullshit negotiating tactic. It is SFist’s pleasure to inform you that the Major League Baseball lockout ended at about 12:30 p.m. Thursday afternoon, according to the New York Times.

“Originally scheduled for March 31, opening day will be moved to April 7,” the Times reports. “Spring training, which is normally six weeks and was originally scheduled to begin in mid-February, will open this weekend."

What does this mean for the Giants? It’s unclear when the first Cactus League Spring Training game will be played, as a statement on the Giants schedule says that “Spring Training games will begin no earlier than March 18 while MLB and the MLBPA work on negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement.” The schedule does show a Cactus League game against the Padres on March 18, so it is a fair bet to say that game will be played at Peoria Sports Complex in Arizona.

Last we knew, the Giants’ lockout-revised regular season was slated to begin April 14 at the freshly renamed Cleveland Guardians. Clearly MLB is re-revising the schedule with this new April 7 Opening Day. A cached version of the Giants pre-lockout schedule shows the Giants would have been off April 7, but with their Home Opener at Oracle Park on Friday, April 8 against the Miami Marlins.

Therefore it is a high likelihood that the Giants’ first regular season game will be a Home Opener at Oracle Park on Friday, April 8 against the Miami Marlins. This is just speculation based on the previous schedule and the latest announcements, but an official announcement is surely coming soon, because you know the Giants organization is itching to sell those tickets.

We do already know that there will be no Giants-A’s Bay Bridge exhibition series in San Francisco and Oakland the weekend before the regular season, as there would be in a normal year. And technically, this deal has not yet been ratified by the owners. But the league itself has endorsed the deal, putting the urgency of now in place, and pitchers and catchers are booking plane tickets to Spring Training as you read this. So it does indeed seem a lock that the Major League Baseball lockout is over.

Related: Buster Posey Set to Announce His Retirement After 12 Seasons With the Giants [SFist]

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 08: Logan Webb #62 of the San Francisco Giants reacts after striking out Cody Bellinger #35 of the Los Angeles Dodgers during the seventh inning of Game 1 of the National League Division Series at Oracle Park on October 08, 2021 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)