Mayor Kevin McCarty is right. Sacramento deserves its own MLB team | Opinion
Sacramento earned its reputation as a sports town in 2013, when the city united to keep the beloved Kings from relocating to Seattle.
That legacy should make any sports league see Sac Town as a city worth investing in.
Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty demonstrated his commitment to the city’s sports aspirations by launching a campaign to bring an MLB team to the city.
“We really (have a) chance to keep baseball here forever in Sacramento,” McCarty said at his State of the City address on Monday. “We are an MLB ready city.”
Don’t be confused: The Athletics left Oakland and moved into a temporary home in West Sacramento this year ahead of a planned relocation to Las Vegas in 2028. What McCarty wants is a team that belongs to the Sacramento region, and to convince Major League Baseball that we are ready for that when MLB expands in 2029 or 2030.
McCarty’s confidence isn’t misplaced. We are a sports-loving community, and our fandom can support a Major League Baseball team with Sacramento on the front of its jerseys.
McCarty said a stadium for a Sacramento baseball team wouldn’t get a public subsidy, aligning with his stance as a city council member a dozen years ago who opposed the Golden 1 Center receiving taxpayer subsidies.
According to the mayor, there are people interested in buying a team, both local to Sacramento and from across the state. But he did not name anyone. There is no official ownership group assembled to buy a Sacramento MLB team. Would Vivek Ranadive, the Kings owner who brokered a deal to have the Athletics play three seasons at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, be a part of a new Sacramento MLB team? We don’t know. In fact, we don’t know much of anything concrete beyond McCarty’s desire for a baseball team to call Sacramento home.
McCarty also said during his State of the City address that the stadium would likely be in West Sacramento. There are no specifics as to how much the ballpark would cost or how would it be financed.
But the mayor remains confident that his interest in getting the Sacramento region its own big league team is unlike the city’s previous attempt in 1989 to lure the Raiders of the NFL to play here.
“This is not a long shot,” McCarty said on Monday. “The commissioner of (MLB) has laid out a path for expansion, and there are three teams on the short list. We are on the short list.”
Unlike Portland and Salt Lake City, which are also vying for an expansion team, Sacramento is technically already hosting a Major League team. Ironically, it’s the Athletics’ half-hearted embrace of our city that may be our biggest obstacle.
The Athletics have a responsibility
“If we want a chance to have MLB forever, we need to step up our game and show that we can rally and support,“ McCarty said on Monday.
The Athletics’ average home attendance was just 9,487 in a ballpark that seats about 13,800—a disappointing turnout, but one that speaks volumes about the team’s lackluster engagement with Sacramento fans. While they eventually unveiled a patch with the city’s name, it took weeks for that gesture to appear on team hats. The message is clear: Sacramento is an afterthought, not a priority.
McCarty wants to see more fan support and local sponsorship, and that would be great. But building a fan relationship with a team requires goodwill from the fans. It requires that people feel invested in the team enough to give the team two valuable commodities in our lives: Our time and our money. When the A’s refuse to use the city’s name in its first year in Sacramento, they undermined the goodwill in Sacramento that might have motived more people to spend their time and money at A’s games.
The A’s sold out just seven of 81 home games and ranked dead last in MLB for overall attendance, which is unsurprising for an Athletics franchise that has done little to earn the city’s loyalty.
Near the end of the season, the A’s did announce an alternate jersey for next year with Sacramento front and center. That’s a great start, but it remains to be seen whether this is a sign of things to come or just a small gesture.
This formal campaign for a Sacramento MLB team isn’t just about a sports team, but about creating sustainable revenue for the city for years to come.
MLB in Sacramento is about more than sports
For the city of Sacramento, its problems end and begin with money. Whether it’s funding tiny homes for the thousands experiencing homelessness or enhancing the American River Parkway, consistent funding is vital.
“Succeeding in this effort has the opportunity to allow us to grow our economy and to get more money in the city coffers so we don’t have to look at cutting programs every year,” McCarty said.
The city needs more ways to generate revenue other than raising the parking fees, and an MLB team would be a great way to bring people, and their money, to Sacramento.
There’s something special about Sacramento sports fans. We show up, rain or shine, for teams that call this city home and sometimes even when the teams won’t say Sacramento out loud. That passion is worth an MLB team.
This story was originally published October 22, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
