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.
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.
Former major league pitcher Trevor Hildenberger played for the Sacramento River Cats last year. When the news broke today, he wrote on Twitter that Sutter Health Park has “No family room, no mother’s room, no shade or bathrooms in the bullpens, [and] only one shared batting cage. If you thought the [Oakland] Coliseum facilities were lacking…”
MLB players often have young children, so the family room is a spot designated in every MLB stadium where those kids can play, snack, nap and often be supervised by childcare employees to give moms a break. The “mother’s room” he’s referring to is a private area where the players’ wives and girlfriends can breastfeed their babies.
These may seem like little perks, but for the players they are a huge deal. Guys sometimes stress about how their families will be treated by rowdy opposing fan bases. Knowing their partners and their kids have designated, secure areas where they can hang out is one less thing they have to worry about while they prepare for the games.
The “no shade or bathrooms in the bullpen” thing is hilarious until you remember that the average daily temperatures in West Sacramento sit in the mid- to high-90s in July and August. The region experienced a high of 106 degrees last July 1, and sweltered through five additional days last July where temps soared to over 102.
So basically relievers have to drink their own weight in water and Gatorade so they don’t die, then either run across the field to the clubhouse to pee every other inning or, I dunno, risk indecent exposure citations if they relieve themselves against a back wall out of sight.
When it gets this hot in MLB stadiums in places like Houston, Arlington or Phoenix they simply close the roof. In Sacramento, there is no roof.
The Vegas stadium won’t be ready until the 2028 season at the earliest, and the A’s lease at the Oakland Coliseum was up after this year. Fisher and Kaval could have just signed an extension to stay in Oakland until the team moves to Vegas (assuming that relocation actually happens, which we don’t know yet!).
Tim Keown of ESPN reported that the city of Oakland wanted $60 million for a 3-year lease extension for the A’s to remain at the Coliseum. His colleague Buster Olney wrote that the A’s wanted to pay $25 million over three years. “It appears that the difference between what Oakland offered and what the A's wanted was about $35 million or so over three years,” Olney wrote on Twitter. “Or about the same that the Angels are paying reliever Robert Stephenson. Meanwhile, owners overseeing an industry worth many tens of billions of dollars stand by and watch their weakest franchise put on this cheap circus, and do nothing. Incomprehensible. And a terrible business decision.”
Olney is right. If it came down to $35 million over three years, how did the other MLB owners let this happen? The players union is about to file every grievance imaginable if Fisher doesn’t bring that stadium’s facilities up to the terms of the collective bargaining agreement, which won’t come cheap.
The River Cats are owned by Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadivé, and his friendship with John Fisher was said to be a key factor in the A’s moving there. Randavé—who must be the most optimistic man in America—made it known that he sees this disaster of a situation as a tryout for Sacramento to eventually get an MLB team permanently.
Will Ranadivé be the one who pays for the bullpen bathrooms, and batting cages for the visitors? Separate clubhouses for the major and minor league teams? Facilities for the families? Is he positioning himself to buy the A’s and keep them in Sacramento? Nobody knows!
Fisher—who took no questions from press— stood in front of a hastily assembled group of media in Sacramento and tried to sell how awesome watching major league games played in a tin can will be. Calling it the most “intimate ballpark in all of Major League Baseball” he said he is excited to watch players like Aaron Judge launch homers there against his team.
None of this should be happening. Some people think Fisher must be a good businessman because he is very rich. He is not a good businessman. He is a man whose parents founded The Gap. And he took that money he inherited and bought one of the proudest franchises in MLB history, slashed payroll, ran the team into the ground, and will probably be rewarded for his historic failure. He has ripped out the heart of a city that has recently lost the Golden State Warriors and the Oakland Raiders and he somehow still possesses the deluded self-confidence to get out of bed every morning.
He and Kaval have been trying to blame all of this on the city of Oakland. We can get into the weeds on the ins and outs of local politics or we can focus on the fact that a billionaire who receives revenue sharing from other owners is too cheap and too shameless to spend $35 million over three years to keep his major league baseball team out of a minor league stadium.
The league deserves criticism here as well. Thirteen years ago this month, commissioner Bud Selig stepped in and forced the McCourt family to sell the Dodgers after they had mismanaged the team’s finances to the point of bankruptcy. He did this because when one wooden pillar of the house turns to rot, the whole thing is in danger of collapse.
Maybe current commissioner Rob Manfred doesn’t think the A’s health is as important to the sport’s overall bottom line as the Dodgers are. Maybe Manfred doesn’t have the guts to do what’s right and step in and stop this farce. Fans can’t stop Fisher from moving the A’s to Sacramento—but MLB can. As a lame-duck commish, Manfred can do whatever he wants without fear of getting fired—especially if he convinces the 29 other owners that allowing the A’s to play in a minor league stadium is bad for business for everyone. Let’s not forget: the people who run the A’s may have chosen to make playing in a Triple-A park a condition of player employment, but that also means the 29 other teams who have to play there as visitors will need to consent to this mess as well. That stadium isn’t even big enough to hold all the press that follow Shohei Ohtani around on a daily basis, let alone provide a suite for his dog.
After the press conference, Kaval told ABC Sacramento that the A’s will treat this last season in Oakland as a celebration and offer more promotions, cheaper tickets and other incentives to get fans to come and say goodbye. The A’s drew 6,400 people last night against Boston, and presumably most were Red Sox fans. I guess we’re about to find out if attendance can dwindle into triple digits when they play the Rockies in Oakland next month.
Fisher is a stain on the sport, but all of this happened on Manfred’s watch. What can we really expect from a man who sees the World Series trophy as just another piece of metal?
Before we honor Bud Selig, who is the best commissioner since Fay Vincent (yes, it's like being the finest ballerina in Antarctica), let's remember that his old friend Lew Wolff owned the A's and had a deal for a new stadium that would have been state of the art, albeit outside of Oakland, and Selig sat there and let him twist in the wind.
Let us also remember the wise words of Edward Bennett Williams, who owned both the Orioles and the NFL's franchise in DC. He said the dumbest NFL owner was smarter than the smartest MLB owner. Think about it.
No praise for Bud Selig who cancelled the World Series. Yes Fay was the best commissioner which is why they fired him. Boo on Fisher and Manfred.