The outside world got a sneak peak at the Athletics‘ new temporary home in Sacramento, thanks to the San Francisco Giants, who held a fan fest there this weekend. (The River Cats, the Giants’ AAA team, make their regular home there.) How it’s going: Okay, kinda, considering?
On Saturday, the field looked like an excavation site: not a blade of grass in sight, littered with bulldozers and what appeared to be the framework for new plumbing being installed over the dirt.
The scoreboard in center field has also been stripped to its bare bones.
Or, in a thousand-words equivalent:
That doesn’t look all that great, but there are still two months to go before the regular season starts, so plenty of time to finish the drainage, lay down sod, build a new scoreboard, and anything else that need to go on behind the scenes, right? Right?
“It’s crazy,” Giants outfielder Heliot Ramos said, staring out from a second-level suite overlooking the field he treaded for parts of two seasons. The grass had been torn up. A John Deere tractor was positioned in left field. The scoreboard, the batter’s eye and parts of the outfield wall were missing.
“I thought it was going to be pretty much (done), but not even close. They’d better be close. The season’s about to start soon.”
Anything else, yes, you in the back, Giants second baseman Tyler Fitzgerald?
Fitzgerald also hoped aloud that there will be a connector between the clubhouses, which are located behind the outfield fences, and the dugouts. As it stands, players have to walk down the lines or through the stands to go between – which may pose an issue for big leaguers.
Meanwhile, the few A’s fans at the Giants fest were excited to have games in their area, though decidedly less excited about the cost: Team execs have taken advantage of the Sacramento ballpark’s tiny 14,000-seat capacity to send ticket prices through the roof, with season tickets going for $100 a game and the cheapest single-game seats at $54. (For $37, you can sit on the outfield lawn.) Sacramento A’s fan — that is, A’s fan from Sacramento, they are officially not the Sacramento A’s, though the San Francisco Chronicle is having none of it — Anthony Huerta called the prices “pretty extreme” and “almost insulting” before proposing a possible built-in solution:
“Once summer hits and it gets really hot, I don’t think people will actually want to come out here and experience that,” he said.
The A’s in Sacramento: Unaffordable or unbearably hot, take your pick! At least maybe you’ll get to see your favorite player walk by on the way to get something from his locker — and who can put a price on that?
High ticket prices *AND* supporting John Fisher? Ok, Sacramento fans…
The only ones I see going for these prices on even a game-to-game basis are fans angling to watch the other team when they come to town and bots designed to cash in on popular teams’ visits through the secondary market. And maybe, just maybe, some civic-minded folks who are willing to strain their financial limits in order to support the “local” team.
Otherwise, what’s the appeal of spending that much money on an (ostensibly) temporary team with no real ties to the city, who is treating the city itself as a stopover on the way to a proposed move to a flashier market, and who also just happens to be owned by a universally-detested figure?
The “spectacle” aspect is in play here, as in partial disbelief by players and fans that A’s management can make a success story. Dave Kaval, former president, quit which indicates he had a share in that disbelief. The plural “spectacles” is what I’ll bring to watch the Sacramento A’s, squatting on a tuft of grass far away , right field probably. Just a guess, but by end of summer that whole lawn area will become a sad brown dirt patch.
Did he jump or was he pushed?
I know which I think is closer to the truth…
Yes indeed i should have added quotes around “quit”. It assumes too much; quit indicates volition, even introspection and soul. SF chronicle did piece at end of year about Kaval’s tweets, but omitted the time he gleefully cheered on the giant trash fire in the port of Oakland. It would be laughable, but Oakland needs so much help right now.
Actually I got season tix for $85!a game and pretty darn good seats- I know there were cheaper ones as well. If you purchased a ticket at a Giants game in the area of my season tix it would be well over $100 so I don’t see these prices as out of line?
Sounds good. Unless you bought seats on the first base line. Those seats cannot be occupied when the sun is up after mid-June. Even night games that start at 7 pm through June – August, those seats will still be in the sun. The River Cats added big sun shades on the west side of the park, but they are pretty ineffective. I’ve been to many River Cats games and live in Sac, so I know how it will be. Once people get burned on tickets, the prices will drop pretty fast. No doubt out-of-towners will come in for the novelty, but they will learn pretty quickly too.
The Rays have also jacked up prices through the (non existent) roof at their temporary home in Tampa.
Yea, but their selling a lot of seats there – even at high prices – because it will be in Tampa, and not the failed location in St. Pete. There was a great story Sunday in the Tampa Bay Times. Perhaps Neil will do a story on it.
There are no articles on the TB Times site from Sunday about Rays ticket sales. Can you share a link?
While we wait: Steinbrenner Field holds 11.026 people, and the Rays averaged 16,515 in attendance last year. So even if they sell out the entire season, the “a lot of seats” they’ll sell will be significantly less than they sold at the “failed” location in St. Pete.
Neil – there’s actually two references in Sunday’s paper. One is under “Mouthpiece” Marc Tompkin’s “Rays rumblings” section. In this section he mentions that all Dugout Club seats have been sold at $29,970 and $26,325 and virtually all Home Plate Box seats at $22,275. As of now, you can only buy full season seats and can be bought for $6,075 – or $75 a game. I assume there are several levels all at much higher prices.
The other article is by John Romano who even suggest that those sales figures might have Stu rethinking about Tampa. He does say that Stu is trying to sell the team after giving up on looking for partners and may even let the March 31st deadline to expire to give him more time to find a buyer and bring up the price for the team.
I am 99% convinced that a stadium in downtown Tampa would be very successful. The commissioner of baseball made it clear to Pinellas County that the team is not moving from the area. This is the 12th largest media market and is growing so fast, it’s incredible.
I’ve lived in the market for 47 years, attended over 700 Rays games at Tropicana Field and nearly every Yankees spring training game since Day 1 at Legends/Steinbrenner Field.
A good source told me Stu had turned down an offer of 1.3 billion to sell the team earlier. There are people in Tampa with money interested in purchasing the team.
I will have to get someone at my office to help get the links up if needed.
It will be a good demonstration that MLB teams can play 3+ seasons in an arena that cost ~$85 million.
I saw multiple posts on social media saying that the A’s had sold out all tickets for every game of the season. It took me about 30 seconds to debunk that, with 40 tickets available in one section for game 2, and plenty of other games with lots available. Not sure why anyone would start a rumor or post nonsense like that.
They sold out all *season* tickets. Not sure how many seats per game that is.
Secondary markets are responsible for season ticket sales.
No one in their right mind would pay those insane prices unless they are from out of town to see their team play
Yankee game in May: $164.00 on Stubhub for the lawn. At least $225.00/ticket for a seat!
Why would anyone have expected anything but a poorly managed utter clusterfuck of a project from this organization?
It is certainly far from impossible that they will get the facility ready in the next 8 weeks… but knowing this crew, will they? Really? Will they manage to not screw this up even worse than they already have done?
I knew they sold out season tickets, but the posts I saw (and corrected) specifically mentioned every single seat. Which seemed bizarre, as they’d only been on sale for a couple of days.
At the prices that they’re asking, some of these are going to be for sale a long time…
Somebody is being wrong on the internet again?!?
Given (waves hands generally at everything), I would say it’s equally likely that the rumors are being spread by Fisher’s staff or by people who can’t read too carefully.
This is like when Dan Snyder owned the Washington Redcommanders and constantly claimed that there was a “10 year waitlist” for season tickets. Meanwhile the stadium was a half empty on gamedays and actual season ticket holders were getting cold-calls from the team’s box office staff begging them to buy more seats.
Funnily enough, overpricing their tickets in Oakland was part of how they made the argument that they had to move.
I don’t know about that. I used to go to Oakland to see a few games a year and the ticket prices were lower than what I paid (for an admittedly much better seat right behind the plate) at a Rivercat game. Parking was crazy though, $35 for a parking spot?
Who is paying for all these renovations?
I am hoping the A’s franchise a.ka. John Fisher. Because He hasn’t paid a dime in keeping them in Oakland. If you go to the Ballpark app and check A’s ticket prices they are through the roof. The average fan especially those who are true A’s fan from the East Bay area are getting screwed again if they want to drive to West Sacramento. Besides, A’s ownership who will be making money from all the season ticket sales will be the Sacramento residents or business that will be selling on the secondary market. What I have read that season tickets range for at least 10-15,000 per ticket. The winner will be A’s ownership for the next 3 years. Baseball commissioner has give them a blank slate to be successful while the true A’s fan is being run over again for the Almighty $$$.
I don’t believe the A’s are paying anything for the stadium upgrades in Sacramento
The city is paying nothing toward the renovations, and neither is Vivek Ranadivé, the River Cats owner. So it’s either Fisher footing the bill or MLB, and they’re not saying.
Typical hack article from a bum nobody has heard of. This idiot trying to spin it like nobody will go to home games but leaves out the fact that game 1 of the season sold out in minutes.
Loser article. Bum author.
That photo typifies a baseball field getting ready for a new season… in early January. At February-5, stadium should be in much better shape. This means they’re at least a month behind schedule. To avoid the embarrassment of players passing out in summer heat, they’ve packed April and May with as many day games as possible, but in this area it’s still raining at that time. Gonna get real sloppy. This is one reason behind A’s and MLB wanting astroturf, but MLBPA squashed that idea permanently.
Grass, it does a body good.