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Once again, the topic of relocating the Oakland Athletics to San Jose has surfaced. Mark Purdy of the San Jose Mercury News discussed the topic yesterday. Whenever this subject comes up, Giants owner Peter Magowan slaps it down by saying it would rain on the Giants parade and drain their coffers. Purdy rightly wonders why nobody has ever commissioned a study to see if Magowan's objection has any validity.

Why does the argument appear specious? Consider this: The Giants operate at about 102 percent capacity in terms of attendance. If the A's were to move to San Jose, is it Magowan's contention that PacBell Park will become a ghost town like Candlestick used to be on one of those nasty, cold, windblown weekday afternoons back in the day? Will they suddenly start drawing 18,000 people? Not bloody likely. PacBell Park is one of the hottest tickets in all of sports. This will be its fifth year of operation and it's showing no sign of slowing down.

You can certainly make the case that nothing is forever, using as examples venues such as Coors Field in Denver, the Jake in Cleveland and Camden Yards in Baltimore -- all guaranteed sell-outs at one time but no more now that their newness is a thing of the past and their tenants have fallen on hard time quality-wise. If the Giants fail to keep pace after Barry Bonds retires will the same fate befall them?

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