A tribute to Athletics star Rickey Henderson is held during the first Major League Baseball game at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento on Monday, March 31, 2025. All the players wore the number 24 in honor of Henderson. Hector Amezcua [email protected]

The sight of a regular season Major League Baseball game being played in a minor league ballpark was odd enough. But a slew of other quirks and glitches made Monday’s Athletics home opener in West Sacramento befuddling, before and after first pitch.

The new area where the Athletics hold their press conferences is a temporary shed-like building that was swaying with the wind after it was unveiled before Monday’s game — and could turn into an oven during the summer months given it’s a metal box without air conditioning.

Manager Mark Kotsay delayed his postgame press conference because the stadium’s music could be heard inside, drowning out his answers to reporters’ questions.

The new scoreboards and video ribbons around the ballpark went temporarily dark after the Cubs hit back-to-back home runs in the first inning.

There were reports on social media of the team’s online radio feed cutting out multiple times throughout the game. The game was temporarily delayed in the seventh inning while a drone hovered near the left field wall in the field of play. Wi-Fi was intermittent, at least for media members.

Not to mention the A’s lost, 18-3, and allowed the most runs in a home opener in the last 100 years, according to the Associated Press. The last time a team allowed more runs was the St. Louis Browns in 1921.

Chicago Cubs catcher Carson Kelly, a career .224 hitter with only two career triples in 558 games, hit for the cycle. A’s pitchers allowed 21 hits, 10 walks and four home runs.

In other words, the A’s debut in their new temporary home in the capital region was not a rousing success.

“Not a good showing on our first night,” Kotsay said.

The first of 81 home games did not go to plan in all facets, to be sure, which isn’t a shock given Sutter Health Park was a minor league ballpark that opened in 2000 and is now the A’s interim home before a planned move later this decade to Las Vegas.

It shouldn’t be a surprise the finer logistical points were not all running smoothly given the lack of time to plan. The A’s executed the move to the 14,000-capacity stadium just under one year after the team announced it was moving. Before that, the Athletics played for 57 years at a stadium built for the Major Leagues in Oakland.

The A’s said they had roughly 150 credentialed media members at Monday’s game, which is far more than what’s expected during the remainder of the season. It’s notable that the team decided against building a press conference room into their state-of-the-art new clubhouse beyond the left field wall, because it could be a significant factor should the A’s make the postseason and have to play elsewhere.

The team has said it isn’t guaranteeing postseason games to be played at Sutter Health Park should the A’s make it. Conditions for media — including cramped, nontraditional seating in a converted luxury suite — would be sticking points.

Playoffs aside, with time and a normalized media presence, things will likely run much smoother moving forward.

“Opening night is not indicative of everything,” A’s slugger Brent Rooker said pregame, well before the blowout. “But it could set the tone for what we could possibly build here over the next three years in terms of a very unique atmosphere that we can create.”

Fans, chants and energy before the rout

The atmosphere in the stands had the makings of what the A’s, Kings and River Cats officials had hoped would come with Major League Baseball’s debut along the banks of the Sacramento River. Several hundred fans, if not more than a thousand, were crowded around the stadium gates two hours before first pitch.

Some fans began chanting “Let’s Go Sact-O!” akin to the “Let’s Go Oakland” chants A’s fans had been using for years at the Coliseum.

The small stadium on Monday was flooded with A’s fans, who were loud before the game got too far out of hand when the Cubs scored 11 total runs between the fifth and sixth innings. Only a smattering of Cubs fans made their presence heard while their team took control of the game in the first inning by putting up four runs.

Those who made the trip to see the visitors surely delighted at Kelly’s cycle. It’s one of baseball’s rarest feats for a hitter and has been achieved by just 16 previous players at the catcher position, according to ESPN Research. Kelly’s was also the first cycle ever hit in the month of March, per ESPN.

The A’s saw a couple of bright spots before the game got out of hand in the fifth inning. Shortstop Jason Wilson hit the A’s first home run in their new home park, a third-inning solo shot. Wilson plated another run with a groundout in the fourth inning, after rookie second baseman Max Muncy doubled in a run.

A’s fans at Sutter Health Park showed energy and support of the team, while much of the fan base had been in vocal revolt since the team announced its plans to move out of Oakland and eventually, Las Vegas, where they hope to open a new ballpark on the strip in 2028.

“I expected it to be loud, I expected it to be exciting,” right fielder Lawrence Butler said pregame. “I’ve been hearing that things were sold out since the announcement was made that we were coming here. So I’m just expecting a rocking house.”

The signs were there. Fans seemed ready to make Sutter Health Park a raucous home atmosphere. But the A’s lost by 15 runs, and everything else that went awry looked like the product of hastily made plans.