Sacramento sports fans suddenly find themselves playing an unfamiliar villain.
They endured years of nearly losing their only major league franchise, the Kings of the NBA, to a larger market with more money and greater national stature. They acquired a Major League Soccer expansion team in 2019, but plans fell apart when the billionaire leading the effort pulled out during the pandemic.
The wounds from these events are only now beginning to heal, and many Sacramento residents have vowed never to do to others what was done to them.
But now that the Oakland Athletics have officially announced they will play their home games in the Capital Region next season while moving 90 miles up the freeway and making their permanent new home in Las Vegas, fans have to accept it. It won't happen. . The move ends the team's 57-year tenure in Oakland and marks the end of Major League sports in the East Bay.
The team, which won four World Series in Oakland and whose baseball mastermind was played by Brad Pitt in the movie “Moneyball,” is scheduled to begin playing in minor league ballparks next season and is currently playing host to children. is rolling down the grassy hill behind me on the right. Field and fans bring dogs to Wednesday night games.
Sutter Health Park, West Sacramento's stadium directly across the Sacramento River from downtown, will certainly look different when the Athletics call it home in 2025. Sacramento has long dreamed of becoming a Major League Baseball city, and there is little doubt that the Athletics will make it happen. It will likely draw a bigger crowd than it did in Oakland in years past, when the franchise owners seemed to go out of their way to alienate their rabid fan base.
More than a decade ago, I covered Sacramento leaders' long-running effort to prevent the Kings from moving to Anaheim, Virginia Beach or Seattle. Kings fans were just as worried and distraught as A's fans these days, and looked at other cities with deep suspicion.
And now the Sacramento region has taken away what belonged to Oakland, at least temporarily.
“Given everything we went through with the Kings, if we took advantage of the city of Oakland in any way and made it harder for the A's to get back there, we would be complicit in that.” “Just 10 years ago, we would have been furious,” said Dave Weiglin, a Sacramento sports radio host known locally as “Carmichael Dave.” Ta.
Weiglein was one of the most prominent figures in the fan effort to stop the Kings from moving, and his passionate “why can't we have something good” approach to the sport in Sacramento has always been one of the most prominent figures in the fan effort to stop the Kings from moving. This has resonated with people in this area, who are often reluctant to approach the area. That goal is very achievable.
Many baseball fans in Sacramento are already viewing the A's temporary home with a mixture of excitement and skepticism.
Some are thrilled to be able to watch baseball's biggest stars like the Yankees' Aaron Judge and the Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani within a two-hour drive to a Bay Area ballpark. They argue that the A's plan to leave Oakland anyway and that Sacramento shouldn't feel guilty about being the team's stopover.
Others are skeptical of Athletics principal owner John Fisher and his intentions, saying the Athletics aren't even expected to carry the Sacramento name — and of Oakland's efforts to keep the team. I feel like the city of Sacramento has allowed itself to be taken advantage of in some way.
And, of course, residents are hearing from Bay Area die-hards who are furious in Sacramento for giving Fisher a way out of Oakland.
Will the A's be able to create real connections with a region that seems constantly striving to prove its worth? Or will they just rent for a while and move on to fancier destinations? Will it become just another Bay Area transplant?
Sacramento is clearly looking at the next three years as an audition in case the deal with the A's in Las Vegas falls through. If that happens and Sacramento becomes the final landing spot for Oakland's last remaining major league sports team, East Bay fans won't have to travel far to find the villain.
Ryan Lillis is a longtime baseball fan, Little League manager, and former reporter for the Sacramento Bee.
And before we leave, I have some good news.
Sharif Hussein Farag is a potter. Alexandra Ann Prusak is a financial analyst. But as the saying goes, opposites attract.
The two met at a party at the University of Southern California in 2016. Farag majored in art, and Prusak majored in mathematics and economics. Despite their vastly different fields of study, the two hit it off and left the gathering to return to Prusak's house and watch Kitchen Confidential together.
A few months later they started dating. They spent the rest of their college years studying alongside each other. Farag worked in a pottery studio while Prusak sat next to him inputting numbers into an Excel spreadsheet.
After college, they dated long distance, with Farag pursuing art in Los Angeles and Prusak working four hours away in Paso Robles in the finance department of Justin Winery. When the pandemic hit, the couple moved in together in Los Angeles, and Farag proposed in March 2023.
The couple wed last month in a ceremony a week after Farag exhibited his work at the contemporary art fair Frieze Los Angeles. The wedding took place at Pasadena's Eden Garden Bar and Grill, a fusion of the couple's Catholic and Muslim upbringings.
