The Las Vegas A(I)s

The Athletics are embracing the weirdest possible thing.

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I’m sure I’ll share some postscripts to the Monday feature stories, I may do some juiced-up versions of smaller things I write on other platforms, and I may do some more opinion/commentary, with a baseball angle, of course. In all cases, I’d love to hear from you in the comments, and we can have a little back-and-forth among friends.

Today I want to expand on something my podcast partner Ted and I discussed yesterday for an episode of Clear the Field. I shared a Very Special Video produced by or at the behest of the A’s, formerly of Philadelphia, Kansas City, and Oakland, presently of Sacramento, and eventually of Las Vegas.

The video is a one-minute promotional clip that seeks to show off the higher-end luxuries planned for the A’s new Las Vegas ballpark, currently under construction. The actual baseball features of the park only appear in the last 12 seconds or so, but that’s fine; every modern stadium has fancy stuff and I don’t begrudge the A’s for wanting to show theirs off.

What’s strange is the fact that most of the video is AI-generated, and not particularly well. Here’s a quick rundown of the amenities you can expect at the A’s new park, according to the clip: