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Tim Keown
On Sunday evening, a local television news crew was placed in front of Sawyer in Sacramenta’s center, which was ready to capture every nuances of the magical moment when you look through your eyes Chicago Cubs He got off the bus and entered the hall. It was the first time that the main league baseball team arrived in Sacramento to play a legally sanctioned game with a regular season, and no story was too small. If you have ever wondered what Ian HAPP It looks like going to the hotel and being surprised by the presence of a camera and a reporter, CBS-13 was a channel for you.
“That was different,” Cubs jugs Matthew Boyd said. “But this is the first time that the big team of the Great League came to Sacramento and they are enthusiastic. Baseball is the great thing that connects everyone together.”
It was quite a week for Sacramenta – more specifically, West Sacramento, a place with a street that declares him the “baseball side of the river”. The first three games of athletics had to host the expected three -season interregnum between Oakland and Las Vegas and had to call it a big league team, even though the team decided to declare athletics simply, a geographically non -specific generic version of the main league baseball team.
It is difficult to explain the vibration in the Sutter Health Park for the first series. It looked like a baseball big league, and it sounded like a baseball big league; It just didn’t feel like baseball Big League. The crowds were mostly reassuring, perhaps because there are only about 14,000 fans, and perhaps because athletics were 35-9 during three games, the first and third could be stopped for humanitarian reasons.
This is a team to be better this season, and three games should not change this expectation. He spent some money, no one knew he had a free agent contract Luis Severino and extension for Brent Rooker and Lawrence ButlerThe steps that have ensured the payroll high enough to adhere to the rules of sharing the revenue of the collective bargaining agreement, but shifting which team has improved. . There is a creeping suspicion that they could build something that could be West Sacramento proud.
It is a long, maybe even an endless season that will contain every iteration of the peak and valley. Three games can end up as the equivalent of one breath during life. Yet it is impossible to deny athletics that has been brought back many of their old classics for their debut Sacramento: 10 doughs went through Monday’s opening; Kicked the ball enough to kick four undeserved runs in three games in three games; They went seven on Wednesday afternoon. The crowds were mostly quiet; The numerous fans of Cubs were noisy until they felt on average, but fans, and, when they found something they cheered, responded as if they were encouraging someone else to a piano recital for a child. As the first impressions go, it could have been better.
Players and defense are going through a period of adaptation. When I asked closer Mason Miller As he likes Sacramento, he starts counting with his fingers and says, “I literally spent five nights here.” They are young, rich and used to living in a new place every season when they progress through smaller leagues, trying to look at their new home as an opportunity to join for the first time.
“We’re all new here,” the newcomer of the second Baseman Max Muncy He says “So even though I’m a newcomer, I can earn some credits if I find a good restaurant and let everyone know.” I will mention the most difficult reservation in the city, a restaurant with a fixed price in Michelin less than 2 miles away.
“It sounds like a two -month waiting,” he says.
“No, if you tell them who you are,” I joke.
“Yeah, I can’t imagine it,” he says. “Besides, when I say” Max Muncy, “when I show up, they say,” Oh great, we got this one.'”
More concern and is playing for the next three seasons in a smaller league ballpark and sharing with a team of smaller league, triple-a Sacramento River Cats. It is something like seniors with a freshman; Senior has DIBS almost everything, but still has to deal with the roommate. For and that means thinking about how the fields will last during 155 games this season, and it comes to dealing with the clubhouse behind the wall of the outfield, disconnected from the excavation.
Severino did his first home start for and on Tuesday evening and he had to tune his routine to be responsible for the new reality: as soon as he left the clubhouse, he did not return. It was cold and windy, so he had to make sure his jacket had got to the trench with him. The notes that he likes to reference during the game also had to be there. His usual practice, how to appear in the clubhouse to watch the game on television while his team hit (“It looks easier and fun on television,” says laughing) is suspended in the foreseeable future. He had to sit there with his teammates, whether well or not – on Tuesday: no – and he knew that each of his emotions would be picked up by at least five cameras.
“You just have to endure it,” Searino says. “You can’t have all the things you have at the normal stadium. When you go there, you have to bring everything with you. You have to try to stay warm and find out another routine. It’s not the same, but that’s, it doesn’t matter because it is happening and we have to get used to it.
Players coming from the bench to interfere or play in defense will go where to relax. In any other park, they jumped into a cage behind the excavation and set off swings or stretched and ran several sprints. Here they have to do what they can do within the trench. “Just make some circles and maybe run on the spot,” Infielder Cubs Jon beri says. “Make it an old school.”
Just one of the three sold -out, unexpected developments after months of civic backslapping and major statements about Sacramento, which strengthened its status of the capital city. Tickets for Wednesday, which attracted 9,342 fans, sold on a secondary market for $ 20 about 30 minutes before the first playground. According to the data assembled in the Ticket App Gametime, the highest medium ticket price – $ 181 – in baseball has and in baseball. The intention was to use the time recognized deficiency = demand The concept that takes maximum profits from minimal opportunities, but one selection – an opener, which also included about 2,000 spectacular tickets – shows that in the first three games it shows that and remains capable of bothering even the most basic economic concepts.
Probably it is not fair to judge the value of Sacramenta as a baseball city based on his willingness to support a team that will not be identified on behalf of the city during his time here. And it is definitely not fair to assess the region based on the number of fans who desire to pass the money to the owner who pulled the team out of Oakland after 57 years and is on his way to Las Vegas.
On the days after the owner of Kings/River Cats Vivek Ranadive connected with Fisher to bring and to Sacramento, someone identified me as “as sacramento how he gets”
As many thoughts as I watched it:
1) I hate it in that we just save Fisher
2) I hate that we basically act like Seattle ten years ago with regard to the king and poiesed and from Oakland. This is a terrible feeling that I wish nothing
3) I am interested in finding out if it actually goes anywhere else than just rescue Fisher for 3 years while waiting for what happens in LV, what magic will happen
4) Reeeeally I wish Vivek to read the room on this
5) We could buy seats on grass $ 30 and catch the ball Mike Trout Or even better, (Austin) SlaterWednesday evening in SAC. That would be wild
And they quickly point out that there were not many crowds on Oakland in Oakland on Tuesday evening. ) And if and cannot sell a smaller league stadium with the established fans of the team, what predicts for their possible move to Las Vegas, where the team predicts the crowds, including nearly 5,000 tourists at the stage of 33,000 seats without connection with A?
But that’s someone else’s problem, some other day. Three trips of this week to Sutter Health – Sunday for river cats, Monday and Wednesday for A – were a chance to watch the Big League baseball in a curious, intimate ballpark. I thought it could be like starting back in time, maybe what it was like to watch Philadelphia and in 1907 in Columbia Park, if Columbia Park had the most modern video screen that looks like an 86 -inch television hanging from the wall of the studio apartment. That would be baseball back when games were just games and Big League Ballpars didn’t feel obliged to store a luxury apartment with shrimp $ 300 Cabernet and fist. Back, when each concession stand sold almost the same thing (in Sutter Health, each seller has a menu set and one or two “specialized” items such as pizza and pints) and fans could bring a chair or sit on the grass in the right field and dream of Miker’s or Austin Slater.
His spells are undeniable, but sustainable? Workers in Ballpark are all brilliant and helpful, enthusiastic about having a baseball Major League in their humble yard, but maybe we should check in August. On Sunday on the Sunday game of the river cat, I talked to an employee working in a team store store, which set the process of overturning from athletics to athletics within about 24 hours. Starting 17:00 on Sunday at 17:00, three overlapping shifts worked overnight and well by Monday, folding and packing and pulling out all smaller league equipment, storing it somewhere on which it is not dedicated while pulling in all large league devices JJ Bleday jersey.
When she described the process and time limitations that these river cats and AA and Conga would take place about every 10 days to two weeks over the next six months, I began to feel stressed, just looked at every cap, sock, shirt, Bobbleead, Dinger Mascots and Men’s Half-Zip with audience.
“Will he do it?” I asked her.
She laughed.
“I think it has to,” she said, “But I’m gone tomorrow.”
And Poof, as on Sunday, were no signs of AA, there were no signs of cats on Monday. Everything brick red and gold was replaced by something Kelly Green and Gold. Even the Sacramento’s Triple-A Championships sign was replaced by one announcement of the victory of the nine world series A, five in Philadelphia and four in Oakland. But just like everything else about athletics 2025, there is no geographical designation. How and knows better than most others, you are where you are until you are where you want to be.
