The San Jose Mercury News’ Mark Purdy spreads a rumor that surely will meet with Too Short’s disapproval.

Within a few weeks, A’s owner Lew Wolff will announce that because the Oakland deal is going nowhere, he will abandon those plans. And he will cast his glance southward — to Fremont, where there is plenty of available land to build a ballpark complex.

As we all know, the Giants possess the territorial rights to Santa Clara County, which ostensibly prevents the A’s from moving to San Jose or Santa Clara or anywhere else within the borders of the Bay Area’s most heavily populated county.

No problem. Wolff (above) has supposedly come up with a novel plan.

He will move his franchise to Fremont, just north of the Santa Clara County line.

But the team will be known as the San Jose A’s.

Could that happen? Absolutely. If you have followed the recent business of baseball, then you know that in Southern California, fans now buy tickets to see the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. So why not the San Jose A’s of Fremont? Makes sense.

To find out if this conjecture has any meat on it, I called Wolff the other day. He did not deny that Fremont is on his imminent radar.

“It’s pretty much what I’ve said all along,” Wolff explained, “which is that by the beginning of the new season, if we don’t have a solid path to a particular venue in the city of Oakland, we’re going to look elsewhere. That doesn’t mean we won’t continue to look in Oakland, and at this stage, my feeling is we should try and do everything we can to stay in the East Bay and South Bay areas. Fremont hasn’t been hidden. There may be some opportunities there. . . . I think we’re following the game plan I said I would months ago.”

Would the Giants have any issues with Wolff’s move? Not if you go by the comments of Giants owner Peter Magowan over the years. As far back as June 2000, Magowan said: “If the A’s want to go to Fremont, we won’t have a problem at all.”