John Fisher Humiliates MLB, Announces A's Will Move to Sacramento

...where they will play in a minor league stadium from 2025 until at least 2027.

A Boston Red Sox fan joins A’s fans in solidarity by wearing a SELL T-shirt aimed at A’s owner John Fisher to the Oakland Coliseum this week. (Photo by Loren Elliott/Getty Images)

Let me start this newsletter by saying that I am not anti-Sacramento. I’ve spent a decent amount of time there, and have college friends who grew up in Sac-Town suburbs like Elk Grove and Roseville who speak highly of the community.

It seems like a decent (if boring) place to raise a family—which is fine! Nearby UC-Davis is an elite school for farming and veterinary medicine. Joan Didion is from there. There is historical stuff to visit, an NBA team and it’s only a two-hour drive to Lake Tahoe and a 90-minute ride (with no traffic, lol) to San Francisco. It smells like cows when you drive through it on the 5, but there are definitely worse places to live!

So now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let me tell you why the A’s announcement that they will play the next three seasons there is the biggest stain on the sport since, uh, the Astros cheating scandal. And maybe even worse, because while that trash can fiasco was largely overshadowed by a global pandemic, we will be stuck hearing about the indignities of major league baseball teams playing at a minor league facility daily for the next several years.

If you haven’t yet heard, nepo baby John Fisher and his Dick Cheney, Dave Kaval, announced today that they are officially moving the Oakland A’s out of Oakland when this season ends. While Fisher and Kaval wait for their ugly new stadium to be built in Las Vegas, they will share a stadium with the Sacramento River Cats, the San Francisco Giants’ Triple-A team during the 2025, ‘26 and ‘27 seasons. This stadium—known as Sutter Health Park— has 10,624 “permanent” seats. But don’t worry! Officials say that it’s possible to cram an additional 3,300 people on the lawn beyond the outfield fence.

So in terms of fan capacity, it’s like a spring training stadium. But in terms of amenities? Uh. The private high school up the street from my house has a better setup for their JV team.