By Steve Martarano | Solving Sacramento
Jason Cooper, a resident of Ohio and an avid “stadium chaser” who has caught games in 30 Major League Baseball stadiums and another 25 in minor league parks, was with his wife visiting family near Antioch when they decided to pop into Sacramento to see an Athletics game in the May series against the New York Yankees.
Cooper is part of a nationwide fan base now zeroing in on West Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park, which joined an elite fraternity this year by being one of 30 cities hosting a MLB team. Overnight, in addition to local fans, Sutter Health Park, highlighted through sites like Facebook’s Stadium Chaser, has become a destination for out-of-town fans following their teams on the road or those who try to visit as many MLB parks as possible.
“I thought it was fantastic,” Cooper said of the ballpark. “It’s a very intimate setting to see a Major League Baseball game. If anybody asked me, ‘Would you recommend going to a game there?’ I’d say, hell yes, I would.”
Halfway through the first season the Sacramento area has hosted an MLB team, the spotlight remains squarely on West Sacramento’s 25-year-old Sutter Health Park and home of the minor league Sacramento River Cats, which was recently refurbished to better fit MLB standards and weather the daily wear of two teams playing there. As the A’s residence makes Sutter Health Park one of the busiest minor league ballparks in America, hosting a total of around 150 A’s and River Cats games through September, the impacts on both sides of the Tower Bridge will continue to be felt.
A’s arrival part of ballpark’s 25-year progression
The Athletics’ controversial arrival to West Sacramento followed the team leaving their Oakland Coliseum home of 57 years to temporarily reside in West Sacramento for at least three years while preparing for a scheduled move to Las Vegas for the 2028 season. The sold-out March 31 opener when the A’s took on the Chicago Cubs was attended by 150 members of the media and vaulted the region into the MLB stratosphere.
Former West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon, who helped bring professional baseball to his city, notes that construction of the $46.5 million ballpark in 2000, then called Raley Field, sparked a years-long renaissance of the industrial area that birthed West Sacramento’s Bridge District.
Having served as mayor of West Sacramento from 1998 to 2020, Cabaldon, now a state senator, points out that the A’s arrival is a natural progression of the vision leaders had when the Yolo County city incorporated in 1987.
“It isn’t as though you open the stadium in 2000 and then suddenly the entire district is built out like somebody was building a theme park,” said Cabaldon, who lives three blocks from the ballpark. “Instead, it created the conditions by which all the other development that has occurred since then.”
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