FanHouse Cisco Field

Despite their recent history of success -- and a fanbase rightfully proud of the team's uber-efficient player evaluation -- the A's don't exactly pack the McAfee Coliseum. The A's ranked 26th in attendance last season, just ahead of the Pittsburgh Pirates and just below the lowly Washington Nationals.

So the A's need a new stadium, and need it fast. Fortunately, it looks like a new stadium is more likely than ever:

The new ballpark for the A's in nearby Fremont, Calif., went from concept to formal proposal Thursday morning, when the team submitted a development application to the City of Fremont to develop 226 acres of land in the Pacific Commons area of the city.

Laid out in the application are the plans to build a baseball-only ballpark and a surrounding "village" that will consist of residential and commercial properties, as well as a new elementary school.

As much as I crave the nostalgia of Wrigley Field each summer, every time I walk into a brand new baseball stadium my wonderment reaches new heights. Even parks as innocuous as Cincinnati's Great American Ballpark feel special in their modernity. If anything will get the fans out in Oakland Fremont, a new park and a surrounding village is it.

And, if the stadium is approved, you can send your kids to elementary school there too! Billy Beane will turn that into a talent factory, just you wait.

(Photo HT: Biz of Baseball)

Moneyball aficionados rejoice! Oakland A's owner and managing partner Lew Wolff has extended team president Michael Crowley and General Manager Billy Beane's contracts through the 2014 season. Of course, an extension for Beane was hardly a pressing matter -- his old contract had him locked up through 2012 -- but simply finding Jack Cust off the scrap heap earlier this year was probably worth a couple of years itself.

Beane's trademark is making a lot out of a little, and that's continued so far this year. Case in point? Finding Cust; having the foresight to sign Alan Embree, who's held the bullpen together as the interim closer in place of the injured Huston Street; and inking Lenny DiNardo, who's pitched even better in three starts (0.52 ERA) than he has in relief (1.83 ERA), just to name a few.

The A's currently sit in third place in the AL West, which is misleading considering they're also five games above .500 and have won eight of their last 10. They're still operating on a shoestring budget, though hopefully that will change before the end of Beane's contract whenever the team moves into the eventually-to-be constructed Cisco Field. Can you imagine what this guy could do if he hand the financial freedom to routinely make $40 million mistakes like Brian Cashman can?

Update: Some sites are reporting this as a "seven-year extension" for Beane. That's flat-out wrong -- his current deal wasn't going to expire at the end of this year, but rather in 2012 as part of an extension he first signed when Wolff first took control of the team in 2005.