OAKLAND — After graduating from Stanford in 1998, Dave Kaval and a buddy gave themselves a gift, a cross-country road trip in which they visited all 30 Major League ballparks. They wrote a book about it called “The Summer That Saved Baseball.”



Now, almost two decades later, Kaval has found a higher calling: Saving baseball for Oakland.



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“I like doing what almost seems impossible for the legacy it could have,” said Kaval, named the A’s president last month in a leadership shakeup.

Owner John Fisher handpicked Kaval, 41, for the way he, as president of the San Jose Earthquakes, got a $100-million soccer stadium built in six years. Since opening in 2015, Avaya Stadium has played host to the MLS All-Star game and international teams to put the Bay Area on the soccer map.

“I call him a ‘why-not guy’ instead of a ‘what-if guy,’ ” said Lew Wolff, co-owner of the Earthquakes and, until recently, the A’s.

The Kaval family defines its resourcefulness as a “Cheerios gene” in reference to the buoyant breakfast cereal that pops to the surface after being submerged in milk.

“Dave has the extra gene,” younger brother Peter Kaval said. “People have said no to this guy his entire life.”

Kaval — pronounced CAV-al, like the first two syllables of Cavaliers, his favorite NBA team — comes from strong Ohioan stock. His father’s roots are Slovak, his mother’s Italian.

Jim Kaval graduated from Stanford’s business school in 1961 before joining the Peace Corps. He returned to Cleveland to start a commercial real estate company. Paula Kaval was a realtor and school teacher.

They emphasized family, education and Catholicism while living along Lake Erie just a few minutes from downtown Cleveland. The Kavals were wrapped up in the Cleveland pro scene like the town’s tasty Polish Boy sandwiches. A great uncle had season tickets for the Cleveland Browns, so the Kavals spent many autumn Sundays in Municipal Stadium watching football. In the summer, they were there for Cleveland Indians baseball games.

Kaval still has one of the family’s seats from Municipal Stadium, which was demolished in 1996. He plans to move it from his Quakes office to his new residence in the Coliseum. It’s a tangible reminder of the deep association fans have for stadiums and teams. Kaval shared in Cleveland’s despair in 1996 when owner Art Modell relocated the Browns to Baltimore, then again when LeBron James abandoned the Cavaliers in 2010 for Miami.

“We ‘get’ scorn,” said Peter Kaval.

Dave is motivated to keep the A’s in a working-class city that reminds him of Cleveland. A club with four World Series titles and 16 West Division championships since 1971 has struggled financially in recent years, leading Fisher to promote the Earthquakes chief — Kaval will remain in that role, too — to jumpstart the dormant stadium project.

“He’s not a guy you hire if you want to slink out of a city,” said Aron Weisner, a Stanford friend who joined Kaval and Brad Null for part of the 1998 ballpark tour.

Kaval faced a similar challenge when taking over the Earthquakes at the end of the 2010 season. The Quakes were a low-budget team playing in an outdated college stadium at Santa Clara University.

In an effort to create a splash, Kaval organized an annual home game at Stanford scheduled around July 4 weekend. The past five events have attracted sold-out crowds of 50,000.

Mostly, he became laser-focused on building Avaya Stadium by working with city officials, nearby neighborhood leaders, developers and architects to make sure the Quakes did it right. Kaval eventually persuaded Fisher to spend $40 million more than the owner initially budgeted to turn the 18,000-seat stadium into a Major League Soccer showcase.

“He’s shown he can climb the 10,000-foot mountain,” Stanford marketing professor George Foster said of his former student.

“Now he’s got Everest.”

Bring it on, says Kaval, who brings intensity to whatever he undertakes, including that baseball trip during the epic summer of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa’s home run duel. Kaval and Null hatched the plan that spring while driving to Texas to watch the Stanford men’s basketball team play in the Final Four. They meticulously plotted a route that required only 38 days to see all 30 ballparks.

“There is only one way I know to do things: to be all-in,” Kaval said. “It’s almost like being on a crusade.”

Similarly, Kaval wasted no time in romantic pursuits. He met the woman he would marry, Maria Fredricsson,the first day on campus when helping her father carry a refrigerator to her dormitory room.

The Menlo Park couple, together since their freshman year, has two middle-school-aged daughters. Fredricsson is a vice president at Oracle.

Kaval, while working toward a degree in international relations, had no idea he’d one day become a top sports executive. After graduation, he spent two years at a technology startup and eventually returned to Stanford to earn an MBA. He did a summer internship working on national security budgets for the George W. Bush administration. But during a class at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Kaval found his way into baseball with something called the Golden Baseball League.

He created the concept in the classroom then executed it for real. Kaval rounded up investors that included Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak, former NFL players Mike Sherrard and Christian Okoye and Cisco Systems executives in launching the league in 2004. Featuring retired major leaguers such as Jose Canseco, Rickey Henderson and Mark Prior, the league opened with eight teams, including the Chico Outlaws, San Diego Surf Dawgs and the Japan Samurai Bears, who played all of their games on the road.

There were 16 teams by the time Kaval left in 2010 for the Earthquakes. Within a year after his departure, the Golden Baseball League merged with two other independent leagues. The operation folded after the 2012 season.

Now Kaval is playing in the big leagues in a city with complicated stadium economics. Those who know him best say Kaval won’t surrender easily in trying to build an urban ballpark.

“Dave knows how to catch a falling ball,” Foster said.

He’s going to need a big mitt for this one.