WASHINGTON -- Major League Baseball is confident the Oakland Athletics and Tampa Bay Rays are moving closer to getting plans in place for new ballparks.
Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred has said the sport will consider expansion, but only after the A's and Rays get new stadiums.
The A's had hoped to build in downtown Oakland near Lake Merritt on land owned by Laney College, but the Peralta Community College District's board of trustees killed the project in December. The team is now considering building adjacent to its current home at the Oakland Coliseum or on the waterfront at the Howard Terminal, which is more distant to mass transit.