The transition from playing in Oakland to now hosting games in West Sacramento has been a tricky one on a few fronts for the A's. There have been obvious upgrades to player accommodations, including a new home clubhouse for the players to use. The fans are getting into the games as the season has gone on and the weather has warmed, but there has always been something missing.
A unifying chant when the moment calls for it.
For decades, the A's chant has been "Let's go Oak-land!" With the club leaving The Town following the 2024 season as they await their potential Las Vegas ballpark, the A's are taking a rest on the way to Sin City in West Sacramento. The main problem here is that the team has not fully embraced Sacramento, and isn't using the city in its name, or on the chest of their jerseys.
So when that big moment calls, what should the fans chant? The team has explicitly asked to be called the "Athletics" or "A's" and so after a couple of months of confusion at home games, the scoreboard added a new graphic this past homestand.
So far the fans have been sticking with the Oakland chant for the most part, though there has also been some experimentation with "Let's Go Sac-to" and "Sac-ra-men-to" on occasion.
The team apparently would like the fans to begin chanting "Let's go A's!" in those big spots. Through the first handful of games, it hasn't taken off just yet. In the games that Athletics on SI attended this home stand, there were a smattering of fans that would join in for the new chant, but there was a larger chorus of fans that stuck with "Let's go Oak-land!" and kept it going.
This is a period of change for the franchise, and figuring out these things is part of that change. If the new chant takes off, then the longtime fans are certainly going to miss the old one. For the franchise, this makes sense, however, because this is something they could in theory take with them to Las Vegas in a couple of years too.
The fans are the ones that buy the product, however, and they'll have the final say in what the chant ends up being while the team is in Sacramento.
It's also important to note that it's a bold choice for the A's to go with a three-word phrase for their chant that comes with three beats of music to accompany it. It's bold, because there was a specific chant that followed A's owner John Fisher around Oakland for the past two seasons that was also three words.
"Sell the team."
There is a world where the A's trying to change the chant actually gets people to begin those cries of "sell the team" up in Sacramento. For the most part, those chants have died down since the opening series, though "Sell" shirts and "I'd rather be at the Oakland Coliseum" shirts are still seen at the park pretty consistently.
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