The Oakland Athletics are, inevitably, playing in Las Vegas sometime in the next four to five years.
Owner John Fisher and MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred did everything in their power to make it happen, leaving an entire baseball city without a team they have rooted for since 1968.
The plans for the construction of a new stadium in Las Vegas are there, the funding plans are mostly there, and the other owners’ approval is also there: the A’s will be out of Oakland before the end of the decade.
Their current lease to play in the Oakland Coliseum expires at the conclusion of the 2024 campaign, so they needed to come up with a place to play before the Las Vegas stadium is completed.
The initial plan was to have the team play in multiple venues for their home games, all around the area.
However, it was announced on Thursday that the A’s will be playing the next three seasons (2025-27) in Sacramento.
There is also an option to play there a fourth year, 2028, but that will depend on how the construction of the Las Vegas stadium is at that moment.
Fisher made his first public comments about the A’s playing in Sacramento for the next three years.
“We’re excited to be here for the next three years, playing in this beautiful ballpark,” Fisher said, per A’s on NBCS.
“We’re excited to be here for the next three years, playing in this beautiful ballpark.”
A’s owner John Fisher talks about the team playing in West Sac’s Sutter Health Park pic.twitter.com/vAa5rp5AZO
To this point, Fisher and Manfred have become villains for most MLB fans.
They just don’t want the team to leave Oakland, but Fisher cited low attendance numbers over the years to make the move happen.
Perhaps if he had invested more money in his team (or to improve the Coliseum) and not in relocation ideas, fans would have had the opportunity to go to a proper ballpark and support a franchise with some semblance of hope.