For professional sports team executives thoroughly jeered for their ineptitude, the bosses of the Oakland A’s have managed to get just about everything they wanted to make their move to the Las Vegas Strip a smashing success.

Sure, team owner John Fisher desired a $500 million public financing package from his fans at the state Legislature and had to settle for a mere $380 million to help fund a $1.5 billion, 33,000-seat stadium on the site of the Tropicana Las Vegas. This doesn’t exactly qualify as a setback — a broad daylight heist is more like it. Every gambler in Las Vegas would sign up for an opportunity to lose like that.

It's not as if the franchise figures to be bringing big-league entertainment value with it when the A’s finally start playing their home games here sometime near the end of the decade. Given its major league-worst record this past season and Fisher’s unwillingness to invest to obtain top talent, don’t be surprised to find local fans holding up their own signs one day. “Cirque du So Lame” is only a suggestion.

Major League Baseball had plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the team’s strategy to migrate from one of the largest media markets in the country to one barely big enough to qualify for big league status. But we recently watched as other owners and MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred were so anxious to have the team leave Oakland that they unanimously approved the move and waived a league relocation fee estimated at nearly $300 million. In essence, the league is practically helping them pack with Manfred behind the wheel of the U-Haul.

Following the audacious waiver of the relocation fee, Manfred said, “There [were] significant expenditures by John Fisher and his family to get this stadium built. It's a $1.5 billion project.”

Yes, it’s a $1.5 billion project with a $380 million public welcome package from Nevada for a family with an estimated worth of about $10 billion. I’m beginning to think the commissioner sleeps in Las Vegas A’s jammies.

I could list the team’s history of fizzled plans on and off the field, document its tortured relationship over the years with the city of Oakland and Alameda County, but at this point it appears that even most of Oaktown’s unabashed optimists are having trouble holding up their “Sell the Team” signs. 

The best Mayor Sheng Thao could muster in a recent statement was, “We are disappointed by the outcome of this vote. But we do not see this as the end of the road. We all know there is a long way to go before shovels in the ground and that there are a number of unresolved issues surrounding this move. I have also made it clear to the commissioner that the A's branding and name should stay in Oakland and we will continue to work to pursue expansion opportunities. Baseball has a home in Oakland even if the A's ownership relocates."

That sounds a lot like resignation, and it probably should. For all that Fisher has received for a sorry media strategy and even worse public outreach, he’s getting just about everything he wanted. And he’s wanted out of Oakland for a long time.

Even the biggest threat to the move, the Nevada State Education Association’s energized “Schools Over Stadiums” promised efforts to litigate the public funding component contained in Senate Bill 1, feels like a genuine long shot in the face of the current momentum.

Not that NSEA President Dawn Etcheverry agrees with my assessment. “After several months of organizing, our commitment to blocking the use of public funds for the stadium project has only grown stronger,” she said recently, adding her belief that the funding bill violated five or more sections of the state constitution.

Plenty of questions abound.

Where will the team play prior to the completion of the new stadium? An opening day boycott is already being planned for 2024 in Oakland.

With official stadium plans apparently still being copied at Kinko’s, what we do know is the sparkling artifice with the Strip address will likely be built on just 9 acres. When it’s finished, some are asking, will it still include a retractable roof? A dome? A Circus-Circus tent?

More than the costs and the drawings and the politics and the lack of fairness in throwing public funding at a billionaire’s big idea in a state with so many quality-of-life nightmares — including the performance of our public education system — my question is more basic.

Where is the crowd noise? Where’s the energy? Where’s the real fan interest in this? Outside the efforts of the NSEA, even the team’s Las Vegas critics seem tired of shouting about it.

Where is the roar of public support that swelled during the Raiders’ enormously expensive move, or the unabashed enthusiasm that has accompanied the homegrown NHL Vegas Golden Knights and WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces?

I’ve been listening for it for months, and it’s not there. Chess matches have more grandstand buzz. As a baseball fan, I find that pretty sad.

Who knows, maybe that will change. But for now, done deal or no deal, the Las Vegas A’s amount to an expensive amenity without a constituency.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in Time, Readers Digest, The Daily Beast, Reuters, Ruralite and Desert Companion, among others. He also offers weekly commentary on Nevada Public Radio station KNPR.