THE BATTLE ON THE BAY : If the Giants Want to Stay in San Francisco and the City Wants the Team to Stay, Then What’s All This Talk About San Jose?

SAN FRANCISCO —  Are you ready for the San Jose Giants? Oakland Giants? Redwood City Giants? Denver Giants? Washington Giants?

The ball club that gave up on New York’s Polo Grounds in 1957 has given up on San Francisco’s Candlestick Park and plans another move next year.

Only one thing--a new place to play--could keep the Giants in town, club President Bob Lurie said.

He said he favors the ball park that has been proposed by San Francisco developers for a waterfront site downtown by the Oakland Bay Bridge.

Which brings us to Dianne Feinstein, the mayor of San Francisco.

Playing a daring political game, Feinstein is supporting the projected stadium with everything she’s got but money.

She wants the city’s private sector to come up with the $110 million needed to pay for both the real estate ($20 million) and the construction ($90 million) of the bay-side stadium, which would be used primarily by the Giants. The 49ers are staying at Candlestick.

“He (Lurie) must find a way to buy the land,” Feinstein said.

This flies in the face of American history. No sports team in the last 60 years--an era with sweeping big league changes--has been able to find such a way.

Every major stadium project since 1925, when the New York Yankees built Yankee Stadium, has required city or state financial assistance, usually for the land.

Acquiring the acreage for Dodger Stadium in 1960, Walter O’Malley won a game of Monopoly from supportive, cooperative civic leaders. To the city, he deeded Wrigley Field, which was on a cramped, low-value site in south central Los Angeles. To O’Malley, the city deeded much-larger Chavez Ravine, which at the time was probably the world’s richest chunk of nearly bare downtown real estate.

And a majority of Los Angeles’ citizens agreed with O’Malley that it was a good deal, voting for the proposition in a referendum.

Lurie, a wealthy San Francisco native who rescued the Giants for the city in 1976 when former owner Horace Stoneham was on the point of selling to Canada, hasn’t quite lost hope. Asked if local financiers could underwrite a new ball park from the ground up, he said, “I don’t know--it would be a tough assignment.”

To date, the only volunteers are those who would build on land financed by the city. And Lurie’s deadline is the end of the year, after which his options will include a jump to the real estate of the high bidder--San Jose, Redwood City, Oakland, Vancouver, Tampa, Denver, Washington, Honolulu or elsewhere.

Thus for San Francisco sports fans, this is a period of galling uncertainty, with one overriding question.

Who’s right--Feinstein or the mayors of numerous other U.S. cities who in the last half century have aided and abetted sports teams financially?

With San Francisco as the stakes, Feinstein is clearly gambling. She’s also gambling with her political future as the second-term lame-duck mayor of a city in a state that will be electing both a governor and a senator in 1986.

She stands to gain heavily with many taxpayers, those who, as they tell newspaper readers regularly in letters to the editor, are fed up with grants of public money and land to private sports teams.

But as the economists say, also regularly, the loss of the Giants would be a damaging monetary blow to San Francisco, and, probably, Feinstein would get the blame.

“Sports teams generate substantial income to a community, create jobs, and attract new companies,” Pennsylvania Prof. Edward B. Shils said in summarizing a recent report by researchers at the university’s Wharton School of Finance.

How substantial?

Major league sports in Philadelphia generate more than $200 million a year for the Philadelphia economy, the researchers found.

Lurie, his accountants concede, is dropping at least $5 million a year at Candlestick.

Lurie has begun looking around--joining a trend. The municipal demand for sports franchises in America is such that, of the major leagues’ 98 teams, 80, including the Rams and Raiders, have either relocated since World War II or have come aboard as expansion teams.

The city of San Jose would like to make that 81 of 98.

San Jose, unlike San Francisco, believes deeply in the Wharton School report and is preparing to finance the land for a new Giants Stadium north of town. Estimated cost: $15 million. Private, San Jose-based developers would then build a $60 million stadium.

Lurie visited San Jose last spring and liked what he saw of that city and its leaders. But after first consenting to Giants-San Jose discussions, Feinstein changed her mind early this summer and cooled the relationship.

“Her attorneys put our attorneys on notice,” said Tony Ridder, publisher of the San Jose Mercury-News. “She threatened to sue us for inducing the Giants to break their (Candlestick Park) lease with San Francisco.”

A 35-year agreement originally, the lease has another nine years to run.

“We aren’t lease breakers,” Ridder said. “Until her letter came, we thought we had her blessing. She had given us to understand she’d work with us to keep the Giants in the Bay Area. But her suit carried the threat of punitive damages--and we backed off. (As for going after the Giants) we’re in a holding pattern now.”

Accordingly, the 1985 fight over the Giants isn’t between San Francisco and San Jose. It’s between Feinstein and the Giants.

“The ball is bouncing in her court,” said Robert F. Beyer, San Jose’s deputy city manager. “We’ve broken off talks with the Giants.”

Those studying the complex controversy are of the opinion that one of two things is about to happen to San Francisco. Conceivably, by maintaining her present financial posture, Feinstein could save the taxpayers some money but lose the ball club. Or, if Lurie manages to turn up enough stadium investors, she could have it both ways--keeping out of it and also keeping the Giants.

The resolution of her gamble will be the sports story of the year in San Francisco.

A NEW PARK?

This spring when the developers unveiled their plans for a cozy new ball park for the Giants, the mayor was ecstatic.

San Francisco could have “the most attractive downtown stadium in the United States,” Feinstein said after looking at the designs. “(It is) the most exciting plan for a downtown stadium I have ever seen.”

After thinking it over, she still feels the same way.

“San Francisco cottons to exciting ideas,” she said. “The stadium would have an air-supported dome (covering about half the seats) and we could put concerts, circuses and other events there. (At present) we don’t have a seated convention center. I’m very enthusiastic about the (stadium) plan.”

But there is doubt that voters would support a stadium bond issue. And, otherwise, Feinstein will give the Giants nothing but a few tokens of financial assistance--”such as a waiver of admission taxes,” which they already have.

Deputy mayor James Lazarus promised only: “We can lower their costs of operations (somewhat).”

The really big money, Feinstein insists, will have to be endowed by private investors.

“More citizens must come forward, just as Peter Stocker has come forward,” she said.

Stocker, 42, is the father of the new ball park here. A real estate developer, he had the original idea, for which he is coordinating financing. He also commissioned the architect, New York’s Juanito Yan.

The concept includes a unique stadium-hotel and shopping plaza for a snug, largely vacant site on San Francisco’s Embarcadero at the foot of the Oakland Bay Bridge. The little stadium would seat 45,000 baseball spectators lining all four sides of the field. The little built-in hotel would have 100 rooms, some with a view of the playing field, and all plush.

The place is too small for football. City officials say it would draw comparisons with Boston’s Fenway Park and Chicago’s Wrigley Field.

“It’s a departure from the super-stadiums of today and a return to the small ball park (that is) built right into the fabric of the city,” San Francisco city planner Dean Macris recently told the San Francisco Examiner.

For circuses, concerts and other events, a portable roof would cover 25,000 seats and all 140 luxury boxes.

Stocker is the spokesman for and one of several partners in a local real estate firm, the Pacific Union Co., which built, among other things, the $100 million Opera Plaza, a mixed-use facility in San Francisco’s Civic Center. His partners include H.W. Harlan and J.G. Montgomery.

A Denison University graduate and sailboat enthusiast, Stocker was unavailable for comment last week.

Stocker’s plans call for him to become a minority owner of the Giants, at first, and then majority owner.

An appealing aspect of his projected stadium is its site on the San Francisco waterfront under a picturesque bridge. It is within easy walking distance of downtown areas, and, weather experts say, the site is strangely and happily shielded from much of San Francisco’s wind and fog.

If the Giants ever play there, they’ll like the place.

AN OLD TEAM

There are some circumstances in which the Giants would stay another year or two in Candlestick Park, their famous but unloved ancient stadium, which sits on a gusty, quite inaccessible promontory on the bay south of the city. Should ground be broken for a new stadium here, for example, they’d sit a spell at Candlestick and wait.

“But I’m not going to stay in this stadium until 1994,” the owner of the club vowed last week.

Contemplating his future, Bob Lurie thinks he only has two priorities.

“The Stocker plan is No. 1,” he said at his stadium office. “I hope to know about that within 30 days. After that, if I have to, I’ll start thinking about No. 2.”

What’s No. 2?

“The other possibilities,” he said.

Doming Candlestick isn’t among them.

“It would cost too much,” the Giant leader said. “And it wouldn’t solve any of the other (Candlestick) problems.”

Lurie is 56. He was dressed for an afternoon ball game in two tones of gray. Mild of manner, stocky, below medium height, he is a Northwestern University graduate whose pleasant smile suggests that he is easily amused.

The proprietor of a long-suffering team in a long-suffering city--the Giants have the 24th best team and 26th best stadium in the 26-team majors--Lurie obviously has as much patience as money.

His San Francisco background is impeccable. His father, financier Louis Lurie, founded the Montgomery Street real estate firm that bears the family name and hobnobbed in the old days with the Leland Stanfords and the Mark Hopkinses and the Hearsts.

Fortune magazine estimated the Lurie fortune at $200 million before he started losing $2 million or $3 million a year, after taxes, on the ball club.

Now 103 years old, the Giants, in fact, haven’t ever been very lucky. Their New York stadium, the Polo Grounds, was better suited to polo or even croquet than baseball. And after Dodger owner Walter O’Malley persuaded the 1950s Giant owner, Horace Stoneham, to accompany him to California, they wound up in, respectively, the best and worst stadiums in America.

Chronicle columnist Art Rosenbaum says the city has been urged to award the croix de candlestick, patterned after France’s croix de guerre, to any Giant fan who stays for the 10th inning of an overtime game at night.

Several years ago when a frostbitten fan threatened to sue and when, simultaneously, Charles O. Finley threatened to take the A’s away, Lurie arranged a deal to play the Giants’ night games in Oakland and day games at Candlestick.

“We’d still consider Oakland (for a permanent residence) if the A’s move,” Lurie said.

The A’s, who lose twice as much money as the Giants, are facing two more seasons on their Oakland Coliseum lease. But according to one Bay Area scenario, they would willingly move to Denver or Washington next year, leaving the Giants to pick up their lease in Oakland.

One problem is that a Giant team in Oakland would lose most of its present clientele, San Francisco old-timers insist. To them, Oakland is on another continent.

“I have a big family with more than 100 relatives in Oakland,” Rosenbaum said. “But thank God, they’re all my wife’s relatives.”

The A’s date their present miseries to a decision by Finley in the late 1970s to sell the A’s to the Haas family, which, up here, rivals the Lurie family in wealth and prestige.

Both families think the Bay Area (population 5 million) is too small for two baseball teams.

Asked if he joins with the Giants in calling this a one-team market, a Haas relative, Roy Eisenhardt--the operator of the A’s--once said, “I’m not sure it’s even that.”

Still, the history of baseball reveals rather plainly that sports teams blaming their troubles on saturation--rather than, for instance, on mismanagement--can’t prove it. Attendance went down, not up, for the Red Sox when the Braves left Boston; for the Cardinals when the Browns left St. Louis, and for the Yankees when the Dodgers and Giants left New York.

If it isn’t the small Bay Area market that’s strangling the Giants and A’s, it’s television. This is the view of many baseball men, including Commissioner Peter Ueberroth. They hold that the majors’ present television arrangements are unfair.

Unlike pro football, where all television money is shared, baseball allows each team to negotiate its own electronic package--which divides baseball into two camps, haves and have nots.

The have nots, which include the Giants and A’s, get less than $2.5 million annually, apiece, from television. The haves, which include the Yankees, Mets and Dodgers, each get about $13 million--close to the annual television income of each of the NFL’s 28 franchises.

The upshot, in any case, is that football’s 49ers can make money at Candlestick and baseball’s Giants can’t. It helps, of course, that the 49ers win championships, whereas the Giants don’t. Secondly, as everyone says, Candlestick is more suited for football.

It will apparently be strictly a football stadium from now on. Feinstein is assisting the 49ers with a $30 million remodeling job that will include more seats and luxury boxes. She isn’t, however, putting in any city money. She wouldn’t. The Giants can tell you that.

A NEW CITY?

If San Francisco gives up on the Giants, the leading contender to take them is San Jose.

Lurie could make more money selling the club to interests in Denver, Washington or Vancouver.

“But he wants to see the Giants in the Bay Area,” said Corey Busch, the Giants executive vice president,

There is some doubt about whether San Jose is actually in the Bay Area. Most San Franciscans say it isn’t.

“To them, we’re a wilderness outpost,” said San Jose Mercury-News sports editor Mark Purdy.

Lurie was asked to settle the argument.

“Sure it’s part of the Bay Area,” he said. “In less than an hour you can drive around the bay to San Jose.”

The bay is San Francisco Bay, a mighty expanse of sea water shaped like a triangle. Near the north end, San Francisco and Oakland glare at each other across a handsome bridge. Fifty miles south, San Jose sits near the point of the triangle.

Candlestick Park and the San Jose stadium site are 42 miles apart.

Although San Francisco is called The City around here, faster-growing San Jose is about the same size. The population of each is 700,000, more or less. There are 350,000 in Oakland.

“San Jose is one of the 14 largest cities in the country,” Mercury-News publisher Tony Ridder said. “It will soon be the largest city in California north of L.A.”

And already, San Jose is more willing than San Francisco to make a home for the Giants. The mayor is more interested; the dominant paper, the Mercury-News, is more helpful; the stadium builders are only awaiting the word, and the fans are ready to go.

In a sense, this has all been inevitable. Landing the Giants would make San Jose or even Pismo Beach a major league city overnight. Meanwhile, San Francisco, in any case, remains the home of the world champion 49ers, keeping its major league label intact.

Moreover, San Francisco’s interest in the Giants has been dulled for years by the performance of the team, which, so far, hasn’t bothered San Jose.

Finally, there isn’t much evidence that today’s San Francisco generation really understands the importance of major league baseball as compared against, say, pro football or opera.

Baseball, the nation’s oldest and most honored pastime, played daily, is the strongest of municipal magnets. In 1957, San Francisco knew this. But it has had the Giants since ’58.

From the outside, looking in, San Jose knows it now. And it has delegated deputy city manager Robert F. Beyer to coordinate efforts to get a franchise.

“Most of the great (American) cities have major league baseball teams,” said Beyer. “Major league teams do wonders for a city’s economy and identity. But if the mayor here (Tom McEnery) hadn’t been interested in a ball club, we never would have moved on it.”

McEnery was unavailable. He and the San Jose city council take July off. But Beyer, whose office overlooks the road to the proposed stadium, said:

“The city wants to make the stadium land available (to the Giants) on a long-term lease. And we will also provide the infrastructure of facilities, roads, sewers, and so on.”

As in San Francisco, private interests are planning to finance and build the ball park as well as adjoining office buildings and a hotel. Those carrying the ball in San Jose are developers Lew Wolff and Phil Di Napoli.

Their stadium, seating 45,000, will be for baseball only.

He also said Lurie picked San Jose’s 100-acre baseball site, which is in the countryside 8 or 10 miles from downtown.

Like the area for miles around, San Jose’s stadium site is a brown, arid, flat pasture. The most distinctive geographical difference between San Francisco and San Jose is that the former is a city of hills. Altogether flat, San Jose rests in a wide valley between the Santa Cruz mountains to the West and the Mt. Hamilton range on the East. There is often a veil of smog overhead, but on a clear day you can easily see nearby Mt. Hamilton.

As a whole, San Jose is defined not alone by its families but also by its affluence. The so-called Silicon Valley--which includes, basically, a string of modernistic buildings dedicated to computers and electronics--begins and ends near here.

Although a recession hit the Silicon community this year, Santa Clara County, of which San Jose is the county seat, is still doing all right.

“The median household income in San Jose is $33,780,” Ridder said. “That puts us first in the state--and sixth in the nation.”

Clearly, the Giants could sell some tickets in San Jose--if they could get out of the last nine years of their Candlestick lease. Buying their way out would cost $3 million or more.

The Giants think they’d win any court action matching them against the municipality of San Francisco because their Candlestick lease obligates the city to provide “a major league facility.” And, said Giant vice president Busch, “Mayor Feinstein herself has said: ‘This isn’t a major league facility.”’

In other words, Feinstein has expressed agreement with the big majority of those who visit Candlestick to play or write about baseball, Giant president Lurie said, adding:

“She has made more derogatory statements about Candlestick Park than I have.”

So the question they’re asking 50 miles south of San Francisco this summer is this: Will Dianne Feinstein cooperate with San Jose to make a nest for the Giants in the Bay Area next year--instead of Denver or Washington--if plans for the new San Francisco ball park fall through?

When this thought came up last week, she said:

“I don’t see that it would be possible for me to support San Jose.”

She sounded as though she meant it.