As early as the 19th-century Gold Rush, when miners arrived on riverboats to stock up with supplies before heading into the mountains, Sacramento\u2019s reputation has been more way station than destination.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the place for a bathroom break on the way to Lake Tahoe. It\u2019s a career stop, for ambitious politicians, on the way to Washington. And for millions of Californians, it\u2019s a civics-lesson pit-stop on the way to the rest of their lives: the last time they came to Sacramento was for that fourth-grade field trip to the State Capitol.<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s fitting that as the Sacramento area finally gets a Major League Baseball team, it\u2019s only as a temporary home for a club that is on the way to somewhere else. When the Athletics had a messy breakup with Oakland after 57 years and set their sights on Las Vegas, the team needed a landing spot until their permanent stadium gets built on the Strip.<\/p>\n
In stepped the Sacramento region, which eagerly agreed to host Major League Baseball for three years at its minor-league stadium. The catch: The A\u2019s refused to adopt the city\u2019s name.<\/p>\n
As the team plays its home opener here on Monday, they\u2019re not the Sacramento Athletics. They\u2019re just the Athletics. And many Sacramentans, it turns out, are just fine with that.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlways the underdog,\u201d Rachel Birnschein, 35, said of her hometown as she ate with friends at a lively downtown plaza before a recent National Basketball Association game. \u201cThat\u2019s the Sacramento mentality.\u201d<\/p>\n
Located in the expansive valley that runs through inland California, Sacramento is used to being overshadowed by Los Angeles and San Francisco. If it were in the Midwest, the Sacramento region, with some 2.5 million residents, would be considered a major hub \u2014 it actually has more residents<\/a> than the metro areas of Kansas City, Cincinnati or Milwaukee, each of which have multiple big league teams.<\/p>\n Sacramento was founded in 1850 at the intersection of two rivers that now supply much of the state\u2019s water. It long called itself the \u201cCity of Trees,\u201d an ode to its lush canopy that spares residents from the searing summer heat, until several years ago when it declared itself the \u201cFarm-to-Fork Capital.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the city\u2019s best qualities might be considered a backhanded compliment. It is, as they say, a great place to raise a family. Soccer games in the suburbs and bike rides along the American River Parkway define good living on weekends. Napa Valley wineries and Sierra ski resorts are a day trip away. Sacramento lacks the oppressive traffic that has come to define Southern California, though yearslong freeway projects have become a regular irritant.<\/p>\n In recent years, the city has invigorated its downtown. A modern basketball arena opened nearly a decade ago, and with it came a luxury condo tower, new bars and higher-end hotels. Before that, Sacramento was developing a serious culinary scene<\/a>, built on that \u201cfarm-to-fork\u201d locally grown mantra and driven by purveyors of bountiful produce at farmers markets.<\/p>\n The Sacramento Kings, the basketball team that has long been the lone big league franchise in town, had until recently been on its own upswing. A return to the N.B.A. playoffs two years ago was accompanied by a purple laser beam<\/a>, which remains in use, that shot from the roof of the arena whenever the team won. (One popular T-shirt around town that season: \u201cSacramento vs. Everybody.\u201d)<\/p>\n Sacramento\u2019s image, to the outside world, has been shaped in part by famous storytellers who left it behind. Joan Didion wrote in 1967 of arriving in New York at age 20 \u201cin a new dress which had seemed very smart in Sacramento but seemed less smart already\u201d as she stepped off the plane. Greta Gerwig, a filmmaker who grew up in Sacramento, portrayed her hometown as sweet but unbearably stifling in 2017\u2019s \u201cLady Bird.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s soul killing,\u201d the eponymous character says in the film. \u201cIt\u2019s the Midwest of California.\u201d<\/p>\n Hollywood will weigh in again next month when a feature film<\/a> called \u201cSacramento\u201d opens. The trailer depicts two guys from Los Angeles who take a road trip to, as one of the characters puts it, \u201ca city I have no desire to be in.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, those who live here appreciate Sacramento\u2019s charms. Autumn leaves that paint bungalow-lined streets in streaks of crimson and gold. The cool Delta breeze on a hot summer night, carrying wafts of jasmine.<\/p>\n Sacramento has long yearned for a major league franchise. The concrete foundation of a baseball stadium has stood for decades near where the old basketball arena sat, the remnants of long-unfulfilled hopes. The M.L.B. stadium never materialized, but a minor-league park sprouted in 2000 \u2014 in West Sacramento, Calif., across the river from Sacramento proper.<\/p>\n It\u2019s that stadium, now known as Sutter Health Park, with a capacity of about 14,000, that will host the A\u2019s. Local fans generally seem thrilled at the idea of having the team in their backyard, just a bike ride or short drive away. For once, they don\u2019t have to schlep two hours to an M.L.B. game.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone is buzzing about it,\u201d Erin Nickerman, 46, said as she sat down with her son for a scoop of Bing cherry at Gunther\u2019s Ice Cream, a beloved local parlor, on a warm afternoon.<\/p>\n The franchise\u2019s official guidelines<\/a> say the team should simply be called the \u201cAthletics\u201d or the \u201cA\u2019s\u201d during the stay in Sacramento. That goes for standings and for public relations references, and the city\u2019s name won\u2019t be on the front of team jerseys.<\/p>\n \u201cKnowing that this was an interim circumstance, we thought that the most respectful thing was to call ourselves the Athletics,\u201d Sandy Dean, the A\u2019s vice chairman, explained.<\/p>\n The A\u2019s breakup<\/a> with Oakland was agonizing for many fans in that area, leaving them seething at the team\u2019s owner, John Fisher. A\u2019s fans accused Mr. Fisher<\/a>, an heir to the Gap clothing fortune, of dealing with the city in bad faith over the construction of a new stadium and purposely driving down attendance to make his case for moving the team, all while flirting with Las Vegas.<\/p>\n Not everyone in Sacramento is happy, either. Dave Weiglein, a local radio host, said the decision not to use \u201cSacramento\u201d in the team name amounts to a slap in the face. Mr. Weiglein takes hometown pride seriously. On air, he goes only by \u201cCarmichael Dave,\u201d a reference to the Sacramento suburb where he grew up.<\/p>\n \u201cInstead of getting off on the right foot and welcoming the Sacramento A\u2019s at the end of this month, it will be basically him saying to the region, \u2018You\u2019re an Airbnb for us until we can relocate to Las Vegas,\u2019\u201d he said of Mr. Fisher.<\/p>\n The A\u2019s do not anticipate adopting a city name until it incorporates \u201cLas Vegas\u201d after it starts playing there, Mr. Dean said, likely in 2028.<\/p>\n In the meantime, the team\u2019s green and gold logo is already popping up across its temporary home. On a Little League field on a recent afternoon, Thomas Hines, 47, wore a green A\u2019s cap as he warmed up his son TJ and the 5- and 6-year-old players on their team. Birdsong rang from trees near the bleachers as the thrum of the freeway emanated from beyond the outfield. He said Sacramento remains misunderstood.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone from the big cities, they think of it still as a little farm town,\u201d Mr. Hines said. \u201cBut it\u2019s growing.\u201d<\/p>\n The Athletics did make one concession to better embrace a Sacramento identity, agreeing to a sleeve patch that features a local icon, the Tower Bridge, with the word \u201cSacramento\u201d beneath it. But then the team announced that players will also wear a \u201cLas Vegas\u201d patch that more clearly shows that city\u2019s name \u2014 on whichever arm tends to be more visible to television cameras<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cLittle-brother energy,\u201d observed Robert Soltero, 35, a state worker who was celebrating a friend\u2019s birthday at a riverfront beer garden near the ballpark. \u201cBut I think we\u2019re all comfortable with it.\u201d<\/p>\n Alain Delaqu\u00e9ri\u00e8re contributed research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As early as the 19th-century Gold Rush, when miners arrived on riverboats to stock up with supplies before…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9619,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2391],"tags":[537,5,2178,6018,6019,6021,19,4,3226,6020,63,6015,6017,66,6016],"class_list":{"0":"post-9618","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-athletics","8":"tag-athletics","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-fisher","12":"tag-john-1961","13":"tag-las-vegas-nev","14":"tag-major-league-baseball","15":"tag-mlb","16":"tag-mlb-athletics","17":"tag-oakland-calif","18":"tag-oakland-athletics","19":"tag-sacramento-calif","20":"tag-sacramento-kings","21":"tag-san-francisco-giants","22":"tag-stadiums-and-arenas"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114470078168118521","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9618","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=9618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}