Giants willing to share AT&T Park with A’s

It’s not a secret. O.co Coliseum in Oakland is not the most attractive of baseball parks.

Both dugouts have, at one point, suffered sewage backups. It shares time with a professional football team in the Oakland Raiders, which, at times in September and October, leaves the baseball diamond in deplorable conditions. It also seats nearly 10,000 less people for baseball than it does for football, and the Athletics are actually establishing themselves as a consistent force in their sport. Even the Raiders have been rumored to want to get out of the nearly 50-year old stadium.

Despite all of these facts, Major League Baseball and the Athletics have not been able to come to an agreement on building a new stadium for the back-to-back American League West champions. They’ve come close; a site in Oakland and a site in San Jose have been listed as popular landing spots for the green and gold. San Jose seemed to be the front-runner, but the proposal to move was blocked last year by MLB. The San Francisco Giants had something of a hand in that, as they have territorial rights in San Jose.

The Giants aren’t opposed to having the Athletics move stadiums, they just want them to do it somewhere other than San Jose. In fact, as ESPN.com reports, the team is willing to lend AT&T Park on a part-time basis to the A’s, if a new stadium does begin being built.

"“They’ve got to come up with a long term plan,” [Giants president Larry] Baer told the San Jose Mercury-News. “Once that’s arrived at, then maybe you’ll take a step back and say, ‘Is there something we can do to be helpful?’ as a neighborly thing. Obviously, they’ve got to come up with what their plan is, and we’ll go from there.”"

AT&T Park is located 20 minutes from the current site of O.co Coliseum and is regarded as one of the better ballparks in the Majors. It has a seating capacity of 41,000 and won Sports Facility of the Year in 2008. Currently, the Athletics’ lease on O.co extends through 2015.