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Adios, Oakland: A’s to Play Next 3 Seasons in Sacramento

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The mystery of where the A’s will play their next three seasons is over.  The team has just announced that it will play the 2025, ’26, and ’27 seasons in Sacramento before moving to Las Vegas in 2028.

The team will share a stadium with the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats (a Giants affiliate), whose ballpark has 14,000 seats. Obviously, that’s tiny by big league standards; on the other hand, the A’s averaged only 10,275 fans per game last year in Oakland and are likely to do even worse at the gate this season, so the smaller ballpark may actually be a good fit.

The team’s lease at the Oakland Coliseum is up at the end of this year. There was talk of a potential three-year extension (among several other possibilities), but the team ultimately chose the Sacramento option.

Today’s development has several implications of great relevance to Uni Watch:

  • It’s not yet clear, at least to me, what the team will be called next season. The Sacramento A’s? The Golden State A’s? Just the A’s? Update: Several outlets are reporting that they’ll just be called “the A’s” and “the Athletics” while in Sacramento — no city name as part of the official identity.
  • Doing a complete design overhaul for a three-year stopover doesn’t make sense, so I’m assuming the team will keep its color scheme and its “A’s” jerseys while playing in Sacramento.
  • The team’s road and Kelly alternate jerseys, however, both have “Oakland” on the chest. Those will presumably be swapped out for new designs. Here’s one option:

  • The team’s primary logo says, “Oakland A’s,” so that will presumably be updated as well.
  • Now that we know where the team will be playing for the next three years, will they join the City Connect program and get a Sacramento-themed uniform, or will they wait until they move to Vegas?

It’s also worth noting that when the A’s move to Vegas in 2028, that will be the franchise’s fifth city — an MLB record. Here’s the breakdown:

  • Philadelphia: 1901-1954
  • Kansas City: 1955-1967
  • Oakland: 1968-2024
  • Sacramento: 2025-2027
  • Las Vegas: 2028 –

Meanwhile, it’s unclear what this will mean for the Oakland Coliseum, which will lose its primary tenant at the close of the current MLB season.

My condolences to Oakland fans who are losing their team — I feel for you.

 
  
 
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Comments (129)

    They should take a page out of Dan Snyder’s book and call themselves the “Athletics Baseball Club”

    The Athletics Baseball Club — not a bad notion.

    Throwbacks could be interesting; the Atlanta Black Crackers and the Indianapolis ABCs could be in play.

    I don’t think they could have picked a worse nearby city than Sacramento. Fitting for this owner.

    Could be worse than Sacramento, they could have gone to Stockton…

    (Sacramento is not that bad of a city)

    Have you ever been to Sacramento or are you just making an uneducated guess? Sacramento is 1000 times better and safer than the crime infested dump known as Oakland. Also the tourist zone of Old Sacramento and the waterfront are right next to the stadium which will provide an experience that ghetto Oakland can’t. Sacramento is an amazing baseball town and will sell out this stadium all 3 years providing more than double the average attendance that Oakland will draw this season along with a better viewing experience closer to the field.

    “Sacramento is 1000 times better and safer than the crime infested dump known as Oakland.”

    This is some racially coded garbage.

    A casual glance at Sacramento’s demographics will tell you it’s a majority minority city. There is nothing remotely racist by saying Sacramento is safer than Oakland. It’s just factually accurate. 1000 times safer might be a bit of hyperbole, but still.

    I don’t have a source handy but I saw a tweet that they’re just going to go by ‘The Athletics’ or ‘The A’s’ no city name.

    I feel bad for Oakland, what a complete joke and pathetic ownership group. If I were a fan, I wouldn’t step foot near that stadium unless they plan another reverse protest and pack the stadium on last time.

    The Athletics were named after a series of Philadelphia teams, the first simply the Athletics Club that happened to play in Philadelphia back when clubs did not have a city name because they weren’t yet franchises with designated territories. I guess this is why none of those teams ever wore a “P”.

    link

    So the Athletics are kind of the one MLB team with a historical justification.

    Evan Drellich of The Athletic reported the A’s will drop the city name while in Sacramento. They’ll be known as “Athletics” or “A’s” only. No word on whether the TLA will be ATH or something else.

    I haven’t been a fan of their current uniforms, but this gives them an opportunity to wear “A’s” uniforms for home and the road until they officially move to Vegas, but that’s my opinion. Oakland fans, I do feel for you.

    The one report I’ve found says they’re just going to be called ‘The A’s’ without a city name attached. I can’t really figure out if they mean they’re just going to be called the ‘Athletics’ and the report was just using the colloquialism, or if they are literally just going to be called ‘The A’s’ and dropping ‘Athletics’ in addition to ‘Oakland’. I’d imagine the quickest way to get rid of ‘Oakland’ in their primary logo is to just get rid of the roundel altogether and just keep the ‘A’s’ filling the circle, but that kind of lends itself to the idea of just being called ‘The A’s’.

    My guess is that they’ll just drop the gray and kelly jerseys altogether, and wear their dark green alternate jerseys on the road full-time the next few seasons. I can’t imagine they’d re-design the home whites, so they’ll just have a jersey that says ‘Athletics’ for home and a jersey that says ‘A’s’ on the road. A good enough stopgap until the move to Vegas.

    Oakland is having a rough time. Losing the A’s and recently the first In-N-Out to ever close.

    “The Oakland Athletics of Sacramento.” Also, it will be interesting to see who draws better, the A’s or the River Cats.

    Seriously, though, I feel bad for Oakland sports fans.

    If the A’s continue charging big-league ticket prices, the Rivercats may actually outdraw them. I’m not sure how many people will be willing to pay ~$100 a ticket to watch a AAAA team play in a AAA ballpark. They’ll sell out when the Yankees/Dodgers/Giants are in town, but you’ll be able to hear the crickets at your average mid-week game against the Tigers.

    The Seals…the Raiders….the Warriors…now the A’s….tough to be a sports fan in Oakland

    Will a major professional team be named Oakland again? End of an era?

    Does this make Oakland the first city to lose teams in all 4 major sports leagues?

    Depends on how you want to measure it, but the technical answer is no.
    *=folded
    Kansas City MLB (A’s), NFL (Blues/Cowboys*), NBA (Kings), NHL (Scouts)
    St. Louis MLB (Browns), NFL (All-Stars*/Cardinals/Rams), NBA (Hawks), NHL (Eagles*)

    Oakland is the only city to have everyone move with no folding. Additionally, the Bay Area at large now has the unfortunate distinction of losing teams in all 5 of the current major sports leagues when you include the MLS San Jose Earthquakes version 1.0.

    Was about to ask but I think ABA Oaks was the basketball team lost for the Bay Area.

    Don’t forget the NASL’s Oakland Stompers that bolted after one season to become the Edmonton Drillers.

    Probably a reference to Oakland losing the Warriors to that other city across the Bay.

    I could tell John Fisher where he, himself, should go. It’s neither Sacramento nor Las Vegas.

    That said, the chutzpah of the man to keep clothing the A’s in Oakland unis! He could have brought back the gold A’s jerseys from the 2010s. He could have brought back the forest green Athletics jerseys from the 1990s–2010s. He did neither. And every time I see those Kelly greens (including the one in my closet, no longer worn), it feels like a slap in the face.

    Well, whatever. I’m not planning any trips to the Coliseum. Nor to the River Cats park.

    The city of Oakland is still trying to negotiate with the A’s to purchase back their stake in the coliseum site because they hope to redevelop it. Also, the Oakland Roots (USL) and Oakland Soul (USL W) are going to play there in 2025.

    I assume the team will do what many of its peers across baseball have done in recent years, and simply declare either the cap logo or the elephant-on-a-ball alternate logo to be the primary logo, and retire the roundel that includes geographic and team names. At least temporarily; a whole new logo for LV would obviously be the smart way to go, so I assume the team will not do that, making a slightly tweaked roundel the most likely permanent logo once the final relocation happens. If it happens.

    The most interesting question for me will be whether the A’s draw a larger per-game attendance than the co-facilitated River Cats. At least, after 2025, when there will be a novelty factor to outweigh how terrible the on-field product is and how odiously the ownership will inevitably treat the local community.

    I would suspect the opportunity to see real major league ballplayers on the visiting teams, who they couldn’t see before in person, would be a draw for the As in Sacramento. And, over the first two seasons, they’ll see different players each year from the visiting National League teams.

    Fair point. And in his Sacramento press conference, Fisher singled out the attraction of seeing Aaron Judge hit home runs off A’s pitching as the major draw for Sacramento fans to attend games. The A’s are clearly banking on the prospect of bringing actual big-league players to Sacramento as visitors. Which, if it works, will probably remain the team’s approach in Las Vegas.

    The hilarious move would be for the River Cats to play in the Coliseum instead.

    Sacramento could do a KC Kings and KC A’s throwback collaboration. Without giving it any thought, I don’t know of another city that could do multiple throwbacks from the same previous city’s location.

    I don’t think any team in any sport has moved that many times, to that many cities, without changing its name.

    Braves moved twice, right? The move to Sacramento will be the fourth for the A’s.

    Rochester Royals, Cincy Royals, KC-Omaha Kings and Sacramento Kings. Three moves.

    The Braves have moved only twice but I believe that they hold the record for home venues having had six different ones since 1900.

    The Atlanta Hawks are close, except that they started as the Tri-Cities Blackhawks and then became the Milwaukee Hawks and St. Louis Hawks.

    The Raiders, of course, technically moved three times without changing nicknames, but one time back to Oakland. However, there was that first couple of years when they actually played in San Francisco.

    Now if the Warriors had gone with their original plan of splitting home games between the Oakland Arena and the San Diego Sports Arena in ’71, it would have changed its name once yet moved to two cities at the same time. Instead, it has now not changed its name, but moved back to San Francisco under its Oakland name.

    Gee, it seems like a lot of these stories involve Oakland. For the sake of sanity, no one is counting the pre-1901 histories of the American League teams, where everyone in the minor Western League except Detroit moved to larger cities. Thus tacking an extra move on to the Orioles, who were the Milwaukee Brewers before being the St. Louis Browns. However, the Athletics can’t seem to be traced to a particular Western League team, so I guess Connie Mack started from scratch.

    To think most of this could have been avoided about a decade ago if MLB didn’t bow down to the Giants and let the Athletics set up shop in San Jose, they’d still have been in the Bay Area.
    Surprised they didn’t set up shop in the Las Vegas Aviators’ stadium if they were just going temporarily use a minor league stadium.

    Oakland granted those territorial rights to the Giants as an incentive to remain in SF. At the time, Oakland did what was best for MLB. Too bad the Giants couldn’t be bothered to return the favor. A’s should have a nice stadium in San Jose. Guess I’ll take comfort in knowing the Giants are now a losing franchise in a decaying city.

    They won 3 titles in 5 years a decade ago, yes, but they just won 107 games 3 seasons ago. I wouldn’t necessarily call that a “losing franchise.” They spent a lot of money this off-season on some big names so the expectation is at least a WC spot.

    The City thing I can’t really argue about though I do think it’s being overblown.

    I was about to bring this up as well, the Giants have played a major role in this franchise leaving the Bay area they and MLB share in this blame. In every other multi-city town where the ballbarks are even closer in proximity they can co-exist with shared media territories.

    A little history lesson. When Charles O Finley applied in 1967 to move the @Athletics from Kansas City, Oakland was considered as an “open territory,” a remnant of when the PCL Oaks moved from Emeryville to Vancouver in 1955. The A’s moving to Oakland only required approval by the then 10 American League owners. The Giants and the rest of the National League team owners had no say in the decision. The Giants’ ownership protested the move, fearing, correctly as it turned out, that their attendance would plummet with the A’s in Oakland. The Giants, unlike the @Orioles when the Expos relocated to DC, never received any indemnification for the damages to their business. This directly resulted in the de facto bankruptcy of the Giants in 1975-76, and the team almost relocating to Toronto. Both the Giants and A’s attendance have suffered for the last 56 years by there being too many teams for the population base. Both the A’s and Giants have faced the financial necessity to relocate to more a more profitable location at least a half dozen times since 1968. The early 1990s agreement regarding San José only codified what the A’s paid for in 1967–the territorial rights to the Oakland area.

    Wow that’s great knowledge. I never knew that. So you’re saying the Giants were always supposed to have the rights to SJ back in the 60’s when the A’s first moved there?

    Not really, as the AL and NL were still separate entities when the A’s moved, why would the NL expect to have a say on the matter. Just like the Yankees and AL had no say on the Mets.

    SJ was shared until 1990 but really that just meant both teams could veto a move.

    Sacramento is still considered part of their TV coverage so the TV rights deal is not impacted. If they moved to Vegas they would have to re do that.

    Also, it is my understanding that an open air stadium in Vegas is considered untenable.

    I grew up going to games at the Coliseum. It’s a dump. Tear it down.

    I can’t imagine the minor-league team is happy about this. Three years of having a (more or less) major league team eating up the area’s entertainment dollars? Their attendance is bound to take a hit.

    The Rivercats owner, who also owns the Sacramento Kings, was actually the primary driver of this. He is friends with Fisher and got the deal done. His primary motivation though is the long game, he wants to use this as an “audition,” for Sacramento to push him as an owner and the city as a market, ahead of the group in Salt Lake City when the league expands by 2030.

    It’s pretty much settled that they’ll put one team towards the east of the country, which is all but certain to be Nashville, and one team out west. Until today, Salt Lake City was far and away the favorite, with SLC also vying to be a temporary home to the A’s for the exact same reason.

    There’s of course still the fan based Portland Diamond Project but I think that’s pretty much completely lost steam. It’s Sacramento vs SLC now for that western expansion team.

    I wouldn’t be too hasty to declare the winners several years in advance. When all that money and economic development is suddenly actually on the table instead of just speculation we may see Portland get their act together again. Same thing in the east, Nashville may be all fired up but if North Carolina gets its act together suddenly they could easily get beat out Nashville. Bigger markets, way bigger media markets, much bigger tax bases. Those places may seem disorganized and “behind” now but just wait.

    Not sure why they are so adamant to add a team in the west. MLB is lacking a presence in the south compared to other pro sports, you have both Charlotte and Nashville as viable markets, and certainly Montreal could work on a second run. Those all seem better choices than Sacramento, Salt Lake City, or Portland given population / market sizes.

    In the east it will be Nashville or Charlotte. So they’ll kill 2 birds with one stone. People keep dreaming of an Expos return but it’s just not going to happen, nor will Vancouver. For the same reason even the NHL will go back to the hockey hotbed of Atlanta a third time before going back to Quebec City.

    The weakness of the Canadian dollar and the increased taxes. We’re more likely to see the Blue Jays move to Buffalo than we are to see a return of the Expos (for the record i don’t actually think the Blue Jays would re-lo to Buffalo). But my point is, not even the NHL wants to go deeper into Canada, MLB certainly will not either, nor will the NBA. It doesn’t make financial sense.

    While I don’t think MLB will relocate to Montreal, I suspect it’s more due to a lack of adequate stadium, and deep pocketed owner, and likely questioning the long term support by the fan base. Canadian governments seem far more reluctant to fund stadiums builds, and thus the Toronto Blue Jays, playing in one of the biggest cities in North America, play in an out-dated, albeit recently renovated stadium, those renovations I believe were all privately funded.

    The Rivercats owner was a primary driver in this, yes, but with how MiLB assignments work, the Giants might NOT be quite as happy. It’s their players that may now face longer road trips or be pushed out of the primary facilities. Considering how large the Giants fanbase is throughout Northern California, Ranadive better hope he doesn’t sour his relationship with the Giants if the expansion plan doesn’t come to fruition.

    I don’t get the push for a West team either. We can see Manfred wants an 32 team NFL style alignment. The Rockies and Astros swap leagues and expand into the South and this is what you get:

    AL West-COL, LAA, LV, SEA
    NL West-AZ, LA, SD, SF

    AL Central-CWS,KC,MIN,TEX
    NL Central-CHC,HOU,MIL, STL

    AL Metropolitan-CLE,DET,NSH,TB
    NL Metropolitan-ATL,CIN,MIA,PIT

    AL East-BAL,BOS,NYY,TOR
    NL East-CAR,PHI,NYM,WSH

    This is unlikely to happen, but I have what I condier the objectively best idea for a 32-team realignment. Four separete LEAGUES:

    NL: CHC, CIN, MIL, NYM, PHI, PIT, STL, TOR
    AL: BAL, BOS, CWS, CLE, DET, KC, MIN, NYY
    Southern League: ATL, CHA*, HOU, MIA, NSH*, TB, TEX, WSH
    Pacific League: ARI, COL, LAA, LAD, LVA, SD, SF, SEA

    That’s actually brilliant and a fantastic way to get a dig in at their Southern California rivals.

    Sad. Just sad. I attended an A’s game in Oakland once. Sat in the Raiders Suite. Hate it for the fans in the Bay Area.

    I like Chris Creamer’s suggestion. Makes sense to call them the California A’s during this time.

    Rather strange not to have a city name attached to a Big 4 sports team.

    New England Patriots (They originally change the name from Boston to Bay State but quickly changed to New England because the BS Patriots was not a good look).

    Minnesota Vikings, Twins, & Wild
    Tennessee Titans
    Florida Panthers and at one time Marlins
    California Angels and Golden Seals
    Golden State Warriors
    Texas Rangers

    The jersey could have a full US map with travel lines through all the franchise stops.

    Are there any MLB teams that have been in four cities? From a quick Google I can only find teams that have been in three – the Twins (Kansas City, Washington, Minneapolis), the Orioles (Milwaukee, St. Louis, Baltimore), the White Sox (Sioux City, St. Paul, Chicago), the Guardians (Columbus, Grand Rapids, Cleveland), the Braves (Boston, Milwaukee, Atlanta). I could totally be wrong, but from what I see, the A’s will set a new record just by going to Sacramento!

    As a Browns fan who had his team ripped from the city by a dumbass owner, I feel so bad for the A’s fans. It’s hard.

    I’m not exactly an A’s fan, but I’ve always admired their aesthetics. I’m glad that I bought two caps (home and road) and one jersey (Kelly green) before this terrible news.

    The team’s itinerant history could be karma for the hat usually bearing an “A” and not the location– well, except for KC.

    So you could say you’re into the obsessive study of Athletics aesthetics.

    Same. I’m an SF Giants fan, but I really like the A’s colors and uniforms. Although I don’t care for their current road cap with the white and gold “A’s” on it. I much prefer the more simple hat they wore in the 2000’s that was a gold “A’s” on hunter green. That one looked great and fit their road uniform so much better IMO.

    I love the current road hat in a vacuum (truth be told, I only bought the home one because the road one was out of stock at my local store), but I agree that the white A looks worse in the context of the whole uniform.

    As a baseball fan, I feel really bad for the few Athletics fans left, and the many that the current idiot owner drove way.

    As a fan of chaos though, I love this.

    It’s a perfect time to buy Oakland A’s apparel! It will go clearance and before it’s “vintage” or throwback, we can all buy it on the cheap!!

    The A’s owner is far too cheap to care about any of this crap. I’d bet “Oakland” will stay on the jerseys.

    it’s been reported the Coliseum will be refitted for soccer as the Oakland Roots, of the USL, and the Oakland Soul, of the USL W, will be moving in

    link

    I have never been to Oakland. I have never even been to the US. However, I have been an Oakland Athletics fan ever since I discovered baseball. This was the era of Jose Canseco, Dennis Eckersley, Dave Stewart, Mike Gallego, Mark McGwire and the incomparable Rickey Henderson. Becoming and being an A’s fan was easy.

    Most of the time since that glorious night in 1989, being an A’s fan has been increasingly difficult. I can’t say I know how fans in Oakland feel today, because I am lucky. I live in Europe, where most sports clubs are owned by their community.

    I do, however, sympathise and feel their pain. Even to me, losing baseball in Oakland, a place I will probably never seee, is bad, even for me.

    Today, I don’t know how it will feel watching the Athletics in Sacramento or Las Vegas. Will I still support them? I have no idea. You can’t control emotions.

    So, my instinct is the call John Fisher all sorts of names and certainly, he’d deserve them. I do want to offer a bit of dispassionate analysis though. In a very short time period, Oakland has lost the Raiders, the Warriors to SF, and now the A’s. They lost all their teams very quickly. So maybe, it would be fair to at least partially blame Oakland as well. I mean, you lose all your teams in what, 5 year, you know, maybe Oakland itself is at least part of the problem.

    Part of me also thinks perhaps the Bay Area just isn’t big enough for 2 teams but then again, when you really measure the whole sphere of influence what the US Census terms “Combined Statistical Area,” it’s not much smaller than Chicagoland or the Baltimore-Washington area, both of which support 2 teams just fine. So maybe it really is a bit the city itself.

    The cities in the Bay Area are far more distinct than anything in Chicago, where everything is ultimately centered around Chicago itself (complain all you want, Naperville). Chicago is just big enough alone.

    San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland are three different cities, much more akin to the DMV. Washington and Baltimore are absolutely different entities (other than some statistical definitions). I don’t think people on the East Coast appreciate how true that is in the Bay, as well.

    East Bay can absolutely support pro sports, but Oakland got screwed by a historically bad stadium and a cascading pile of circumstances that led to it not being fixed. The Warriors are different story — they just realized the massive lucrative potential of being in SF, where there was not already a basketball team connected to the city.

    Sad all round. That said, I will definitely be traveling down to Sacramento when the Mariners are in town to check out the weirdness.

    Basically, the twin with the most money had too few teams and the twin with less money had more teams than it could support, so rebalancing was more like a tsunami of Oakland teams fleeing for new facilities.

    Actually the A’s franchise began when the Western League was elevated to a major league – the American League. They bought the Indianapolis Hoosiers and transferred many of the players to the 1901 Philadelphia Athletics in the same way the former Cleveland Browns became the Baltimore Ravens. It was the same team but “officially” it was new. So in reality, the A’s team has gone from Indianapolis to Philadelphia to Kansas City to Oakland, next to Sacramento, and then Las Vegas. That would make six.

    It seems the rapid growth of San Jose came at the expense of Oakland. We have a similar circumstance in Westchester County where a giant city– Yonkers– can’t establish an identity better than NYC’s hat because of geography. It isn’t even the county seat.

    Hey Paul – any chance you can get your source to provide the A’s style guide for 2024? I’m curious if they still have the darker green softball tops with the A’s logo as a designated jersey despite last wearing it in 2021 (I think?). If so, I can see them wearing those full-time on the road and scrapping the gray and kelly green jerseys altogether.

    A little off topic ,but seeing the different cities listed which this team has called listed – I never realized that the team was in Oakland longer than it was in Philadelphia.

    Here’s a list of every AL franchise with more World Series wins than the A’s nine…

    Yankees

    That’s it. That’s the list. Go @*!# yourself, John Fisher.

    Yes, but the history of those As championships is telling. Burst of a few championships followed by many bad years. Because sharing a market in Philadelphia and then the Bay Area made it impossible to build for the long term. Kansas City should have been the solution but Finley bungled it then.

    Put it this way: what would have happened if Connie Mack had put the team in Kansas City in the ’20s instead? Both the As and Phillies would have been financially healthier instead of taking turns as awful.

    Went to the A’s website-all references to Oakland in the logo are gone. The only way you would know they are still there is the link to the Mausoleum for tickets.

    That’s really shitty. We’re a week into the season and they’re still in Oakland for the next 6 months. Couldn’t they at least let the body get cold?

    1972, 1973, 1974 World Series Champs. I’m 12, 13 and 14 years old at the time, in my prime as a sports and uniform loving kid from the midwest. The Swingin’ A’s. So brash, so cool. The uniform combinations. The white shoes. The mustaches. Bando, Vida, Rollie, Rudi, Campy, Reggie….What a legacy.

    So sorry, Oakland fans.

    Hey Jim!

    I was 6, 7, and 8 (so my PRIME for discovering baseball and uniforms) during that run; of course, I was crushed in 1973 when they beat my Ya Gotta Believe’s … but at least they pushed them to seven games. A crusher for sure, and the Mess have had little success since then, but that cemented my Mets fandom. Most of my buddies didn’t get into baseball until a bit later, and as a result, several of them became … Yankees fans since the Yanks made the WS in 1976-78, winning 77 & 78.

    But even though the A’s beat the Mets in 1973, I always liked the Oakland team and I LOVED the kelly, Fort Knox and Wedding Gown. I even convinced my pop to buy me an A’s cap, and I used to pretend I was Catfish, throwing balls to my “Pitch Back” with a fake mustache in my backyard.

    Such a sad ending to a once great franchise.

    I would love to see the A’s go back to the 70’s uniforms elastic waistbands and all. That was the golden age of baseball unis and why I became a uniform fan as I was growing up and playing baseball at that time. Also bring back the “Swingin’ A’s” logo. It was the best and doesn’t include a city name. I think people will be surprised at the electric atmosphere in Sacramento despite the smaller ballpark.

    Great story. I have a soft spot for the A’s as well but this owner does everything to damage the team. I feel sorry for Oakland fans. Who will watch the A’s in the desert? A couple of curious tourists who leave after the third inning to go gambling again in AC controlled casinos. Plus maybe some disgruntled former Aviators fans who had to give up their team for the A’s coming to town. This will not be a happy chapter in the long history of this club.

    Time will tell, but I think you greatly underestimate how much of a sports town Las Vegas is. Locals are fairly rabid about the Raiders and the Golden Knights and more supportive of the Aces than any other WNBA city I’m aware of. Sure it helps that the GK and Aces have won championships, but I think the people in the seats at Vegas games are more likely to be locals than “curious tourists”, although I do think a fair number of tourists will show up as well.

    I’ve been going to baseballs games in Sacramento for over 65 years. The A’s will find some of the best baseball weather that exists, a pretty passionate sports base and the 19th biggest media market in the country. The minor league River Cats were a top AAA draw as an A’s affiliate. I’m rooting for a successful 3 year audition.

    Definitely.

    Sacramento was supposed to be a lock to get an MLS franchise a couple of years ago and things went bad. But not building that new soccer stadium should make resources available for expanding or replacing the minor league ballpark.

    Lifelong A’s fan from the valley here. Yes, I’m reevaluating that even though they’re coming to my city.

    They own green like no one else in baseball. May as well use it.

    They can just wear green jerseys on the road with the simple “A’s” logo. They had alts like these not long ago, it’s an iconic 70’s A’s look, and was part of their Spring training look for quite a while. Oh, and they’ve been wearing something similar on the road caps already anyway.

    Whites work as they are currently, with “Athletics” in script. They can actually wear that green “A’s” shirt whenever they want, including using it as as a home alt.

    They could add an “Athletics” script green alternate in the mix too, which they’ve also done previously. They could make either the monogram-ish or full-word spelled-out version a brighter Kelley green, and both would work home or away.

    Heck, with two distinct green options, they could do something uncommon and skip the home white top. Who else is going to clash with green? They already own the color, may as well leverage it.

    A yellow home alt would be a bolder choice, but I’m not sure if the current design climate or fans interest will work for it. They either need to go completely unabashedly bold somehow (I doubt the A’s or Nike are that inspired), or play it smart with the classics.

    If I’m really honest, I’m not sure any decisions they make are going to be smash hits with the conflicted feelings folks will have over the next 3-4 years. They’re probably going to face protest routinely. They can stick to known winners design-wise and tread water by the river for the next few years without ever having to acknowledge the *ahem* elephant in the ballyard.

    I hate to see this happen. But, it is a business. The fans have put up with a lot since the glory years of Dave, Rickey, Dennis, etc. Although they have made the post-season many times, the lack of spending to provide a championship caliber team is probably why attendance has been so low for so long. Throw in the current condition of the Oakland Coliseum along with the attendance issues, it was just a matter of time. My thoughts are that once they move, Oakland will tear down the Coliseum and work to build either a new football stadium or ballpark to lure a new team to come in. It took doing that in LA, and now they have two NFL teams. Hang in there Oakland fans. It may be a while. But, you will eventually have another pro sports team.

    1. Screw these entitled billionaire owners that rake in big cash from sponsorships and media deals, throw a fit when the public doesn’t cough up a bunch of money for them, then steals a community’s team away. Even worse when they keep a team name after moving (and the A’s are one of history’s worst offenders hopping across the continent after ditching Philly).

    2. Oakland only a few weeks ago approved a lease deal with professional soccer club Oakland Roots SC to play at the Coliseum in 2025. This also means their women’s team, Oakland Soul, will be moving pro in the USL Super League which is starting this fall at the same level on the pyramid as the NWSL (division 1). They also have plans to build a temporary, more size-appropriate venue in the Coliseum parking lot until a permanent soccer venue can be built. That organization, unlike the sleezeballs running the Raiders and A’s (and the San Jose Earthquakes, owned by the A’s Fisher and who just plopped a reserve team into the Oakland area called “The Town FC” to compete with the Roots) actually seem to care about the community there and have been fairly successful in their first few years.

    Roots are the best, but they’ve had terrible luck with stadiums. They were pulling in 5000 a game in a league no one heard of, then Covid wrecked two seasons while they made the move to USL. They had unplayable conditions at least once shuffling between several small-college fields. So they draw less now as 2nd Division than as 3rd Division.

    The Kansas City A’s really wanted to come to Atlanta and play at the newly built Atlanta Stadium (later named Fulton County Stadium), but their lease with the city of KC wasn’t up until 1967. The Braves moved to Atlanta in 1966. As an Atlanta baseball fan I think about what might have been if the A’s came instead of the Braves. I’m assuming Ted Turner would probably have still bought the A’s and I’d be an Atlanta A’s fan now. Guys like Smoltz, Glavine, Maddux and Chipper would be A’s legends. Most importantly, Henry Aaron would’ve never broken the home run record in Atlanta. It’s a fun thought exercise.

    Go back to the Charlie Finley era uniforms. Just A’s on them. No city name and they are better than the current uniforms.

    “the A’s averaged only 10,275 fans per game last year in Oakland and are likely to do even worse at the gate this season, so the smaller ballpark may actually be a good fit.”

    @paul please don’t blame the Oakland A’s fans for this situation. Oakland has an incredible fan base as evidenced by the June 13, 2023 reverse boycott (27,759 attendance); the February 24, 2024 Oakland Fans Fest (community-organized because ownership hasn’t organized one for several years) or the April 28, 2024 opening day boycott.

    Please don’t repeat the inaccurate narrative being created by a greedy baseball ownership group who has tanked this team, alienated the fans, and destroyed this franchise.

    BTW, if you want to geek out on some of Oakland’s uni-related fan-created goodness, I highly recommend link. All proceeds from their most recent offering will be used to fight against the use of public funds to subsidize a billionaire’s new stadium: link

    I’m not “blaming” anyone; I’m simply citing the attendance figures. That’s all.

    Yes, I realize that the fan base is disaffected, and has good reasons for feeling that way. That won’t change when the team moves to a new (minor league) market. So a small stadium makes sense. The end.

    PhilaKansOakSacLas Athletics anyone? Sort of rolls off the tongue quite nicely.

    Here’s the uniforms they can use. Both home and road. A blast from the Past. Just “A’s”

    link (Yellow over White)
    link (Yellow over Yellow)
    link (Green over White)
    link (White over White)

    link (Had to have one with the white coaches hat)

    Fisher is absolutely the chief villain in all this. But save a few hisses for the local politicians of Oakland: even with the most agreeable & generous owner imaginable, it’s not clear that they’d ever have allowed a new Oakland ballpark to be built.

    Grab this paragraph out of an Athletic article. Almost sounds like there will be a CC for the A’s.

    “It’s an interim situation, and we felt it was best to play as the Athletics in this period of our history,” Kaval said. “There’s going to be nods to Sacramento and things we’re going to do with maybe some special uniforms or patches, and things of that nature that we’re going to look at. And obviously, merchandise.”

    link

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