Home Game

Yesterday I managed to catch the Yankees at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento.

Sutter Health Park is a lovely place to watch a game. In addition to being the home field for the A’s it’s also home to the Sacramento River Cats the AAA farm club of the San Franciso Giants.

The A’s will be playing here for a few years while their new stadium is being constructed in Las Vegas. Maybe.

Vegas has too much going on to sustain attendance for eighty home games of a three-hour sport. Eight home football games for the Raiders, sure, but baseball seems like a bad fit. 

Are out-of-town guests really going to fil it up when they could be watching pretty much anything else? We’re talking about the A’s here. A team whose entire lineup costs less than the wardrobe budget at Cirque Du Soliel.

Anyway, like I said, Sutter Health Park is a nice place to watch a ball game.  

When the A’s are playing they slap up some quick signage.

Originally I wasn’t going to go. While Sacramento is really a SF Giants town, the Yankees are always a draw, and the three games had been sold out for months. The price of a ticket was going to be up to the vagaries of the secondary market.  

Normally that might work in my favor but the stadium only seats 14,014 fans.

I’m not sure how they arrived on 14,014. Right field is lawn seating. The number seems a bit arbitrary.

When I checked initially, the cheapest tickets were going for $80. Lawn seating.  

I’m too old for lawn seating.

My son thought we should go anyway. He knew that I’d be mad at myself if I didn’t bother to go see the Yankees in my own backyard, so he stayed on it.

By Sunday, the price had dropped.

Maybe people remembered it was Mother’s Day.  

Maybe the match up of Luis Severino vs. TBD took some of the shine off it.  

Maybe they realized that it was an A’s game.

Their loss was my gain. Sixty dollars for Field Level seats just past third base!

I say Field Level like there are other levels. There are not. Unless you count the press box and the Solon Club, a place with its own bar where the city’s elite can pay an extra two bucks for the same can of beer the hoi polloi buy downstairs. It does have a nicer view of the Tower Bridge and downtown, so I’ll give it that.

The Solon Club was named as an homage to the Sacramento Solons, a minor league club with a long history of failing to stay in business.

From Wikipedia:

The Sacramento Solons were a Minor League Baseball team based in Sacramento, California. They played in the Pacific Coast League during several periods (1903, 1905, 1909-1914, 1918-1960, 1974-1976).

The team derived its name from Sacramento's status as capital of California. Solon was an early Greek lawmaker and the term "solons" was often used by journalists as a synonym for "senators.

You learn something every day. OK, one last thing on this

The Sacramento team moved to Fresno in 1906, and was renamed the Fresno Raisin Eaters.

Sometimes the jokes write themselves.

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We parked in Old Sac for twelve dollars and walked across the Tower Bridge. Easy in. Easy out. Five-minute walk.

I mention cost because we all know what it costs to go to see an MLB game. For example, parking at the Oakland Coliseum for an A's game used to cost fifty dollars. Well fifty dollars plus the cost of whatever was stolen from your car while you were watching the game.

The lot at Sutter Park can be had for twenty-five but parking off site and walking in for half of that was totally doable. Try parking off site in Oakland.

I don’t miss going there.  

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Lots of Yankee fans. At least half the crowd.

Also lots of Ex Yankees on the A’s.

Luis Severino, Gio Urshala,  Miguel Andujar.

Miggy Two Bags looks great. Healthy at last and batting .306. Always liked him .

Sevi, entering the game, was 1-3 with an ERA in the low threes. He left 1-4 with an ERA of 4.70.

Not much to say about the game other than Aaron Judge is effortless. Or as the ad says…

Rice hit a grand slam, and the game was never in doubt. Plus, always good to watch a game with the kid.

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Last thing, I had the Chicken Tenders so that if I ran into Michael Kay we would have something to talk about.

He stayed home. I'm glad I didn't.