Between the end of their lease in Oakland and the readiness of their ballpark in Las Vegas, the Athletics will become the Wandering Minstrels of the Majors.

Granted approval for their move by major-league owners in November, the Athletics have entered a baseball Twilight Zone with many potential twist endings.

Their lease at the Coliseum in Oakland expires after this season and renewing it seems unlikely because of bitter feelings between the ballclub and their host community. Yet their sleek 33,000-seat stadium on the Las Vegas Strip won’t be ready before 2028.

What to do during the intervening three seasons is the biggest question facing the club since Bowie Kuhn vetoed the sale of Rollie Fingers and Joe Rudi by outspoken A’s owner Charlie Finley at the dawn of free agency nearly a half-century ago.

Options range from sharing Oracle Park, the waterfront park where the Giants play, in downtown San Francisco to playing in Triple-A facilities in Summerlin, Nevada – current home of Oakland’s Triple-A affiliate – or Sacramento, where the Giants have their AAA team.

Complicating these decisions is the broadcasting contract between the Athletics and NBC Sports California. It runs through 2033 but the team will lose that revenue stream if and when they vacate the Bay Area.

That eliminates Nevada, though even Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park would be too far away to keep that pact intact.

Athletics team president Dave Kaval hinted at a short-term lease extension from the Coliseum, which has turned into a run-down facility, but that would mean repairing bad relations between the team and the city, which is already upset the ballclub was unwilling or unable to find a local site for a new stadium.

John Shea of the San Francisco Chronicle suggested that Sacramento might work if the team renegotiates the broadcast deal, taking less money during the time the team plays in Sutter Health Park, current home of the Sacramento River Cats.

In the meantime, the Athletics are set to receive some $380 million in public funding for construction of their new Nevada ballpark on the site of the old Tropicana on the Strip, according to Mick Akers of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

That will also guarantee the A’s will remain a receipient of major-league revenue-sharing for 2024.

That status had been conditional, depending upon finalizing a binding agreement on the new stadium.

What remains to be seen is what kind of fan support the lame-duck team will receive over the next four seasons – no matter where they play.

The Athletics finished 2023 with the worst record and lowest payroll in the major leagues. They were dead last in the American League West with a 50-112 record, yielding a .309 winning percentage and leaving them 40 games behind the front-running Houston Astros in the American League West.

Their estimated 2024 payroll, according to Spotrac, will be $36,904,968 – about $10 million less than the annual competitive balance tax salary of Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani all by himself.