. >> reporter: michael ulmer is a baseball fan living in san jose who remembers 12 years ago when the a's tried to move to this area of the city, adjacent to the transit station and the sap center. the hp pavilion, at th time. >> i remember, they wanted to put it right there and that would have been a beautiful ballpark. >> reporter: but, the deal was squashed by the giants, who exerted territorial rights. the irony is, the only reason giants have those rights is because the a's agreed to it in 1990 as a way to keep the giant in the bay area and not relocat to florida. >> a's ownership at the time was incredibly magnanimous and the whole idea was that the giants were in the golden stadium of the south bay, which never happened, but that held onto the territorial restriction. >> major-league baseball needs to stop that. okay? it is a monopoly. it's like playing a game of monopoly, okay? i own boardwalk, you can't own it but yet still, you won't be able t put nothing here unless i say so. >> reporter: as the 10th larges city in america featuring the economic strength of silicon valley,