Dave Kaval

David A. Kaval

• School Stanford University

• Born October 28, 1975 in Cleveland, OH USA

Biographical Information

Dave Kaval is the President of the Oakland Athletics.

Born and raised in Cleveland, OH, he attended Stanford University where he obtained both his undergraduate degree in international relations in 1998 and his MBA in 2003. Upon graduating in June of 1998, he and classmate Brad Null undertook a 38-day road trip to visit all 30 major league baseball ballparks, the journey resulting in the book The Summer That Saved Baseball, published in 2000.

In 2003, he founded the Golden Baseball League and served as the league's CEO until 2010 when he left to become President of the San Jose Earthquakes of Major League Soccer. The Golden League was not able to survive his departure, folding in 2012. While the Earthquakes were not particularly successful on the field during his tenure as president, he did succeed in getting a soccer-specific stadium built for them, Earthquakes Stadium, which opened in 2015 in San Jose, CA.

On November 16, 2017, he was named team President of the Athletics. He made efforts to bring the team closer to its fans, in particular with a bold and very successful decision to play a game with free admission in 2018 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the team's first game in Oakland, CA. A huge crowd was present, and it paved the way to a successful season on the field that saw the A's return to the status of perennial contender in the AL West. However, the biggest issue he has faced is that of the state of the team's ballpark, the Oakland Coliseum, a decrepit and obsolete facility by all accounts. After a number of potential locations for a new ballpark fell through, he set his sight on an ambitious project to build a water-side facility at Howard Terminal, that would be accompanied by a major redevelopment of the neighborhood, along the lines of what the Atlanta Braves achieved with SunTrust Park. The project has been anything but straightforward, and he has had to resort on a number of occasions to the threat of relocation unless various actors, particularly the Oakland City Council, failed to support the project. On July 20, 2021, the Council did vote in favor of a non-binding term sheet for the project, but there was still much uncertainty, as Kaval explained that without a commitment to invest up to $855 million in public money for the redevelopment of the area around the ballpark, the project was unlikely to go ahead. Still, a negative vote would have meant an almost certain departure from Oakland, so at least there was still hope for fans.

Further Reading

• Brad Null and Dave Kaval: The Summer That Saved Baseball, Cumberland House Publishing, Nashville, TN, 2000. ISBN 978-1581821871

Related Sites

• Stanford Business School Alumni profile