Six decades before, while offering a deposit in a New Jersey sports betting instance, then-Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig spoke steadfastly against placing a franchise in Las Vegas and railed against gambling as”evil” Today, a team is working with investors to construct a stadium and deliver a major-league staff to Las Vegas.
Those efforts come as Selig’s successor, Rob Manfred, predicts Las Vegas a workable marketplace for the sport and baseball decision-makers descend on the city to get its league’s Winter Meetings at Mandalay Bay from Dec. 9-13.
Behind the scenes, Lou Weisbach, a Chicago-area entrepreneur who led the charge to bring the Montreal Expos to Las Vegas in the early 2000s, and Chicago White Sox tv announcer and former Cy Young winner Steve Stone are one of those working to produce their dream of bringing a team to Southern Nevada come true.
Weisbach reported the people he is working with, including some in Las Vegas whom he declined to identify, are engaged in ongoing conversations with shareholders and landowners.
He said individuals involved have been talking with local leaders.
Gov.-elect Steve Sisolak, the longtime Clark County Commission chairman, was asked if he had had talks about a major-league group in Las Vegas.
“Not that I can talk about. … I hope you know sometimes I must sign NDAs (nondisclosure agreements),” he explained.
Could it work here?
The jury remains out on whether Major League Baseball would thrive in vegas.
Some say no — that the entertainment buck would be stretched too thin to market out. Then there’s Weisbach.
SHORT DESCRIPTION (Las Vegas Review-Journal)
“We’ve got a great deal of different locations that we continue to operate on and which are available and so it’s not a matter of if Vegas will have Major League Baseball,” he stated,”it is a matter of if.”
After a greater than 30-year lack, Major League Baseball returned to Washington, D.C., since the Expos became the Washington Nationals, who settled into a temporary residence at RFK Memorial Stadium.
Whether Las Vegas was being used as leverage or has been severely close to becoming a major-league city in 2004 remains up for discussion, and the response varies based on who’s asked.
1 thing was for sure: Washington, D.C., had a scene (and since has built a baseball-specific one). Las Vegas did not.
“I believe in the few instances that I’ve tried to really do so, I think it was too early and we didn’t have a facility,” Stone said.
Weisbach went further, saying he believed that if Las Vegas needed a scene at that time, the Expos could have moved west. This time, the plan is to build a scene initially and deal with procuring a team — if by relocation or expansion — instant.
Read more here: https://sukisather.com/?p=9445
