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WEST SACREMENTO, CA – The arrival of this apparently major league team to Minor League City last week was not an error-free experience, as I said in baseball.
Previously from Auckland, the A player from Las Vegas was unfamiliar with the layout of his temporary home, Sutter Health Park. The Sacramento Bee manager had “a lot of confusion” as the team tried to find a way to navigate the much smaller footprint of Triple A Ballpark.
The Wi-Fi has been down. Radio broadcasts have been cut off many times. The beer line was spectacular. The game was paused after someone took a drone onto the field in seven innings. Many stubborn Auckland fans present were still caught up in a sense of betrayal in the way the team left Auckland. And there was a score: A was lost to the Cubs 18-3.
To sum it up, Sfist on the website didn’t pull a punch in that headline.
But the city booster, which also grows in the name of West Sacramento – many people, a crude town of 54,000, do not realize that even the wider regions are cities – that’s not important.
Excitement has continued to grow ever since team officials announced that A’s future home was being built at the 14,000-seat stadium of A’s Minor Rivercats (the San Francisco Giants Triple A affiliate) over three years.
This has been widely described in the media nationwide as a move from Western Sacramento to the California capital city of Sacramento, which is across the river in another county. Most news organizations that were crowded to cover the season’s opening game and the players they cited do not seem to register the presence of West Sacramento.
A’s relief pitcher TJ McFarland’s comments were typical. “It’s a lovely city, the capital of the state,” he tells Sacramento Bee, standing at the heart of Western Sacramento’s most precious civic landmark.
West Sacramento took everything boldly. City officials are used to living in the shadows of Sacramento and are sure to bringing A here will be a boon, even if no one knows he is here.
After all, it’s not the first time the magic of baseball has lifted up the town’s wealth.
“They’re also a part of the world,” said Sen. Christopher Cabaldon (D-Euro), who served for 20 years as mayor of West Sacramento before being elected to the Senate last year.
Still, city mayor Martha Guerrero said, “We like Western Sacramento, that’s the official location.”
Western Sacramento has long been a stepchild of the provincial washes. Sacramento’s population of 526,000 people, its bright Capitol Dome, elegant tree canopy and gold rush excellence were incorporated in 1850. Crossing the Sacramento River and the county line, other major towns in Yolo County didn’t last very long. Woodlands dated in 1871. Winters was founded in 1898. And even the relatively new Davis became the official city in 1917. Woodlands was known for its majestic Victorian homes. Picturesque downtown and miles of walnut orchard winter, velvet green against the purple Vaca mountains. Davis on the bustling campus of the University of California.
But for most of the 20th century, what is now called West Sacramento was, in many respects, a small community known as a garbage dump for people and pets that the city of Sacramento didn’t want.
According to historians cited by the Sacramento Bees in 1984, the area was known as “Sin City” during the ban, as Sacramento authorities “escorted criminals, morphine addicts and alcoholics” to the area. During depression, a longtime resident told local newspapers that it was a common practice for Sacramento people to abandon dogs and cats that could not afford to eat the western Sacramento side of the river.
By the early 1980s, the area was known as a hub of drugs and prostitution.
Still, local leaders always dreamed of big things. In the 1940s, Congress approved the construction of a deep waterway linking the community to the Gulf of Swissung. In the 1960s, Western Sacramento Port (originally Sacramento Port) became operational, hosting large cargo ships and creating thriving industrial bases.
In the 1980s, developers saw the area’s potential as an affordable bedroom community for legislative aides and other state employees working on short drives and bikes in downtown Sacramento, opposite Landmark Tower Bridge. The detached house began to rise to what had been a huge acre of farmland that germinated corn, tomatoes, melons and rice.
And in 1987, voters in the area ultimately voted to include it.
The Tower Bridge spans the Sacramento River, connecting Western Sacramento with its adjacent neighbour, the glittering downtown of Sacramento City.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
It was soon after that Cabaldon moved into town.
“I accidentally went to Western Sacramento,” he said. The year was 1993, and he had begun his job as a legislative officer. The real estate agent took him to a “unustreably affordable” “great neighborhood” and promised that exciting shops, restaurants, parks and other amenities would soon be here. Cabaldon was sold. “I didn’t realize it was on the other side of the truck and no one wanted to go there at night,” he said.
Cabaldon began to love his small town. He praised the gorgeous riverside. Still, he realized that many of the amenities the real estate agent had promised were not on the horizon. And he gathered together and said the city had felt like a loser for a long time.
Instead of moving, he ran for the city council. He lost, but ran again and won in 1996. By 1998 he was mayor. Shortly afterwards, he recalled being approached by a developer who wanted to build a minor league ballpark in town.
“We ran with that,” he said. “It really changed the notion that we are under the armpits of this area.”
The park was built and by 2001 the river cat had moved (originally became the Giants Triple A affiliate in 2015 as the farm team of Auckland A). A stone throw from the Sacramento River, the ballpark about a mile from the Capitol building quickly became a draw for the locals.
Certainly, the team took the name Sacramento River Cat, but its presence in West Sacramento helped drive affordable condominiums, apartments and townhomes, as aimed at young workers, and finally, a place for all these new residents to eat and shop without crossing the river. The parcel transformed the land along the city’s waterfront into entertainment venues, parks and trails.
“We did so many ribbon cuttings,” Mayor Guerrero said.
West Sacramento went that path even before A’s very bad split with Auckland.
A’s longtime home, the Oakland Coliseum, was widely considered one of the most devastated stadiums in the Major League, as the Guardian newspaper said, and was one of the last diving bars in baseball. Famous wild cats roamed the complex. Dead mice they did not belong to. Sewage problem. Barbed wire. And so many concrete.
“It’s a huge concrete toilet,” said baseball analyst Eric Burns. “But it’s their toilet bowl, a special toilet bowl.”
John Fisher, owner of A, kept his desire to go outside without keeping a secret. And when he finally did, he hatched plans to move to a $1.5 billion stadium, host of Las Vegas strip, Oakland residents and many nostalgic sportswriters.
In a 2023 photo, Auckland Coliseum fans protest A’s relocation plans.
(Jed Jacobsohn/Applications)
“There could be a debate that A’s stay away from a ruined home due to the wealth of Las Vegas is a large part of what’s wrong with professional sports today in America,” the New York Times said.
“Auckland A has been for many of us for a long time, for a very long time, and now there’s nothing at all,” writes Ellen Cushing in the Atlantic.
In their final match at the Coliseum, hopeless fans attacked the owner with a big chant “Sell the team.” Then they waited in line to collect dirt from the old diamonds.
It is said that every division has two aspects. However, in this divorce, almost everyone seemed to have taken away Oakland and its fans.
Western Sacramento’s A-season opening was marked by an operational glitches as the team found a way to navigate the much smaller footprint of Triple A Ballpark.
(Scott Marshall/Applications)
After all these months, West Sacramento officials emphasize that they are not involved in stealing the team from Auckland. But they also don’t hide their pride in being an A’s rebound city. Even if it’s three years.
They spent offseason upgrades at the stadium, including new clubhouses and expanded locker room facilities. They came up with a parking plan to accommodate what would be expected to be a bigger crowd. They added premium seats.
Guerrero said the dream is that Major League Baseball considers the expansion team’s region, as the short-term relationship between A and West Sacramento is so successful. And if they put that team in her town, it’s not like every dream, and step-sister city crossing the river.
“We have a strong fan base in West Sacramento,” Guerrero said. “We’re a baseball city.”
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