FanHouse LewWolff

Commissioner Bud Selig has appointed a commission to study the A's needs for a new ballpark and where they might find one.

The committee will be chaired by Bob Starkey, a stadium expert and financial consultant for Major League Baseball. It also will consist of Corey Busch, a former baseball executive, and Irwin Raij, a lawyer with Foley and Lardner who worked extensively on both the Washington and Miami ballpark proposals. They will work with MLB President & Chief Operating Officer Bob DuPuy and will provide a written report to the Commissioner at the conclusion of their analysis."Lew Wolff and the Oakland ownership group and management have worked very hard to obtain a facility that will allow them to compete into the 21st Century," Commissioner Selig said.

"Spring training is very important. It gives all the Dominican players time to learn how to say 'renegotiate' in English!" "lol /thrusts hips"

Hopefully our only look at the AL West this year continues with the Oakland Athletics, a team so perplexing that they are simultaneously predicted to win the division and be removed from baseball completely. Their mascot is an elephant! What's the deal with that!

Today's Spring Training Dugout is after the jump.

After spending the last couple of years working on plans to move the team to nearby Fremont, Calif., the Oakland Athletics announced on Tuesday that, due to complications, they were no longer considering the migration. Of course, just because the team has to stay in Oakland for now, that doesn't mean it is going to be there forever.

The team would still like a new stadium, after all, and if they aren't going to get it in Oakland, they're going to look elsewhere. Somewhere like San Jose.

The Oakland Athletics have had plans on moving about a half hour drive south on I-880 to Fremont, Calif. for quite a while now. After being unable to get a new stadium in Oakland, the team was prepared to make the move and play in the Bay Area's fourth largest town causing an uproar from Oakland fans for leaving the city.

Well fans in Oakland need not worry about being abandoned for now anymore. Team owner Lew Wolff announced that he's scrapping any further plans to build in Fremont.

Anytime a powerhouse regular season team (I'm looking at you, Cubbies) gets knocked out in the baseball playoffs, you'll hear someone say "Anything can happen in a short series!" It's true. A bad start from your ace, a mis-timed error and, whoosh, you're playing golf before the next Frank TV commercial. And that's when you've got to lose three of five games.

Imagine if it were just one game? If Lew Wolff, owner of the Oakland A's, had Bud Selig's job, we might find out just how harsh that feeling would be.

"I'd make it one-game-and-you're-out for the first series. It would be exciting. It would be great."

Why bother with a whole game? Whoever scores first wins. And use that Olympic rule where the players start on first and second and you can start your lineup wherever you want. That's excitement, buster!

Look, I get the A's have had a hard time over the years once playoff series move past the first game but this is a real stinker of an idea. No team in baseball history has ever won more than 116 games in a season, which means every now and then you lose to the Royals. That's baseball and that's why, imperfect as they are, five and seven game series are the way to determine the champion.

Not much chance of it happening, though. Wolff says he hasn't said anything to Selig because he's afraid of him. On that, Lew, we are agreed.

Today's Dugout deals with that important moment in everybody's life when their fortunes change and they have to move on, but have absolutely no clue what the words "move" and "on" mean.

After the jump, no Anton Chigurh parodies, if you can believe it.

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.