Despite an inauspicious debut for the Athletics’ first Sacramento home game — losing 18-3 to the Chicago Cubs — team owner John Fisher doesn’t have his dauber down. Far from it.
He has high hopes that the team’s three-year stint in Sacramento will not only be very successful but also lead to the city landing a Major League Baseball expansion franchise.
The A’s began playing at Sutter Health Park on Monday. The team will call the 14,000-seat minor league stadium home until the team’s planned 2028 Las Vegas move.
Despite chatter from fans and some media about the possibility that the A’s may end up staying in Sacramento permanently, Fisher maintains that he plans to keep ownership of the team and to build a new ballpark in Las Vegas.
Fisher remains confident that construction of the $1.75 billion Strip ballpark will begin sometime before the end of June, to keep the project on track for a 2028 debut.
“For us it’s a perfect lead-in to the beginning of construction for our ballpark in Las Vegas,” Fisher told the Review-Journal, referring to Monday’s game. “The excitement is going to build over the next three years and when we have Opening Day on the Strip in 2028, it is going to be a momentous occasion for the history of our franchise.”
Plans moving ahead
The A’s last week got clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration that the stadium’s 320-foot height won’t affect operations at nearby Harry Reid International Airport. That approval paved the way for the A’s ballpark plans to be heard Wednesday by the Clark County Commission, as the team works toward obtaining permits to begin work on the stadium site.
The A’s item asks the commission to approve issuing a permit to allow for excavation of the site to begin ahead of the two sides entering into a development agreement.
“The community in Vegas has been incredibly supportive and “The county… has been moving at a really tremendous pace to try and get this all accomplished so that we can start construction and get all of this moving along,” Fisher said.
Sacramento MLB audition
The next three years could serve as an audition of sorts, to see how Sacramento handles MLB, on a smaller scale, with the potential to see the region be rewarded with an expansion team, if the league moves in that direction in the future.
“I couldn’t be more excited to be spending the next three years here in Sacramento. It’s a tremendous sports town with very supportive people,” Fisher said. “They’re really excited about the opportunity to have Major League Baseball here now and to hopefully have an expansion team sometime in the future.”
Mike Testa, president and CEO of Visit Sacramento, the city’s tourism arm, said officials have long believed that the area is more than capable of supporting more than one major sports team. He pointed to the success of the Golden 1 Center, home of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings, which ranks among the top 10 in revenue-producing arenas in the U.S., Testa noted.
“I’ve no doubt that our community support will continue for the next three years,” Testa said in an email to the Review-Journal. We are hopeful that MLB decides to expand permanently in Sacramento, and if the next three years allow us to prove our readiness through a dress rehearsal with the A’s, then that’s an opportunity that we’ll embrace.”
Kings owner Vivek Ranadive, who also owns the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats and Sutter Health Park, has previously expressed optimism that Sacramento would be in the running for an MLB expansion team, if the city performs well during the A’s three years there.
Testa said he hasn’t had direct contact with MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, but he is aware that Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty has been in contact and noted the city remains confident that it and community will step up enough over the next three years to warrant serious consideration of becoming a permanent MLB city.
“The future is bright in Sacramento and we’re confident that our friends at MLB see great opportunity here,” Testa said.
Double duty
Although Monday night’s game wasn’t the start to their tenure in Sacramento the team envisioned on the field, Fisher was excited to debut the millions of dollars in renovations made to the ballpark by the A’s, in partnership with the Sacramento Kings and River Cats. An announced crowd of 12,192 fans attended the game Monday night to ring in the MLB era in Sacramento.
Working on both the A’s move from Oakland to Sacramento and the continued Las Vegas stadium efforts has been a challenge for Fisher and his executive staff, but one they’re ready to take on.
“It’s a unique opportunity when you are working on creating a 33,000-capacity stadium on the Strip in Las Vegas, but you also have a baseball team to run,” Fisher said.
Vegas in mind
Some of the recent personnel transactions the A’s have made, including signing players Lawrence Butler and Brent Rooker and manager Mark Kotsay to contract extensions, were made with continuity to Las Vegas in mind, he said.
“All of those moves were meant to show Vegas that these are the kinds of things that we intend to do to become a great pennant-winning team when we hit the Strip starting in 2028,” Fisher said. “All of those contracts were signed with the idea that these players will be able to play their careers with the Athletics and in Vegas itself. “
Contact Mick Akers at [email protected] or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on X.
