WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — For Chicago Cubs second baseman Nico Hoerner, an Oakland native, Monday was a bittersweet day.
The Cubs are part of the first major-league series played at Sutter Heath Park, a Triple-A stadium the Athletics are calling home for at least the next three seasons as they await their permanent new park to be built in Las Vegas. They departed Oakland after 57 seasons in the Coliseum.
“I mean, I’d rather be playing in Oakland — Oakland is a special place for me,” said Hoerner, who grew up an A’s fan. “I’m really grateful I got to play there in 2023 and got to show love to a lot people there, but it’s always cool to play the A’s.
“I feel for fans in Oakland, baseball fans, sports fans in general. All three teams being gone (including the NFL’s Raiders and NBA’s Warriors) for sports fans is a hard hit to an entire community, and three teams that created a lot of joy for a lot of people. Just straight up community-wise, I think sports play a great role in a place and to have all that stripped very quickly is a really challenging thing.”
Before the game, Hoerner anticipated a good atmosphere for the A’s home opener Monday.
“Anything that sold out is pretty cool, Hoerner said. “There’s a lot of great baseball fans in this area, played a bunch of travel ball and stuff out here. The baseball interest is going to be high, and it’s a pretty cool setting to see a lot of the best players in the world throughout the season.”
The Cubs handed the A’s an 18-3 drubbing in their new home that included 11 extra-base hits, back-to-back home runs by Michael Busch and Dansby Swanson in a four-run first inning, and catcher Carson Kelly completing the first cycle by a Cub since Mark Grace in 1993.
“I pitched in my fair share of minor-league baseball games, it was kind of like being back home,” said starter Ben Brown, who went five innings in the win. “There was definitely a lot of people there, for sure. So it was cool, a little bit different structure, but, yeah, it was awesome.”
There were a few notable mishaps in the A’s new ballpark, though.
Both the Cubs and A’s radio broadcasts were frequently disrupted and cut out because of WiFi issues in the press box, which they rely on to air games. When the WiFi was spotty and dropped, the teams’ radio calls subsequently went dark. The game was also briefly delayed in the bottom of the seventh when a drone hovered above the warning track in left field. The A’s bat boy initially grabbed the drone and then used a bat to knock it down after it tried to get out of his grip.
Cubs players spotted the drone and alerted manager Craig Counsell, who informed home plate umpire Adrian Johnson.
“I guess it’s the world we’re in right now,” Counsell said. “It was funny because it looked like the drone was trying to fly away and trying to fly (the bat boy) away too. But it’s life in 2025.”
The A’s will be sharing Sutter Health Park, which seats roughly 14,000 fans, with the Rivercats, the rival San Francisco Giants’ Triple-A team. Among the ballpark upgrades: a new scoreboard was installed, grass replaced the artificial turf, both dugouts were expanded, and a weight room and coaches’ locker room were among the additions for visiting teams.
“They’ve done all they’ve done in order to make it as nice as possible, and that’s all you can really ask for,” Swanson said. “My main message to anyone, and myself and just how I look at it, is we’re just very fortunate to play this game, no matter when or where, no matter what the stadium is or where it may be located, doesn’t matter. It’s a major-league baseball game.”
The A’s ballpark is the only one in the majors that doesn’t have dugouts connected to the teams’ clubhouses, forcing players, coaches and staff to trek through the outfield to get to the home and visitor locker rooms. The batting cages are also located behind the outfield wall — and Seiya Suzuki ran back between innings a few times to get swings in between his at-bats as the designated hitter.
The isolated dugouts reminded Counsell of the Giants’ old Candlestick Park, which had the same setup. He joked after Monday’s game that the Cubs are going to make the starting pitchers sit in the dugout for all nine innings the entire season.
“It was a fun atmosphere,” Counsell said. “You embrace it, you enjoy it. It’s a new baseball experience. It’s the first big-league game here, so we just tried to enjoy it — I thought we did a really good job with that.”
