The MLB will form a committee of three members to evaluate the relocation of the A's from Oakland to Las Vegas. Those three persons will be staffers of the Philadelphia Phillies, Kansas City Royals, and Milwaukee Brewers franchises, Associated Press revealed on Friday.
In a not-very-coincidental development, the MLB has named some people from cities to which the A's belong and where the team played baseball in the past: Philadelphia and Kansas City. Those two persons are Phillies chief executive John Middleton and Royals CEO John Sherman.
The first member of the three-man committee to be revealed a few weeks ago was Brewers' chairman Mark Attanasio, who MLB commish Rob Manfred chose himself to handle the relocation saga.
Although Nevada has done all it could to help the A's complete the move to Las Vegas, the truth is that the Oakland Athletics still have to clear some hurdles on their way to sign on the dotted line for the final move away from the Bay area.
The A's owner and president will have to put together a full presentation in which they state the reasons they want to move, why they have decided to make that decision, how they did in the city and market they are leaving and why they think the new one would provide a better future for the franchise, etc...
Once that document is submitted to the MLB, it will be reviewed by the league and the committee, which in case of approving it would then send it to the other 29 franchises so they vote in favor or against the relocation. At least three-quarters of those franchises must vote yes to the relocation for the A's to move.
And even after that is completed, the A's are still keeping track of what's going on in Nevada as the place they chose to build their new ballpark (a nine-acre land lot in the Las Vegas Strip currently occupied by the Tropicana Hotel) must be cleared (in conjunction with the mockups of the stadium submitted by the A's) because of potential issues with near flights and planes in the vicinity of the place.