Want the latest Bay Area sports news delivered to your inbox? Sign up here to receive regular email blasts, plus “The Dime,” our twice-weekly sports newsletter.
Aaron Judge has been hitting at a record clip in major-league parks across the nation.
Now we’ll see what he can do in a minor-league park.
The New York Yankees are in California’s capital for a three-game weekend series against the Sacramento-based A’s — meaning Judge will take his mighty hacks at tiny Sutter Health Park as undoubtedly the biggest attraction to visit the restructured facility since the A’s debuted there six weeks ago.
“I miss Oakland,” Judge told The Standard last month at his Yankee Stadium locker. “I always enjoyed going to Oakland and playing at the Coliseum, with all the history there. So it’ll be a little different going to Sacramento.
Subscribe to The Dime
News, gossip, and inside-the-locker-room access for Bay Area sports fans, every Friday and Monday.
“But it’s still Major League Baseball. There’s still a game to be played. It doesn’t matter where we play and what the situation is. You have to be ready to go.”
The situation is this: The Yankees flew to Sacramento instead of the Bay Area because A’s owner John Fisher pulled the team from Oakland after a 57-year run that featured four World Series championships, six pennants, 21 postseason appearances, and countless memories for generations of fans.
Throughout the series, all eyes will be on Judge, the most dominant hitter in either league. The 6-foot-7 right fielder got off to a historic start by posting some whopping numbers that rank him first in the majors in several categories — .400 batting average, .491 on-base percentage, and 1.241 OPS — and he’s tied for the major-league lead in home runs (12) and RBIs (34).
Whew.
Now it’s time to swing away at Sutter Health Park. Judge grew up in Linden, two hours east of the Coliseum, and made many trips to the Bay Area to watch A’s and Giants games. In that regard, he was not keen on the A’s leaving the East Bay.
“Growing up in California, a big San Francisco Giants fan, a big A’s fan as well, also knowing the history of what the A’s did, and my dad telling good stories of going to the Coliseum back in the day, it’s tough to see,” Judge said. “They had some good teams my first few years in the big leagues and some really good players that are still in this game and scattered around the league now, especially Matt Chapman at third base for the Giants. It’s definitely sad, but we’ll see what the future holds for them.”
Sacramento is closer to Linden than Oakland, and Judge isn’t unfamiliar with the A’s temporary stadium, which will be in use if and when construction is underway in Las Vegas. He visited as a kid on a school field trip when it was known as Raley Field and played there with Fresno State against Sacramento State. On March 26, 2013, he collected two hits in a 3-2 Bulldogs victory.
“There are quite a lot of baseball fans in the Central Valley, especially in Sacramento,” Judge said. “They’ll get a chance to see some big-league baseball a little closer to them. That’s pretty exciting for some of the kids with San Francisco or L.A. maybe a little too far, so now they get a chance right there in Sacramento to see some of their favorite players come through.”
A’s crowds haven’t been as large as anticipated. In 18 home dates, the team is averaging 9,839 fans per home game, fewest in the majors. Capacity is 14,014, and the team announced one sellout, on opening night: 12,119 (plus comps).
It’s a far cry from the Coliseum, where an A’s-Yankees regular-season game in 2004 attracted 54,613. In the A’s final playoff game at the Coliseum, they drew 54,005 in 2019 with the Rays in town.
The organization was scrapped in recent years under Fisher, who downsized the product on many fronts, turning away A’s fans who refused to support an owner who wouldn’t support them.
Fisher grew tired of the disenchanted fanbase and skeptical East Bay politicians and escaped to the comfort of Sacramento, where his buddy, Vivek Ranadivé, owner of the Triple-A River Cats and NBA Kings, cut a sweet deal for the A’s to use his facility for three or four seasons. Fisher is still able to pocket TV money from his NBC Sports California deal.
Meantime, Fisher’s dream could come true this weekend. When he announced at an April 2024 news conference that Sacramento would be the A’s interim site, he continued to turn off fans when mentioning how “some of the greatest players in baseball” will “launch home runs out of the most intimate ballpark in all of Major League Baseball.” He mentioned Judge by name but no A’s players.
At the same news conference, Ranadivé played up the anticipation of Judge — “you’re going to see Aaron Judge hitting home runs out there” — and mentioned Shohei Ohtani, though the Dodgers don’t play in Sacramento this season.
As for how he anticipates the A’s ballpark to play, Judge said he noticed “the ball flying out of there” in early-season games but added, “It’s tough to say until we actually get there and get a chance to hit on the field.”
The A’s aren’t the only big-league team playing in a minor-league park. The Rays are based this season at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa in the wake of Hurricane Milton destroying Tropicana Field. It’s the Yankees’ spring training ballpark, which made it odd for the Yankees to be the visiting team in a mid-April series.
“We played in London, we played in a cornfield in Iowa, a lot of different places,” Judge said. “So I think going to a minor-league park isn’t going to be much different.”