WEST SACRAMENTO — They call it the big leagues because, well, everything is bigger.
The colors seem more vivid, the lights are brighter, the energy levels are higher. The big league experience extends to players, who enjoy better accommodations and better food, and to fans, who get to see some of the best athletes in the world in venues representative of some of the most iconic cities in North America.
That’s not the experience at Sutter Health Park, the Triple-A ballpark where the A’s are playing for at least three years until a planned move to Las Vegas. Over the last few weeks, many in baseball have tried to make sense of the situation in Sacramento, and there are plenty of pros to the A’s being in California’s capital city, at times, it still feels senseless.
“I think it’s sad,” former A’s third baseman and current Mets hitting coach Eric Chavez told the Daily News. “I think this is a situation you’ve just got to make work. From talking to their guys, it’s a situation that you just have to be optimistic about and just deal with it…
“But just in general, for Major League Baseball, it’s not good.”
This was a one-team town for as long as I could remember, but Sacramento has always wanted to be more. Growing up about 20 miles away in a town called Folsom, the the A’s were popular and so were the Giants, but no team dominated the airwaves and the headlines like the Sacramento Kings.
The Kings, unlike the A’s, embrace the place.
To people around here, the Kings represent a city that will always be overshadowed by the more popular cities in the state. The Kings do something the A’s will not by wearing the city’s name on its chest and embracing the surrounding area. That means something. It’s a point of pride, even if the Mets have made more postseason appearances than the Kings in the last 20 years.
The A’s have a Las Vegas patch on their uniforms and signs for the tourism board in the outfield. This temporary relocation to a shared ballpark feels unfair to all involved.
“The situation that we have right now is not the best,” said former Mets pitcher Luis Severino, who will be with the A’s for the next three years. “But this is what we have right now, so we have to adjust and try to do the best job that we can. The worst is that the dugouts are so far from the clubhouse. You have to walk around the field to get inside.”
The clubhouses are in the outfield. The visitor’s clubhouse is small, but no smaller than the visitors clubhouses in Dodger Stadium or Wrigley Field. However, those are iconic, historic venues players love for reasons other than the locker rooms.
Despite upgrades to the facilities, the general consensus among the Mets this weekend is that it feels very “minor league.” The whole place has that feel. The outfield berm feels like a spring training game and with no direct access to the clubhouse complexes, players can’t work out in the cages between innings.
Mets right-hander Griffin Canning had to sit for two long innings Friday night in the Mets’ 7-6 win. Typically, he would have gone into the cages to toss a weighted ball in order to stay warm, but he was limited to a few slams in the small dugout instead. He said he would rather be playing in Oakland.
MLB has two teams playing in minor league venues this season, but while the situation in Tampa remains just as uncertain as the one in Sacramento, the reasons are different.
A’s owner John Fisher seemed ready to leave Oakland years ago. Considering the Raiders and Warriors also left town, it’s fair to say the city of Oakland deserves blame as well, but Fisher’s near-refusal to field a competitive team and make meaningful upgrades to the Coliseum in the years preceding the move felt intentional. Like he was telling people not to come.
He broke the hearts of fans in the East Bay Area, and in a few years he’ll break the hearts of fans in Sacramento, a town that probably deserves another big league franchise of some sort, whether that’s an MLS, NHL or MLB team. With around 2.41 million residents, the Sacramento metro area is larger than Kansas City (2.39 million) and Milwaukee (1.57 million).
I get it, Sacramento isn’t sexy. It’s historically significant, but not culturally. But there are fans here ready and willing to embrace a real-deal, big league team, and corporate sponsors in agriculture and tech ready to spend money.
Fans have to stop being treated as replaceable commodities. In order for teams to sustain their support, they need fans to grow with their teams. Baseball already has plenty of barriers to access with blackout restrictions, numerous streaming services and the decline of the RSN model that make watching local teams increasingly difficult, plus the rising costs of attending games.
Fans will remain loyal to teams if they have a reason to. So far, A’s fans have enjoyed the intimacy of a smaller park and proximity to the Golden 1 Center where the Kings play. They’ve shown up in large numbers as well.
Fan support in Sacramento could wane if the A’s start playing like a minor league team, but already, the fact that they haven’t even broken ground on the stadium in Las Vegas yet has fans in Sacramento hoping the A’s will stay. They shouldn’t get their hopes up.
It’s complicated and it’s strange, but for better or worse, it appears to be temporary.
“I think you keep your expectations low,” Chavez said. “And enjoy it while it’s here.”
