Fisher buys a teeny bit of Celtic, Cochrane does the happy dance

By: Melissa | December 21st, 2007

Whoa, conspirators get started. Last night, we all learned that Quakes and A’s co-owner John Fisher bought 3.24% of Celtic on Wednesday. While this may sound like the beginning of a cool alliance for the Quakes, I’m one of the cynical folks out there who believes this move is nothing more than Fisher diversifying his sports teams investment portfolio. I think our Scoobies have their hearts in the right place but the jury is still out on our owners. San Jose is a bit lucky because their location is the spot Wolff and Co. want to invest since real estate prices are through the roof and Silicon Valley’s IT industry rakes in heaps of money. Wolff’s concept of building small stadiums surrounded by a “Ballpark Village” of shops, restaurants, and high priced condos may very well limit ticket availability, drive up prices, and force fans into buying season tickets. I know most folks are very happy Wolff & Co. took the plunge to invest in our MLS team when they left in 2005 and the future SSS will absolutely not be on the same scale as the future A’s stadium, but what I am getting at here is the Quakes purchase was a right time, right market money making deal. I fully believe this Celtic purchase is the same thing.

Ok, rant over. Everyone else please resume arguing whether American investors are destroying the Premiere Leagues.

On to happier subjects, Ryan Cochrane had a little sit down with the Merc to let us all know just how happy he is to be back in the South Bay again. Here are my two favorite Cochrane-quotes from the article.

“It’s awesome,” said Cochrane, a former Earthquakes and Santa Clara University defender. “What an honor. There are so many Bay Area fans who have been waiting for this day to come, and I’m pretty much the guy representing the old Quakes. I’ve got to admit that there’s a little bit of pressure, too.”

“We had such a deep team and Dom had some tough decisions to make,” Cochrane said. “He had asked me a couple of times what I thought about going back to San Jose. So when I was told I was going to be left unprotected, it wasn’t a sad day. It was a great day.”

Yay Ryan! I totally recommend you guys read the entire article because I guarantee it will put a smile on your face. And if nothing exciting happens in Quake-land between now and X-mas, then I wish y’all a good one.