WEST SACRAMENTO — For better or worse, the first major-league Opening Day in this onetime minor-league town was one to remember.
“This,” Joe Hattfield, 42, said from the grass berm in right field of Sutter Health Park, gesturing toward the playing surface, “is baseball paradise.”
REALTED: Kurtenbach: Is it Sacramento? Las Vegas? What is this new A’s home?
Sacramento might be a temporary pitstop on the A’s eventual move from Oakland to Las Vegas, but for locals such as Hattfield, whose job as a government scientist brought him from San Diego seven years ago, it’s all upside.
Sure, the final score was 18-3. The most runs allowed in a home opener in a century.
Sure, there were technical difficulties. The radio feed cut out multiple times. The scoreboard went dark. The microphone wasn’t turned on for the national anthem.
Sure, the protests continued. If John Fisher, the team’s owner behind the whole situation, didn’t see the smattering of green “Sell” shirts, he certainly couldn’t escape the “Sell the Team” chants from his open-air second-story suite.
None of that concerned Hattfield, a season-ticket holder for the Triple-A River Cats, with his wife, Mallory, a Red Sox fan, who both sported green and gold Monday night.
“Well, they’re out of most of the beer,” he said. “They’re figuring it out. For a little, minor-league ballpark, this is a cool, intimate experience. I love local baseball. To see MLB here, I’m all about it. But when the Padres come to town, I’m wearing my Padres jersey.”
Still, it wasn’t exactly the first impression the A’s were hoping to make on their potential new fans. The official attendance of 12,192 had been whittled down to mostly empty seats by the end of the 3-hour, 10-minute affair.
“Anyone we brought in tonight didn’t seem to have an ability to make pitches or execute when we needed to. We played bad defense. We gave away free bases. We walked 10 people,” manager Mark Kotsay said afterward. “That kind of sums up the night for us. Not a good showing on our first night here.”
The setting for Kotsay’s comments only provided another optics issue. The makeshift media tent in left field drew scrutiny from commenters online. The tarp that served as the roof fluttered in wind gusts to such a degree that it nearly drowned out the speakers.
Plenty of work went into upgrading the facility to appease major-league players, who seemed to approve of the playing surface and clubhouse amenities, and the league’s broadcasting partners, who installed new cameras, but it still wasn’t able to comfortably accommodate a big-league press contingent.
Of the nearly two dozen national, international and local writers on hand for the historic opener, only two had seats reserved inside the primary press box; the remainder were sequestered in folding chairs outside an adjoining suite.
The Cubs’ starter, Ben Brown, was asked if it felt any different pitching in the unique setting.
“I pitched my fair share of minor-league baseball games,” he said, “so it was kind of like being back home.”
The biggest difference Isaiah Woods noticed were the two new, big jumbotrons in the outfield.
They went dark in a foreboding sign seconds before Dansby Swanson launched the Cubs’ second home run of the first inning. But that’s an upgrade from what the park boasted the last time Woods attended a game.
“Because you know, it was real tiny and now it’s nice and big,” Woods, 53, said from a picnic table in right field. Growing up in Oakland, he watched Rickey Henderson play in person but moved to Sacramento 30 years ago and hadn’t been to the stadium since the River Cats changed their affiliation from the A’s to the Giants in 2015.
While Woods said he appreciated the pregame tribute to Henderson, it felt a tad out of place in Sacramento and not Oakland, where the late Hall of Famer was born and raised and played all 14 of his seasons with the A’s.
After all, the field at the Oakland Coliseum is named after Henderson, not the one at the stadium leased by the Giants’ Triple-A team and owned by the NBA’s Sacramento Kings.
“It was a pretty special night for us,” said rookie shortstop Jacob Wilson, who slugged the first homer of his career while wearing No. 24 on his back like the rest of the roster, ostensibly another tribute to Henderson but one that didn’t make it easy on fans trying to familiarize themselves with the new team in town.
The A’s have refused to adopt Sacramento or any other regional affiliation to their name during this three-year waiting period; they handed out hats with the city’s Tower Bridge in green and gold and “Sacramento” in script letters, the same logo as the patch they wore on their left sleeve.
But Las Vegas was displayed just as prominently, with the city’s advertising logo on the players’ right sleeves, on the outfield wall and on the backdrop for any interviews.
“I feel like they could do a better job (embracing Sacramento),” Hattfield said.
But then again, hailing from San Diego, “I can relate,” he said. “We had the Chargers down there and they broke all of our hearts. And you know, most of us forgave the team. So I hope Oakland fans embrace this. Because who else are you going to root for, the Giants?”
Woods said he paid $25 for a lawn ticket after receiving a promotional email from the A’s, who announced that the crowd was a sellout. Six hours before first pitch, seats down the left-field line were going for less than $100 on third-party reselling platforms.
There was more than a smattering of Cubbie blue, and for his part, Swanson had nothing but positive reviews. Then again, wouldn’t you if your teammate (catcher Carson Kelly) hit for the cycle, and your pitcher (Colin Rea) logged an at-bat against the opponent’s backup catcher (Jhonny Pereda, called on to record the last three outs down 17-3).
“It’s my first time here, and I have no complaints,” Swanson chuckled. “Obviously they put in a lot of work here to make it nice, and it has been so far. … I thought the atmosphere was great. I thought the fans were awesome. Everybody was here and ready to have fun and cause a little ruckus, which is always appreciated and wanted.”