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WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The most glaring difference between a major- and minor-league stadium is in height. The newly renovated home of the Athletics, Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, Calif., carries just one main level topped by a second concourse of mostly suites, and in that way, it is still unmistakably the minor-league park it was built to be. But in a city that’s never regularly hosted Major League Baseball, the A’s hope intimacy creates an unusual draw.
I grew up in West Sacramento, three miles as the crow flies, four miles that way,” Sax said, pointing to his left. “We were farmers. Just like when you fly into Sacramento, you see the farms. Growing up, I had so many dreams of playing big-league baseball. I thought, ‘Man, if someday they could have baseball in Sacramento, it would be unbelievable.’”
Little did I know that they would not only have baseball, but they’d have it in West Sacramento, and it’s just — it’s absolutely mind-boggling to me.
The A’s open the first of at least three seasons here tonight in a sold-out game against the Chicago Cubs, with an expected 13,416 attendees in a stadium heavily modified over the winter to accommodate its new tenant. This is the first season the A’s will play outside of Oakland in 57 years, and it is ultimately a layover between the team’s bitter exit from that city and the planned opening of a new stadium in Las Vegas.
West Sacramento is a separate municipality from the larger Sacramento, but the latter can be reached in less than 10 minutes on foot from the stadium, just over Tower Bridge. On either side of the Sacramento River, Sax said he feels a buzz about the A’s arrival. Yet, in the four days a reporter from The Athletic spent here, the overall reception in town felt muted and in many ways tentative, like the awkward early stages of a middle-school dance.
The A’s are sharing the ballpark with another baseball team, the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats, who began their season with three games Friday through Sunday. At the ballpark there was little visible indication that another, more prominent team was about to show up, beyond a purple “Las Vegas” tourism advertisement along the outfield wall.
The grass that was installed is called Tahoma 31 Bermudagrass, which Cook said gets greener earlier in the spring, and stays greener later into the winter. It has been overseeded with a rye grass, which grows better at a lower temperature, aiding the field’s look earlier in the season. There’s also an air pump system that both promotes growth and helps dry when it rains.
Back-ups are in place. Cook said the league has access to a second overseeded rye field for repairs, and a third field that’s only bermudagrass.
It feels very much like either you kind of don’t care, or you care a lot, one way or another,” Webster said. “There’s very few people who are just like, ‘Oh, cool. The A’s are coming to town.’ Either you don’t care, or you’re really happy they’re coming town, or you’re very hurt by the fact that they’re moving at all.”
I feel good because we don’t have to drive all the way out to Oakland to see the A’s play,” said 10-year-old Ezekiel Velez, whose favorite all-time player is the late Rickey Henderson. “We don’t have to drive like an hour and a half, two hours, to see the A’s play.”
Very mixed,” Mahar said of his emotions about the team’s relocation. “Lifelong A’s fan. I wish they would just stay in Oakland. But also, it’s dope that they’re right down the street. I can ride my bike over and go to a game.”
The A’s aren’t hurting to sell tickets — the season-ticket allotment is sold out, at roughly 6,000, they say. Ranadivé said in 2024 that he wanted the A’s to be the “most sought-after ticket in America.”
But the greater construction project will be in reaching those in the area who are ambivalent, at least for now.
I think people are more into Sac Republic to be honest with you, which is the soccer team,” Devine said. “I don’t think they really care that much about the A’s, because they’re not ‘the Sacramento A’s.’ It’s just three years.
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