(Credit: Stan Szeto, Stan Szeto-USA TODAY Sports)

Look in the rear-view mirror and you see Oakland

The NFL Raiders departed once for Los Angeles, returned, and will be moving to Las Vegas in 2020. The NBA’s Golden State Warriors, for 47 years denizens of Oakland, head across the bay to San Francisco next season to a sparking, new arena.

And the Oakland Athletics have been none too happy with their accommodations either.

They’ve been sharing the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum with the Raiders, the last ballpark hosting pro football and baseball clubs. The building is 50 years old and a dilapidated pit suitable for neither, much less both.

The A’s have explored moving somewhere else in Northern California, but on Monday got a bit of news that might keep the club where it is. The city’s port commission is willing to allow construction of a stadium on 50 acres at an area called Howard Terminal if the A’s can complete an environmental impact report within four years.

Such a report doesn’t mean there will be a stadium. A lease or purchase of the land would have to be worked out and other state and local approvals would be needed for the stadium and a retail complex.

Wish the A’s luck with this. Hope they can get this done. Oakland doesn’t deserve to be stripped bare of sports, even if the Warriors will be just on the other end of a BART train. And the A’s, who have trouble drawing fans to their dump of a home, deserve a better place to play and a chance to increase their budget and complete more evenly in Major League Baseball.

There haven’t been many signs of hope for the A’s. This may be one.

 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman