{"id":664304,"date":"2026-04-05T08:42:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T08:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/664304\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T08:42:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T08:42:23","slug":"fans-love-new-sacramento-gold-jerseys-but-as-lose-11-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/664304\/","title":{"rendered":"Fans love new Sacramento gold jerseys, but A\u2019s lose 11-0"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Athletics<\/p>\n

Athletics first baseman Nick Kurtz hits a single in the eighth inning of a game Saturday against the Houston Astros at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento. The team debuted its gold \u201cSacramento\u201d alternate jerseys, also giving them away to fans in attendance.<\/p>\n

JOS\u00c9 LUIS VILLEGAS<\/p>\n

jvillegas@sacbee.com<\/p>\n

There was a gold rush of sorts Saturday in West Sacramento.<\/p>\n

Thousands of A\u2019s fans, young and old, tall and small, poured into Sutter Health Park, greeted by smiling ushers who handed out jerseys by the van load. The gold tops had \u201cSacramento\u201d in green lettering splashed across the front, an indicator that the much-criticized, vagabond franchise yielded a bit to a frustrated fan base, with consumers last year wondering why the club didn\u2019t embrace the city with such perks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Athletics in 2025 had a logo of the Tower Bridge patched onto the sleeves of their uniforms, but no \u201cSacramento\u201d or \u201cSac\u201d on gear otherwise.<\/p>\n

A\u2019s players also wore the spiffy new gold tops, though theirs had names and numbers on the back. The A\u2019s promoted the day as \u201cWelcome to the show, Sacramento Golds,\u201d but the feel-good energy evaporated on the playing field amid the muck of an 11-0 loss to the Houston Astros.<\/p>\n

Fans started to file out of the park in the sixth inning, when Houston led 10-0, with a collective expression of dejected gold.<\/p>\n

\"The The Athletics embraced Sacramento on Saturday with a gold \u201cSacramento\u201d jersey giveaway before the Athletics played the Houston Astros at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento. JOS\u00c9 LUIS VILLEGAS jvillegas@sacbee.com <\/p>\n

The fashion trend won\u2019t be a staple, but the team\u2019s \u201cSacramento Saturdays\u201d theme will include more giveaways, including caps and gloves. A\u2019s fans throughout the club\u2019s debut season in West Sacramento in 2025 demanded something more intimate with their team \u2014 anything with Sacramento on a uniform or a cap.<\/p>\n

Fans aren\u2019t naive. They know that Sutter Health Park is stop-over visit on the way to Vegas, where the franchise plans to move permanently in 2028 after their departure from Oakland following the 2024 season. Fans also surely noticed that the left sleeve of the gold jerseys includes a patch that reads \u201cLas Vegas,\u201d the same design and logo that is on the left-field fence.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving \u2018Sacramento\u2019 on our players, it\u2019s about time, and it\u2019s the right thing to do,\u201d said Dolly Martin, a 63-year-old mother of five and grandmother of eight who lives in Davis.<\/p>\n

An A\u2019s fan since her youth in Oakland, Martin was flanked by four of those grandkids, everyone embracing their cool new digs. Martin added: \u201cIf the A\u2019s are going to play here, then they need to have Sacramento on their uniforms for games. I love this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The A\u2019s reported Saturday\u2019s official paid attendance at 12,015, breaking the 12,000 threshold for the second straight contest after the team only did so seven times in 2025\u2019s 81 home games.<\/p>\n

Before the game, the A\u2019s over the public address system encouraged fans to chant, \u201cSac-ra-mento,\u201d which did not happen in 2025.<\/p>\n

\"Rocco Rocco Sansieir, visiting from New Jersey, tries to get a player\u2019s autograph before the Athletics played the Houston Astros on Saturday at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento. JOS\u00c9 LUIS VILLEGAS jvillegas@sacbee.com Astros roar back<\/p>\n

After falling to the A\u2019s 11-4 on Friday night,<\/a> Houston took advantage of shaky pitching to win for the sixth time in seven games while dropping the A\u2019s to a Major League Baseball-worst 0-4 in day games.<\/p>\n

The A\u2019s (2-6) walked 13 batters, and the Astros had 18 hits and reached base a club-tying 32 times for a nine-inning game. Christian Walker had three RBIs and Joey Loperfido added two. Walker and Cam Smith homered for Houston, which improves to 6-3 and will play the A\u2019s in the three-game series\u2019 finale at 1:05 p.m. Sunday. The A\u2019s will head into Sunday tied for MLB\u2019s worst record.<\/p>\n

\"Houston Houston Astros batter Cam Smith is greeted by teammates after hitting a solo home run against the Athletics in the eighth inning Saturday at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento. JOS\u00c9 LUIS VILLEGAS jvillegas@sacbee.com <\/p>\n

Tatsuya Imai started on the mound for Houston and pitched 5 2\/3 scoreless innings, allowing three hits and striking out nine. The A\u2019s are 1-4 against right-handed pitchers early in the regular season.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t do anything well today,\u201d A\u2019s manager Mark Kotsay said. \u201cThat game was reflective of, in my opinion, past performances that we feel like we\u2019ve put behind us, that we need to put behind us as a team.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cObviously, 13 walks in the game…that is not reflective of the expectation level of our staff. We talk about beating ourselves all the time. Today, we completely beat ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Athletics Athletics left fielder Tyler Soderstrom loses a ball hit by Houston Astros catcher Christian V\u00e1zquez in the sun during the third inning Saturday at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento. JOS\u00c9 LUIS VILLEGAS jvillegas@sacbee.com Full circle for Astros manager<\/p>\n

Astros manager Josue Espada knows this park, which went by Raley Field when he first played on it. That was in 2000, when he was a member of the first-ever Sacramento River Cats team.<\/p>\n

He played in the first game in the history of the venue when the River Cats were the Triple-A club for the then-Oakland A\u2019s (the San Francisco Giants have been the parent club for the River Cats since 2015).<\/p>\n

A second-round draft pick of the A\u2019s in 1996, Espada logged 40 games as an infielder for the River Cats in their debut season.<\/p>\n

This story was originally published April 4, 2026 at 5:16 PM.<\/p>\n


\n \"Profile
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Joe Davidson<\/a><\/p>\n

The Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n

Joe Davidson has covered sports for The Sacramento Bee since 1989: preps, colleges, Kings and features. He was in early 2024 named the National Sports Media Association Sports Writer of the Year for California and he was in the fall of 2024 inducted into the California High School Football Hall of Fame. He is a 14-time award winner from the California Prep Sports Writer Association. In 2021, he was honored with the CIF Distinguished Service award. He is a member of the California Coaches Association Hall of Fame. Davidson participated in football and track in Oregon.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Athletics first baseman Nick Kurtz hits a single in the eighth inning of a game Saturday against the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664305,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2389],"tags":[42,5,139,54,3211,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-664304","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-astros","8":"tag-astros","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-houston","11":"tag-houston-astros","12":"tag-houstonastros","13":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116351215737796870","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}