At a Surreal A’s Opener in Sacramento, Fans Are Ready to Have Hearts Broken Again

Updated 1:56 p.m. Tuesday

WEST SACRAMENTO — Every year, opening day brings baseball fans the joy of reuniting with their team after a long winter and the renewed hope of a fresh season. One like this, however, doesn’t happen very often.

From the capital region and beyond, fans streamed into Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento on Monday night to see the Athletics’ home opener — the first of what’s expected to be a three-season stay at the minor league ballpark.

A line had already formed three hours before first pitch, and an audible cheer rang out as the gates opened for the sold-out matchup with the Chicago Cubs.

“ I grew up 20 minutes from the stadium that we’re playing at tonight, so it’s pretty surreal, and I couldn’t miss it,” said John Metz, a lifelong A’s fan who was raised in Elk Grove and Tracy.

This time, he flew in from his home in Seattle.

“ The drums, Stomper fun zones, being a little kid running the bases, Moneyball teams, all of it. I love it,” Metz said.

Katie White said she drove from South Lake Tahoe in a snowstorm to make it to the game with her husband and 3-year-old daughter. She empathized with A’s fans from the Bay Area who are upset about the team’s move, but like many here, she just wanted to enjoy opening day.

“I think we can only really take the opportunity that we’ve been given here and try and keep supporting them wherever they’re moving through as a team,” White said.

The A’s are set to play in West Sacramento for at least the next three seasons, while the team builds a $1.75 billion, 33,000-seat stadium in Las Vegas.

Construction of the proposed stadium gained momentum in December, after the Las Vegas Stadium Authority approved the lease, non-relocation, development and community benefits agreements for the project. The team expects to break ground this spring, with the hopes of having its new home ready for the 2028 season.

In the meantime, the A’s will share a home at Sutter Health Park with the Giants’ Triple-A affiliate, the Sacramento River Cats. With a maximum capacity of just above 14,000 — a far cry from the Oakland Coliseum’s 63,000 — there’s no mistaking this for a major league ballpark.

Instead of outfield bleachers, there’s a lawn area where people can lie out on blankets or bring their own folding chairs. Picnic tables pepper other parts of the stadium. And the smaller venue means fans are close to the action — children have a great chance of enticing a player to toss them a ball during warmups, and from the lawn, it wouldn’t be difficult to carry on a conversation with the bullpen.

Among the excitement of a new home opener, some of the fan protests that became a hallmark of the A’s last season in Oakland continued. Chants of “Sell the team!” rang out during the game, which started badly for the A’s and only got worse in an 18-3 blowout loss.

Caty Hung drove up from the Bay Area to cheer on the team but wore a shirt that said, “I’d rather be at the Oakland Coliseum.”

“ I love the players, and I love this team, but I don’t love the ownership and the way that this club has been managed,” she said.

Hung was born in November 2001, and five months later, her parents brought her to opening day at the Coliseum.

“ I thought I was going to raise my kids at the Coliseum, too,” Hung said.

Now, she’s wrestling with what it means to be an A’s fan when the team no longer represents her hometown. She’s preparing for another round of heartbreak when the team heads to Las Vegas and feels the pain that Sacramento-area fans may soon experience.

“ I think it’s awesome that the Sactown people are excited about this, but they’re going to go through the same thing,” Hung said. “They’re probably going to get attached to our guys for three years, and then they’re going to be ripped out from under the rug.”

The move to West Sacramento — and, ultimately, Las Vegas — has been a long time in the making.

In 2023, the team signed a binding agreement to purchase land for a ballpark in Las Vegas, ending its years-long search for a new stadium that saw ideas floated for Fremont, San José and the Howard Terminal site at the Port of Oakland. That year, then-Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao accused the team of “using the city of Oakland as leverage” to get a better deal on a stadium in Las Vegas.

Lovingly dubbed “Baseball’s Last Dive Bar,” the no-frills, brutalist Coliseum had played home to the A’s since 1968. Despite the lack of flashy aesthetics, the team awarded its fans many memorable moments, including winning the World Series three years in a row, from 1972 to 1974, and showcasing some of the greats in baseball, including the “Man of Steal” Rickey Henderson, the all-time record holder for most stolen bases in a career.

At Monday’s game, some Sacramento area fans expressed hope that, against all odds, the A’s would stay in West Sacramento to make more memories here.

“We’ve got to make sure that they stay here in Sacramento area because moving to Las Vegas is a bad idea,” said Mel Switzer, who was also at the A’s opening day at the Coliseum in 1968 but now lives outside Sacramento in Lincoln. “I think it’s a great fit. The only thing [A’s owner John Fisher] has to do is sell the team to the right owner. It could happen. It really could.”

Many Bay Area A’s fans have a less rosy outlook. After being burned by the team once, they have accepted that the team is set to leave the state.

“I mean, it is what it is,” said Ron Coffee Jr. of Vacaville, who said he cried when the A’s played their last game at the Coliseum. “It’s sad, but I’ll still be an A’s fan.”

A correction was made to this story at 1:56 p.m., April 1, 2025, to update the spelling of Caty Hung’s name.