WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The most glaring difference between a major- and minor-league stadium is in height. The newly renovated home of the Athletics, Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, Calif., carries just one main level topped by a second concourse of mostly suites, and in that way, it is still unmistakably the minor-league park it was built to be. But in a city that’s never regularly hosted Major League Baseball, the A’s hope intimacy creates an unusual draw.

Standing behind the press box on the ballpark’s top floor two days ago, Steve Sax, the 14-year major-league veteran who now does television work for the A’s, gestured into the distance, somewhere off behind home plate and third base.

“I grew up in West Sacramento, three miles as the crow flies, four miles that way,” Sax said, pointing to his left. “We were farmers. Just like when you fly into Sacramento, you see the farms. Growing up, I had so many dreams of playing big-league baseball. I thought, ‘Man, if someday they could have baseball in Sacramento, it would be unbelievable.’”

“Little did I know that they would not only have baseball, but they’d have it in West Sacramento, and it’s just — it’s absolutely mind-boggling to me.”

The A’s open the first of at least three seasons here tonight in a sold-out game against the Chicago Cubs, with an expected 13,416 attendees in a stadium heavily modified over the winter to accommodate its new tenant. This is the first season the A’s will play outside of Oakland in 57 years, and it is ultimately a layover between the team’s bitter exit from that city and the planned opening of a new stadium in Las Vegas.

West Sacramento is a separate municipality from the larger Sacramento, but the latter can be reached in less than 10 minutes on foot from the stadium, just over Tower Bridge. On either side of the Sacramento River, Sax said he feels a buzz about the A’s arrival. Yet, in the four days a reporter from The Athletic spent here, the overall reception in town felt muted and in many ways tentative, like the awkward early stages of a middle-school dance.

The A’s are sharing the ballpark with another baseball team, the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats, who began their season with three games Friday through Sunday. At the ballpark there was little visible indication that another, more prominent team was about to show up, beyond a purple “Las Vegas” tourism advertisement along the outfield wall.

All around town, in fact, the A’s green-and-gold was scarce. Along the Old Sacramento Waterfront, a tourist area filled with vintage trains and restored Gold Rush-era facades, just one large “Welcome” banner directed to the A’s stuck out.

Apparel stores in town, like the chain outfitter Lids, were still selling A’s shirts that say “Oakland” on it, the city the A’s just painfully left. Other clothiers were hawking unofficial “Sactown Athletics” hoodies and tees.

The latter are notable because the A’s do not actually want to be known as the Sacramento A’s during their time here, preferring to be known simply as the Athletics or A’s until they again take a city’s name in Vegas. The A’s uniforms will have a Sacramento patch on one sleeve, and a Vegas patch on the other, but will only have Athletics across the front. The Sactown shirts are selling well, one merchant said, but asked to keep specifics out of the newspaper, lest the team bring pressure to cease production.

“I’m calling them the Sacramento A’s,” said Sacramento mayor Kevin McCarty. “I’m gonna buy myself a Sacramento A’s jersey and hat very soon. They’re not going to call them that, but we can call them that.

“West Sacramento is calling them the West Sacramento A’s, but that’s fine too. That’s just a detail. They’re here. Professional baseball’s here.”

But it’s sometimes a tricky affair.

Over the weekend, some of the complexities of the A’s and River Cats’ stadium partnership were visible. Their arrangement is uncommon: They both share in Sutter Health’s construction and improvement costs, and will now share in some of the A’s revenues this season, said A’s vice chairman Sandy Dean, who declined to specify exact percentages.

“In less than a year, the A’s and RiverCats were able to conceive, design and implement all of the improvements that have been made to Sutter Health Park, including a grass field with a lot of technology supporting the best health of the field, new scoreboard, new lights, new batter’s eye,” said Dean, who owns a small stake in the team. “There’s a new concessionaire, there’s been upgrades to club seating. Although this is something that most people won’t see, there’s been infrastructure investments to facilitate a major-league quality broadcast, upgrades to the sound system.”

In all, the work cost more than $40 million, said people briefed on the process who were not authorized to speak publicly.

But the River Cats aren’t the only other team the A’s are dealing with in their new locale. The River Cats’ decisions ultimately run through the Sacramento Kings of the NBA, because both the River Cats and the Kings are owned by Vivek Ranadivé.

“To be able to get all that done from start to finish and be ready for Opening Day here on March 31, 2025, is a great accomplishment by the River Cats and Kings who oversaw all of that,” Dean said.

Over the past few days, the A’s, the Kings and the River Cats played a game of political football trying to figure out just who could speak publicly about the construction work that had been done. The relocation of the A’s has long been a sensitive topic, and sensitivities haven’t disappeared in a new town.

The A’s are proud of the changes made to the stadium itself, particularly considering the short period in which they had to build, and the effort appears to have been earnest. A new two-story home clubhouse, one the A’s day-to-day clubhouse staff had a hand in designing, and a brand-new grass field have been installed.

The A’s new clubhouse (Courtesy of The Athletics)

But the A’s ultimately did not lead the day-to-day work at the park. The River Cats and Kings did. Kings spokesperson Kari Ida said The Athletic could interview one of its executives only if the team could approve which quotes were used in advance of publication. The Athletic declined to conduct an interview under those terms.

The Kings have rarely commented publicly on the stadium project, an interesting choice when Ranadivé and others in Sacramento want to show the city could someday host a full-time MLB team, one that isn’t set to leave in a few years.

“We really think this is going to be a trial run for us to show that we’re ready for two professional sports teams in Sacramento,” said McCarty. “Certainly we’ve succeeded with the Kings for the past 40 years, supporting that team in thick and thin. Obviously the A’s have the arrangements, they’re about to finalize starting to build a stadium in Nevada. Some would say (that’s) not locked in yet, but that’s probably happening.

“But expansion is a potential. You know, the commissioner of baseball used the word ‘expansion’ a few weeks ago when he visited, which really struck me.”

One of the early sensitivities in the A’s relocation here surrounded the kind of field they would use. At first, MLB and the team planned to put in synthetic turf, but players and their union successfully lobbied to change the plan. Players find grass to be easier on their bodies, and also cooler.

“It’s not a secret that players prefer playing on natural grass across the board,” said Murray Cook, president of BrightView Sports Turf and MLB’s official field consultant. “Everybody knows that and the players know that.”

Cook said he never felt that synthetic turf could not work. Developments in natural grass have led it to take on characteristics typically associated with turf, like increased durability, and by the same token, turf has in some ways become more grass-like.

Durability is the largest concern with two teams playing on the field virtually every day for six months, because big-league fields aren’t supposed to turn brown or look worn out, and Sacramento is hot during the summer.

The River Cats play their home games when the A’s are out of town, and some of the minor-league team’s home games have even been relocated to Tacoma, Wash., in June, to allow a break for resodding.

The grass that was installed is called Tahoma 31 Bermudagrass, which Cook said gets greener earlier in the spring, and stays greener later into the winter. It has been overseeded with a rye grass, which grows better at a lower temperature, aiding the field’s look earlier in the season. There’s also an air pump system that both promotes growth and helps dry when it rains.

Back-ups are in place. Cook said the league has access to a second overseeded rye field for repairs, and a third field that’s only bermudagrass.

“It is a little bit uncharted to have a major-league team, a minor-league team share a field for an entire season,” Cook said.

To Ian Webster, a college student who wore an A’s shirt on Saturday to work, the area has little in between when it comes to the new baseball team.

“It feels very much like either you kind of don’t care, or you care a lot, one way or another,” Webster said. “There’s very few people who are just like, ‘Oh, cool. The A’s are coming to town.’ Either you don’t care, or you’re really happy they’re coming town, or you’re very hurt by the fact that they’re moving at all.”

On Friday, the day of the River Cats’ home opener, only a handful of fans wore Athletics gear to Sutter Health Park. That was not unsurprising, because the River Cats today are affiliated with the other Bay Area team, the San Francisco Giants. But there are plenty of A’s fans around, and some are happy they’ll get to see their team more often.

“I feel good because we don’t have to drive all the way out to Oakland to see the A’s play,” said 10-year-old Ezekiel Velez, whose favorite all-time player is the late Rickey Henderson. “We don’t have to drive like an hour and a half, two hours, to see the A’s play.”

Keefe Mahar wore a River Cats shirt to the stadium the same day with a standard green A’s cap, with one modification. Yellow tape spelled out the world “Sell” over the team’s logo.

“Very mixed,” Mahar said of his emotions about the team’s relocation. “Lifelong A’s fan. I wish they would just stay in Oakland. But also, it’s dope that they’re right down the street. I can ride my bike over and go to a game.”

Keefe Mahar and his family at the Sacramento River Cats game. (Evan Drellich / The Athletic)

Neither Mahar nor Annjanette Branca, who works along the waterfront, had kind words to share about A’s owner John Fisher. He and the A’s believe the team did all it reasonably could to remain in Oakland; many fans do not agree. How much protest there is inside the ballpark about the move this season is one of the great open questions as the A’s begin their Sacramento era.

Both the home and visiting players will ultimately judge the stadium renovations, along with the fans. The A’s aren’t hurting to sell tickets — the season-ticket allotment is sold out, at roughly 6,000, they say. Ranadivé said in 2024 that he wanted the A’s to be the “most sought-after ticket in America.”

But the greater construction project will be in reaching those in the area who are ambivalent, at least for now. Beth Devine, a rideshare driver here, said she was only interested in the A’s arrival so that her family could come see the New York Yankees.

“I think people are more into Sac Republic to be honest with you, which is the soccer team,” Devine said while driving a reporter to the park last week. “I don’t think they really care that much about the A’s, because they’re not ‘the Sacramento A’s.’ It’s just three years.

“The Sacramento people are like, ‘What if they stay? Wouldn’t that be awesome?’ That’s what we would like. That’s how Sacramento is, like the bridesmaid.”

(Top photo of the Athletics’ new jerseys: Lindsey Wasson / Associated Press)