There are indeed parallel paths on the journey of the happy-feet Oakland Athletics. I don’t want to get your hopes too high, A’s fans, but one of the paths just might lead from Oakland to Las Vegas — and then back to Oakland.

That’s right. According to a City Hall source, all the agonizing negotiations over a new ballpark and village at Howard Terminal might be part of a grand plan by team owner John Fisher and team president Dave Kaval to sell the team.

If that happens, assuming that the new owner would keep the team in Oakland, beautiful things could happen fast. Bulldozers are warming up in the bullpen. A new A’s ballpark within three years is not out of the question.

Here’s a term my source used to describe Fisher’s secret plan: pump and dump.

That’s a term more commonly used to describe illegal insider trading, pumping up a stock so it can be sold to suckers before word gets out that the stock is worthless.

In Fisher’s case, pump and dump wouldn’t be illegal. Sneaky, maybe. Shrewd, perhaps. Fisher and his people have worked with Oakland and Las Vegas to clear hurdles blocking a new ballpark. The more hurdles cleared in Oakland and in Vegas, the more the A’s are worth. Clearing hurdles in Vegas also puts pressure on Oakland to make concessions. That’s the pump.

It’s just a theory, but it is backed by intimate knowledge of the situation and people involved, and it makes sense.

“I think they’re planning to sell,” said my friend in City Hall, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak for the city of Oakland on this matter. “I think they’re trying to pump and dump. I think they’re trying to get as far along as they can with different approvals so they can sell for more. I don’t think they want to be in the baseball business, long term.”

Let’s put support behind this theory, with some stuff that’s known and some that’s new.

It has been reported, and backed by my source, that Fisher met with new Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao about two months ago. The two sides agreed to negotiate directly, and at Fisher’s request they agreed to not talk or leak to the media during the process. They also agreed to use a professional mediator, Steve Kawa, recommended by Fisher.

Those meetings were to culminate this past week with daily marathon sessions to hopefully hammer out final details of the deal. Then on Wednesday, Kaval broke the agreement and went public to announce that the A’s are concentrating their efforts on Vegas, where they have reached a deal to buy a piece of land.

I asked my source why the A’s would torpedo their own deal in Oakland when, after allegedly spending $100 million so far to get it done, they were on the brink of success.

“They didn’t blow it up because they were afraid it would fail,” Source said. “They blew it up because they were afraid it would succeed. (Baseball Commissioner Rob) Manfred told them, ‘I’ll let you go to Vegas if the project fails in Oakland, but you’ll have to try first.’ That’s why Manfred didn’t just approve a Vegas relocation three years ago.”

By this theory, Fisher has no intention of building that multi-multi-billion project, but by moving that plan through the process, he paves the way for a new owner to build a ballpark, making the A’s more attractive with each hurdle cleared.

This theory was reinforced by City Council member Dan Kalb (not my City Hall source), who told me the A’s keep throwing head-scratching new wrinkles and roadblocks into negotiations.

“Early on, they said they wanted to provide a large amount of community benefits, and they created this process to engage with all sorts of community stakeholders and advocates and so on,” Kalb said. “It was a whole multi-layered, very intricate process with lots and lots of people, and they managed the process, lots of it, or at least initiated and helped manage it. And then, more than three-quarters of the way through the process, they said, ‘Oh, by the way, we’re not going to pay for any of this stuff.’

“What the hell are you doing? They made it sound like they were going to pay for it, or at least a lot of it. Then they pull the rug out, and everybody was scratching their heads, like what the hell is going on?”

Why would Fisher want to sell a team that continues to make him money? Well, his revenue sharing from MLB will dry up if he doesn’t get a stadium deal somewhere by January, he has shown little interest in the team itself, Vegas might not be the golden goose he hoped it would be, and maybe he’s sick of being the villain. He would just walk away with a ton of money.

Kaval (who did not return my phone message) has done a recent pivot of sorts, saying the A’s are forced to flee to Vegas because it would take too long to build in Oakland. Dealing with lawsuits and project opponents, he said, would add another three years or so to the timeline.

“Oakland was solving that, too,” my source said, claiming that the mayor and her team have been meeting with Schnitzer Steel and the port’s shipping people to solve their concerns over a colossal project being shoehorned into their already busy neighborhood.

Are those concerns solvable?

“They are solvable,” the City Hall source said. “But if the A’s were worried about that, they could have waited three more days (last week), then they could have said, ‘We tried, and it didn’t work.’ ”

Does this theory make it sound as if the A’s have played Oakland like a town run by rubes? Maybe, said my source, but here’s the upside: If the A’s skip town, all those millions of dollars in grant money Oakland has already secured (and more is likely coming) for transportation infrastructure still belong to Oakland, and can be used either to help build a new ballpark at Howard Terminal (under a new team owner), or for other improvements in the Howard Terminal area. It would be Fisher’s lovely parting gift to the city.

Why would a new ownership have an easy time building a ballpark at Howard Terminal, if that is the choice? Because a new owner might be willing to start by building only a ballpark, as the Giants did, plus maybe some restaurants and shops. A much scaled-down project would be faster, cheaper, simpler, and meet with much less resistance.
Affordable housing, for instance, wouldn’t be an issue if there was no housing in the initial project.

Fisher and Kaval indicated zero willingness to scale back their massive project, thus making it more of a long shot to succeed.

A ballpark at Howard Terminal would be located close to Jack London Square and away from Schnitzer Steel and the port. Fisher’s proposed massive housing/commercial development would risk crowding Schnitzer and port operations.

In a separate conversation, City Council member Noel Gallo (who is also not my source), who is fed up with Fisher’s shenanigans, said of the A’s announcement, “Let’s just kiss and say goodbye.”

But what if Oakland could kiss Fisher and Kaval goodbye (figuratively speaking), and then kiss a new Oakland A’s owner hello?

THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

Arthur Conan Doyle



Table of contents

A Scandal in Bohemia
The Red-Headed League
A Case of Identity
The Boscombe Valley Mystery
The Five Orange Pips
The Man with the Twisted Lip
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
The Adventure of the Speckled Band
The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb
The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor
The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet
The Adventure of the Copper Beeches










A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA





Table of contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3















CHAPTER I



To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him
mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and
predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any
emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one
particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably
balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and
observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would
have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer
passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things
for the observer--excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives
and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions
into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to
introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his
mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of
his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong
emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to
him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and
questionable memory.

I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away
from each other. My own complete happiness, and the home-centred
interests which rise up around the man who first finds himself master
of his own establishment, were sufficient to absorb all my attention,
while Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole
Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among
his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and
ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his
own keen nature. He was still, as ever, deeply attracted by the study
of crime, and occupied his immense faculties and extraordinary powers
of observation in following out those clues, and clearing up those
mysteries which had been abandoned as hopeless by the official
police. From time to time I heard some vague account of his doings:
of his summons to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of his
clearing up of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at
Trincomalee, and finally of the mission which he had accomplished so
delicately and successfully for the reigning family of Holland.
Beyond these signs of his activity, however, which I merely shared
with all the readers of the daily press, I knew little of my former
friend and companion.

One night--it was on the twentieth of March, 1888--I was returning
from a journey to a patient (for I had now returned to civil
practice), when my way led me through Baker Street. As I passed the
well-remembered door, which must always be associated in my mind with
my wooing, and with the dark incidents of the Study in Scarlet, I was
seized with a keen desire to see Holmes again, and to know how he was
employing his extraordinary powers. His rooms were brilliantly lit,
and, even as I looked up, I saw his tall, spare figure pass twice in
a dark silhouette against the blind. He was pacing the room swiftly,
eagerly, with his head sunk upon his chest and his hands clasped
behind him. To me, who knew his every mood and habit, his attitude
and manner told their own story. He was at work again. He had risen
out of his drug-created dreams and was hot upon the scent of some new
problem. I rang the bell and was shown up to the chamber which had
formerly been in part my own.

His manner was not effusive. It seldom was; but he was glad, I think,
to see me. With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly eye, he waved
me to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars, and indicated a
spirit case and a gasogene in the corner. Then he stood before the
fire and looked me over in his singular introspective fashion.

"Wedlock suits you," he remarked. "I think, Watson, that you have put
on seven and a half pounds since I saw you."

"Seven!" I answered.

"Indeed, I should have thought a little more. Just a trifle more, I
fancy, Watson. And in practice again, I observe. You did not tell me
that you intended to go into harness."

"Then, how do you know?"

"I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting
yourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and
careless servant girl?"

"My dear Holmes," said I, "this is too much. You would certainly have
been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago. It is true that I had
a country walk on Thursday and came home in a dreadful mess, but as I
have changed my clothes I can't imagine how you deduce it. As to Mary
Jane, she is incorrigible, and my wife has given her notice, but
there, again, I fail to see how you work it out."

He chuckled to himself and rubbed his long, nervous hands together.

"It is simplicity itself," said he; "my eyes tell me that on the
inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the
leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have
been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round the
edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you
see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile weather, and
that you had a particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen of the
London slavey. As to your practice, if a gentleman walks into my
rooms smelling of iodoform, with a black mark of nitrate of silver
upon his right forefinger, and a bulge on the right side of his
top-hat to show where he has secreted his stethoscope, I must be
dull, indeed, if I do not pronounce him to be an active member of the
medical profession."

I could not help laughing at the ease with which he explained his
process of deduction. "When I hear you give your reasons," I
remarked, "the thing always appears to me to be so ridiculously
simple that I could easily do it myself, though at each successive
instance of your reasoning I am baffled until you explain your
process. And yet I believe that my eyes are as good as yours."

"Quite so," he answered, lighting a cigarette, and throwing himself
down into an armchair. "You see, but you do not observe. The
distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps
which lead up from the hall to this room."

"Frequently."

"How often?"

"Well, some hundreds of times."

"Then how many are there?"

"How many? I don't know."

"Qu