Oakland A’s: Dave Stewart bids for city’s share of Coliseum

Former Oakland A’s ace Dave Stewart is trying to come to the rescue of the team once again, this time by bidding to buy out the city’s share of the Coliseum.

The last time the Oakland A’s sprayed the champagne after a World Series victory, Dave Stewart was named Series MVP after pitching Oakland to wins in Games 1 and 3 of a sweep over the cross-bay rival San Francisco Giants.

Now Stewart, an analyst for for A’s pre- and post-game coverage on NBC Sports California, is making a bid to make sure the club has a safe place to land should the stalled Howard Terminal project not come to fruition.

According to Susan Slusser and Matt Kawahara of the San Francisco Chronicle, Stewart has entered a bid of $115 million to purchase the city of Oakland’s half of the Oakland Coliseum. The A’s bought out Alameda County’s share last fall for $85 million.

A spokesman for Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf confirmed the offer from Stewart, an Oakland native, while also adding it is one of several the city has received thus far.

Stewart, nicknamed “Smoke” during his 16-year career in the majors, was a 16th-round pick by the Los Angeles Dodgers out of Oakland’s St. Elizabeth High School in 1975. He made his Major League debut in 1978 and stuck for good in 1981.

Stewart was traded to the Texas Rangers in 1983 and dealt to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1985. Released by Philadelphia in May 1986, he signed with the A’s two weeks later and emerged as a 20-game winner in 1987, the first of four straight seasons he topped the 20-win mark.

After the 1992 season, Stewart signed a two-year deal as a free agent with the Toronto Blue Jays before returning to Oakland for one more season in 1995. Stewart is ninth on the franchise’s all-time wins list with 119, with only Catfish Hunter and Vida Blue joining him in the top 10 as pitchers from the team’s Oakland era.

Stewart started 14 games for the A’s in the postseason, including pitching a shutout at the Giants in Game 1 of the 1989 World Series at what was then known as Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.

He was part of three World Series winners, adding rings with the Dodgers in 1981 and the Blue Jays in 1993. Stewart’s best work came in the ALCS, where he was 8-0 in 10 career starts with a 2.03 ERA and 1.022 WHIP over 75.1 innings.

Stewart was 119-78 over eight seasons in green-and-gold with a 3.73 ERA and 1.318 WHIP in 1,717.1 innings, starting 245 of the 257 games in which he appeared, with 49 complete games and nine shutouts. He struck out 1,152 for Oakland while walking 655, finishing in the top four of the AL Cy Young Award voting four consecutive seasons (1987-90), but never won the award.

His plans for the Coliseum site is to redevelop it into a place with shopping, restaurants and affordable housing, provided the A’s are able to move forward with their plans for a new ballpark at Howard Terminal. Those developments have been on hold throughout the COVID-19 crisis.

Stewart says it’s about helping to revive an area of the city that has been left behind.

In the mid-1970s, Oakland was the home to teams in all four professional sports, with the A’s and NFL’s Oakland Raiders playing at the Coliseum, while the NBA’s Golden State Warriors and the NHL’s California Golden Seals held their home games what was then known as the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena.

The Golden Seals were the first to leave the city, with the franchise moving to Cleveland in 1976. The Raiders left for Los Angeles in 1982, but returned in 1995. The Warriors departed Oakland for new Chase Arena in San Francisco in 2019 and the Raiders packed up for Las Vegas in 2020.