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(Photo by Carlos Avila Gonzalez/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — As the emerald expanse of Sutter Health Park’s baseball field came into view for Corey Kamehaiku and Mitchell Hirata, who entered the yard from the rolling hill outside the right field entrance, dual senses of wonderment and nostalgia hit the two longtime friends.
“This,” Kamehaiku muttered, “is awesome.”
Hirata, who grew up in Sacramento and is the same age as the makeshift minor league stadium at 25 years old, nodded. He recalled playing in the picnic area beyond the right field berm as a young child. And then fund-raising to play a high school game on its pristine surface.
“It feels like a night at the little league park,” Hirata said. “It’s just, really intimate.”
“It’s a monumental night,” Kamehaiku added. “It’s crazy that the Oakland A’s are here.”
Well, kinda sorta.
Because while the Athletics played host to the Cubs Monday night in the first-ever regular season major league baseball game played in the Sacramento area—the announced attendance was 12,192 in the 14,000-seat stadium—they are not long for the Triple-A locale. Not with the A’s, who have already called Oakland, Kansas City and Philadelphia home in its franchise’s history, harboring plans on relocating to Las Vegas to play on the Strip in 2028.
Still, on the first night of the rest of their (three-year?) lives, the A’s embraced their new, albeit temporary home, by tipping their caps to their past. The night was filled with fan giveaways, Rickey Henderson tributes—the entire A’s roster wore the late Henderson’s iconic uniform No. 24—and fireworks, both the pyrotechnics kind that explode in the air, and the two home runs blasted in the first inning by the Cubs, who made Sutter Health Park look like Wrigley Field West with that four-spot in the first.
The game itself, an 18-3 Cubs runaway win with Carson Kelly hitting for the cycle, was an afterthought on this cool, breezy night, a Jose Canseco to Miguel Tejada to Gene Tenace relay throw away from the California state Capitol building.
Rather, the night was about the event, a minor league park playing host to an MLB game (the Rays played the Rockies at the New York Yankees’ Low-A Steinbrenner Field in Tampa over the weekend with Tropicana Field unusable after Hurricane Milton in October). The A’s issued more than 150 media credentials for the home opener.
And also, the A’s settling in for a three-year sojourn some four miles away from where one-time A’s second baseman-turned A’s broadcaster Steve Sax grew up.
“To think about getting major league baseball here was just so far-fetched…growing up, I loved the Giants and the A’s and I hated the Dodgers,” Sax, the 1982 National League rookie of the year for, yes, the Dodgers, said with a laugh.
“But to finish with the A’s and now, lo and behold, I get to work with the A’s broadcast team, it’s really like a dream come true for me. Especially being here in my hometown.”
No one could have blamed the A’s current players, though, if the scenario of being a big leaguer in a minor league town and stadium served more as nightmare fuel.
Especially with the culture shock.
A’s ace Luis Severino spent the first decade of his big league career toiling in New York, nine seasons with the Yankees, one with the Mets. Now, after signing the largest contract in A’s franchise history at $67 million over three years, he’s wearing a uniform with patches repping Sacramento and Las Vegas on either sleeve while walking through a door in the left-center field wall to get to the A’s brand new clubhouse beyond the left-field fence. With fans sitting atop the two-story building.
More old school Polo Grounds vibe than Field of Dreams cornstalks aura.
“If you have a bad game, some fans can let you know. Right away,” Severino smiled.
“It’s a little small, but we’ve got everything we need.”
The A’s playing in a Triple-A park is unique enough. But consider: they are also sharing the home of their ancient Bay Area rival San Francisco Giants’ top minor league affiliate, the Sacramento River Cats.
Plus, the A’s, who called the River Cats their Triple-A team from 2000-14, are headed to the city that houses their current Triple-A club, the Las Vegas Aviators.
And despite the seeming dual-Sactown/Vegas citizenship patches on their jerseys, the A’s are not claiming any city. Rather, they are simply, the ATHLETICS.
Confused?
“Our mindset is we have to play baseball,” said A’s fourth-year manager Mark Kotsay. “We’ve been embraced by the [Sacramento] community and we’re embracing being here.”
Still, Kotsay, who played for Oakland from 2004-07, acknowledged there is a “bittersweet” feeling to leaving the East Bay, which it had called home since 1968.
“The hope is they follow us here,” Kotsay said of the fans. “I think they will.”
At least one fan who was wearing the omnipresent-at-every-A’s game at the Oakland Coliseum game last year “SELL” T-shirt—a plea from desperate fans who wanted team owner John Fisher to divest himself of the team rather than move it—followed the team to West Sacramento on this night.
Headed to his seat, a beer in one hand, a hot dog in the other, he called himself a “lifelong” A’s fan who was excited they were now in his hometown. And yet…
“I’ll be a fan until they leave the state,” he said. “Then I’ll find a new team.”
Asked his name, the fan picked up his gait, saying, “No thank you.”
No, Mr. A’s fan, thank you, for perfectly illustrating an imperfect big league night in a perfect minor league stadium.
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