For six and a half years, Bob Rose has been the man behind all of the Oakland Athletics public relations. That all ended on Friday when, according to Susan Slusser, the A’s eliminated his position and, thus, let him go. During Rose’s tenure as the Director of Public Relations, the Moneyball movie was made, Bob Melvin made manager of the year, Andrew Bailey was named rookie of the year, and the A’s made three playoffs. Throw in some sewage backup, Oakland’s first rainout in 16 years, the trading of Cespedes a day before his t-shirt giveaway, a never-ending lease negotiation and endless rumor-inducing sound bites from Lew Wolff and Rose has been pretty busy in these past six seasons.
Susan Slusser, as always, provided more information than we really needed to know and we’re very grateful for that since we, as A’s bloggers, have had very little to speculate about lately. She tweeted that the position of Director of Public Relations will be replaced with Director of Publicity and Corporate Communications.
I'm told #Athletics will post job listing for Director of Publicity and Corporate Communication whose main responsibility will be (cont.)
— Susan Slusser (@susanslusser) November 14, 2014
(Cont) will be reaching out to city, county and state officials to improve communication with them.
— Susan Slusser (@susanslusser) November 14, 2014
It was the second tweet that got some of us frothing at the mouth. Does this indicate something bigger? Doesn’t a public relations person already do those types of things? Well, not really. PR workers tend to handle media requests when something goes wrong, publicize when something goes right, and announce when something is planned but the job title and corresponding description seem to indicate that the Director of Publicity and Corporate Communication will have more of a role in the political side of running a team’s public relations.
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It is no secret that a great deal of bad blood has developed between the A’s and the city of Oakland with Lew Wolff and Mayor Quan publicly attacking each other when ever it may benefit some sort of negotiation. Is the desire to “improve communication” an indication that the A’s are hoping to start a clean slate when Oakland is run by a new mayor or do they know something that the public doesn’t know that will require a greater amount of communications?
If we are to speculate the latter, I would look to the fact that Slusser said city and county officials. Of course, they could mean San Jose and Santa Clara County but we all know that the A’s like to take little jabs at Oakland whenever they can (see: scoreboards during lease negotiations) and would surely have figured out a way to indicate that they weren’t going to be dealing with Oakland if that were the case. Could this be an indication that Lew Wolff and company are finally ready to play ball with the city of Oakland and make immediate progress on a stadium situation? Could it indicate that they are aware of the future fate of the Raiders and think things are turning in their favor at the end of football season? Could it indicate that mayor elect Shaaf has tipped Lew Wolff off on her preference for a team in Oakland if lines have to be drawn? Could it indicate that the A’s are just consolidating several job duties into one position and more layoffs are imminent? Any of those could be true or the truth could fall somewhere in the middle.
Beyond speculation, though, is the fact that whomever replaces Bob Rose will have their hands full. The Oakland Athletics have burned a lot of bridges with city and county officials and have alienated certain subsets of fans with their lack of transparency. If Billy Beane is planning on going for the big one again in 2015 and Lew Wolff is willing to talk with Libby Shaaf (at least more than he did with Mayor Quan) than the new Director is going to have a lot of pots on the fire.
What do you think this means for the future of the Oakland Athletics? Is this going to have positive, negative or neutral consequences on the team and the office organization?