It is now officially confirmed that the Athletics would soon be moving away from the city of Oakland. On Thursday, the team announced their plans to temporarily relocate to Sacramento ahead of their mega Las Vegas move in 2028.
The talks of the move of the Oakland Athletics away from the city had been going on for a while. The plans of it were finally approved last year much to the dismay of the fans.
The A’s will now play at the Sutter Health Park. This ballpark is the home of Sacramento River Cats, a minor league team owned by Vivek Ranadivé, who also owns the NBA franchise, Sacramento Kings.
In his statement regarding the move, Athletics owner John Fisher claimed they looked for several temporary homes and even had negotiations to stay in the Oakland Coliseum until the Las Vegas ballpark is completely built.
We explored several locations for a temporary home, including the Oakland Coliseum. Even with the long-standing relationship and good intentions on all sides in the negotiations with Oakland, the conditions to achieve an agreement seemed out of reach. John Fisher said.
Fisher would also speak about how excited they were to move to Sacramento and have some of the best players play in this ballpark.
We're excited to be here for the next three years playing in this beautiful ballpark, but also being able to be able to watch some of the greatest players in baseball, whether they be Athletics players or Aaron Judge and others launch home runs out of this very intimate, the most intimate ballpark in all of Major League Baseball for the next three years. John Fisher continued.
Will the Athletics change their name following temporary move to Sacramento?
The move of the Oakland Athletics has raised several questions. One of them is whether the team will change their name to Sacramento Athletics following this temporary move. Evan Drellich of The Athletic provided an update regarding this massive question.
As per reports from Evan Drellich, the team do not have any plans to add a city designation in front of their name. From the 2025 season till their time in this temporary home, the team would simply be referred as the Athletics or simply the A’s.
This will now be the fourth time the Athletics will move. After starting off in Philadelphia, the team moved to Kansas City and stayed there for thirteen years. The A’s would later make Oakland their home in 1968.
In their 56 years in Bay Area, the team won four World Series titles and clinched the division on 17 occasions. Speaking of the 2024 season so far, the A’s have once again started the season poorly and are 1-6 while being bottom of the AL West division.
More must-reads: