Despite fan protests, it appears to be a foregone conclusion that the Oakland A’s will soon enough become the Las Vegas A’s. While it’s entirely possible something could fall through and the franchise could remain in the place it’s called home since 1968, team owner John Fisher and MLB commissioner Rob Manfred seem deadset on the relocation.
There have been plenty of reasons given for why the move makes sense. The A’s have tried and failed to get Oakland to pay for a new stadium for years. Attendance in Oakland has been sharply down (thanks in part to an uncompetitive product). Las Vegas is an emerging pro sports market where you’re very likely to get a new stadium and plenty of other perks.
One argument that you hadn’t really heard anyone make, for good reason, is that the racial demographics of Las Vegas fit better for a Major League Baseball team than in Oakland.
That was one of the reasons provided in an August 6th opinion column by Steve Kanigher in The Nevada Independent, a “nonpartisan, nonprofit news and opinion website founded in 2017 by veteran political journalist and commentator Jon Ralston.”
In the opinion piece, titled “Las Vegas would be good for A’s,” Kanigher, a former Vegas newspaper and TV journalist, lays out a series of arguments that are cited as reasons Oakland is a better fit for the franchises than Las Vegas. Amongst the arguments, which include the A’s fans’ reverse boycott and the size of the proposed Vegas stadium, there’s a rationale provided that the demographics of Las Vegas fit better with the makeup of MLB players.
The argument: Oakland, with more Black and Asian residents, is better suited for the A’s because it is more racially diverse than Las Vegas. My take: Data from the 2020 U.S. Census reveals Las Vegas more closely resembles the demographics of Major League Baseball players, according to numbers reported on MLB’s website that show this season they are 59.6 percent white, 30.2 percent Hispanic, 6.2 percent Black and 3.2 percent Asian.
That’s, uh, certainly an argument one can make, though we’re not sure how or why.
