49ers Steve Young on the A's Exploring Utah

Hall of Fame QB weighs in on the A's relocation saga

The Oakland A's recently visited a Utah construction site, which is set to be the new home of a Triple-A ballpark in 2025. Salt Lake City native and San Francisco 49ers legendary quarterback Steve Young weighed in on the A's potentially moving to his home state for an interim period between 2025-27 while their own ballpark is built in Las Vegas. 

MLB in Utah is a good idea. But it needs to be done right. https://t.co/wQry9BHjMb

— Steve Young (@SteveYoungQB) January 20, 2024

From this post alone, it's tough to see exactly where Young stands because "it has to be done right" could mean a couple of things.

One option is that he is insinuating that this is not the correct way to go about landing a Major League Baseball team by aiding an owner that has made enemies everywhere he's gone. Helping Fisher would also help uproot the A's out of Oakland, and that could be part of Young's reasoning in this line of thinking, given the time he spent in the Bay Area during his playing career. 

The other line of reasoning is that he is potentially wary of doing business with Fisher, but thinks this is the right move for Utah--it just needs to be done in a way that showcases the potential that the state has to offer. 

There could also be a third option, which is that this is the right move for the A's and Utah, and he has no problem with Fisher. He's just hoping that the end result is something that the people of Salt Lake County support. 

If the A's end up in Utah, it may not matter what kind of support the community shows for the team as long as it's not embarrassingly low. Which cities are granted an expansion club could end up coming down to politics within Major League Baseball, and if Utah does the League this favor, giving the A's a home and limiting the amount of noise that fans in the Bay Area can make, then they may earn their expansion club that way.