The Athletics unveil new Las Vegas patch, crushing excitement in Sacramento | Opinion
Kings owner Vivek Ranadive handed the Athletics and their owner John Fisher the sweetest deal in baseball and maybe even in the entire sports world. Until their 9-acre, 1.7 Billion stadium is built in Las Vegas, Fisher’s A’s get to play at Sutter Health Park rent free. On top of that, they also get to benefit financially from the highest ticket pricing in baseball.
While emphasizing how great it is for the A’s to be here, Ranadive oddly boasted about the high ticket pricing at a recent breakfast attended by local business leaders.
So within the A’s-in-Sacramento food chain, two rich owners sit happily at the top of a funnel of money while at the bottom are the fans who make this green and yellow engine run. Who do they think pays for those tickets?
Sacramentans will put their excitement and energy into the A’s for at least three, maybe four seasons, but their actions signal that it won’t mean a thing to them.
A tale of two patches
Weeks before their inaugural season in Sacramento, the A’s organization thought it was a perfect time to unveil a new patch, but this one says Las Vegas. To make matters worse, the patch will be worn alongside the Sacramento patch all season long.
“It’s not just a patch, it’s a promise,” the team says on their Instagram post. That may be the case for their stint in Vegas but right now their sentiment toward Sacramento says “We couldn’t care less.” They won’t be called the Sacramento A’s. The only nod toward their current home is a patch of the Tower Bridge that players will wear along with a Las Vegas patch. Really?
A Las Vegas patch now, unveiled right before the inaugural season in Sacramento, shows exactly how the A’s feel about us. They don’t see us as a temporary home or even an experiment. We’re a placeholder, a ballpark in Northern California.
This patch unveiling feels obnoxious, as it comes from a team that still has a lot of repair to do with its fanbase after leaving Oakland in a not-so-cordial split. Not a yard of cement has been dropped in Las Vegas to build their new stadium yet they have no problem showing off their future location like it’s already happening.
Reports coming out of Nevada indicate that move could take a while.
Ranadive needs to stand up for Sacramento
Ranadive wanted this deal to show how Sacramento can be an MLB town, but he’s dealing with an organization that doesn’t have a great track record of being partners with cities. Look, I get why Ranadive wants this. It gives him and Sacramento a chance to audition for an MLB franchise, either the A’s or an expansion team later. You just wish the A’s knew how to be a good partner and maybe show more respect to Sacramento in the process.
Yes, the A’s have made surface level efforts. A’s players have shown up at a Kings game and made appearances at schools and small businesses. The effort to make Sacramento residents feel confident to invest in them is yet to be seen.
The potential of a team coming to Sacramento is just that, potential that may never come to fruition. Our community must gain pride in the A’s if they really want their stay to be successful, but they ruin any chance of that when they make an announcement about Las Vegas.
For all the energy that Sacramento and the region will put into the A’s for 4 years, Las Vegas is the one who gets the promise in the end.
That’s a pretty unfair deal.
This story was originally published March 13, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
