The Athletics are having a rough go of things, to say the very least. The A’s are in between homes at the moment, with last season being the franchise’s last in Oakland, and their new forever home, Las Vegas, not being quite ready to accommodate them yet.
The franchise is playing its home games Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento through the 2027 season, the home ballpark of the Sacremento River Cats (the San Francisco Giants AAA affiliate).
Playing in a minor league ball park has drawn heavy criticism from fans, players, and broadcasters alike, leading many to mockingly refer to the ballclub as the AAAs.
Unfortunately, things keep getting uglier for the Athletics. The As faced off with the Houston Astros in Sacramento on Tuesday night, and were it not for the Athletics logo on the backstop, viewers at home may have assumed they were watching an Astros home game.
The boards on either side of the As logo on the backstop were for Houston Methodist Hospital.
This is an incredibly rare sight to see with something from the city representing the visiting team taking up real estate in your own ballpark. Allowing visiting cities to buy ads behind home plate may seem unconscionable, but it has been that sort of season for the Athletics. Earlier this month, security was forced to remove a fan who video-bombed the pregame broadcast sporting an Athletics-colored “SELL” shirt.
It’s hard to imagine the club’s Sacramento stint going much worse than this, but we haven’t even reached the halfway point in year one out of three.