The Oakland Athletics are West Sacramento bound. The upcoming series in Oakland in August will likely be the last time for Dodgers fans to see the Athletics play in Oakland. For those not paying attention, here is how this situation has unfolded.
West Sacramento Bound
Late April 3 or early April 4 (depending on when and where you are), news broke that the Athletics are finally leaving Oakland. On September 26, 2024, the Athletics will play their final home game in Oakland against the defending champion Texas Rangers.
Word broke that for the next three, possibly four seasons, the soon-to-be-former Oakland Athletics will be playing their games in West Sacramento, CA. Specifically, the Athletics will be playing their games in the San Francisco Giants’ Triple-A affiliate’s stadium, Sutter Health Park, just across the bridge from Sacramento for the next three seasons before going to Las Vegas.
Sutter Health Park is not a bad minor-league ballpark by any means. As a 10,000-seat ballpark, which can max out at 14,000 seats, this stadium would be the smallest by far in Major League Baseball.
The initial press conference went about as well as could be expected — which is to say, not at all — considering the absolute fiasco this entire process has been. The reason the Athletics are moving to Sacramento is fairly simple; if the team moved to Portland or Salt Lake City, the team would likely forfeit their television revenue money. Moving to Sacramento likely mitigates that problem as the team is expected to keep a portion of their local rights fee, which was $67 million in 2023.
Rather than pay any rent in Oakland to play after the conclusion of this season, the Athletics will play rent-free and without a lease agreement per the San Jose Mercury News during the team’s stay in the California capital. As an attorney, the move arguably makes the team a licensee at Sutter Health Park rather than a tenant, which would deprive the team of rights that normally are associated with a tenant.
As an attorney, I could not and would not ever advise someone to essentially forfeit their rights in such a manner. Athletics’ President Dave Kaval stated that the team was going to instead pay to upgrade the facility’s batting cages, weight rooms, and field, plus pay for adding additional seating, and premium sections, and pay for advertising.
Said costs will likely be infinitesimal compared to the actual cost of rent due in a non-farcical situation. But why anyone would go see the now-nomadic Athletics in a such buffoonish setting is utterly beyond me.
As for Sacramento, I can see the rationale for those involved. I would imagine that the thinking is that the city will be considered for an expansion team in the future. No one has reported any contractual promise; if anything, Sacramento is eating Oakland’s lunch to demonstrate it could theoretically support a major league team.
Needless to say, the cries of betrayal out of Oakland towards the state capital are fairly easy to find online. As plans go, it’s not a terrible one for Sacramento, especially if Sacramentans show up in droves and one ignores the fact aiding this farce makes one complicit in said farce.
Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadive’s message to Oakland fans who are upset about Sacramento housing the A’s: pic.twitter.com/HRkRRnGY2v
— Matt George (@MattGeorgeSAC) April 4, 2024
The Athletics will not be called the Sacramento Athletics or Sacramento A’s, even though trademarks were filed. Unlike the majority of commenters, I will not condemn the leaders of Sacramento for facilitating the move. In my view, the move just makes the separation true in fact as well as in law.
While there has been considerable, commendable rage expressed throughout baseball’s fandom in support of Oakland last year, it is long past time to acknowledge a sad truth:
This fight is over and has been over for a while — technically since the Nevada Legislature signed off on giving a skinflint like John Fisher almost $400 million in public money.
Regardless of the futile hope, the marriage between Oakland and the A’s has been irreparably broken for a while. Ownership is entirely to blame. And rather than help force a sale, the rest of the owners have been complicit, allowing this farce to reach its climax.
This entire process has been an absolute farce, and while the public relations (and potential legal challenge) over the Nevada public money remains, for all the rage expressed by the Oakland faithful, the process rolls on in Las Vegas.
On April 2, 2024, the Tropicana Hotel closed its doors for the final time.
It is worth noting that the Tropicana is going to be imploded in the fall, regardless of the Athletics. In late 2023, the owners voted unanimously to approve the move to Las Vegas, so the anonymous agita that has surfaced about the Athletics’ relocation is a bit rich.
Within other organizations, there is a lot of disgust with how the A’s have handled the ballpark situation — especially when there’s no actual ballpark plan settled in Las Vegas. And there is an assumption the A’s will tank in the next few years, because their revenue stream will…
— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) April 5, 2024
As a Dodger fan, you should care about this situation
Why should you care as a Dodger fan, apart from tut-tutting ownership for their complicity in this farce? For starters, the San Francisco Giants will soon be the only game in town in the nation’s 10th-largest media market.
The Giants are currently in a position to flex some financial muscle if they actually wanted to try; instead, they are lucking into signing folks like Blake Snell and Matt Chapman on glorified one-year deals, which really does merit its own examination on a different day.
Considering that the Giants still tout the Athletics’ historical efforts to keep the Giants from moving to Tampa Bay, it is galling considering the assistance the Giants’ ownership has given to nudge the Athletics to Sin City.
Dave Kaval details how involved Giants leadership was in securing an interim home for the A’s in Sacramento pic.twitter.com/DjUUW0j8eJ
— A’s on NBCS (@NBCSAthletics) April 4, 2024
For those wondering why the Athletics just do not take up residence with their Triple-A team, I will simply point out that Las Vegas Stadium is an open-air stadium in the heart of the desert. The Player’s Association would likely scream bloody murder about teams playing in the open air, desert conditions of Las Vegas.
The funny thing is that Sacramento gets pretty hot in the summer, just not as hot as Vegas. It’s not Fresno-bad (most things aren’t), but no one would call Sacramento “temperate” in the summer. While everyone involved boasts about $10 million in improvements to the clubhouses, it is pretty hard to believe that Sutter Health Park could be considered on par with the other 29 major league stadiums.
What should Dodger fans do?
Honestly, I would recommend going to Oakland in early August when the Dodgers visit to say goodbye. The fans in Oakland are by far the best part of going to a game at the Oakland Coliseum. There will be a Guide entry for the Coliseum, but I am drawing the line at reviewing what is a minor league ballpark with all due respect to the denizens of Sacramento, a city I did not mind living in for parts of three years. I have resigned myself to returning to Las Vegas at some point after 2028. But my past adventures in Las Vegas, as well as any future updates, are a story for a different day.