MLB ushers in new era with Cubs-Athletics game in West Sacramento

WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — This is what failure looks like.

Just don’t tell the folks in the Sacramento area. They love the Athletics and love the idea of their beloved A’s playing in the shadow of Sacramento’s iconic Tower Bridge.

This is Kings country, but the A’s will be the ones treated like royalty while they play in a decidedly minor-league ballpark for the next few summers.

Just don’t call them the Sacramento A’s or the West Sacramento A’s because they are technically in another county — Yolo — on the west side of the Sacramento River. Might as well call them the Hidden Valley A’s because Major League Baseball is pretending they aren’t really playing anywhere. Shhhh! It’s a secret.

For the next three seasons — at least — they simply will be called the Athletics. Period. City names are overrated anyway.

That 14,000-seat Pacific Coast League ballpark? Look away. Pretend Sutter Health Park — still occupied by the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats on the days the A’s aren’t here — is a major-league stadium complete with, you know, major-league accommodations. Forget that the main parking lot wouldn’t work for your neighborhood Jewel and that the clubhouses are a cinderblock building beyond the center-field wall.

‘‘I’d rather be playing in Oakland,’’ Cubs second baseman Nico Hoerner, who grew up in Oakland, said before the team helped the A’s christen their new home Monday night. ‘‘Oakland is a very special place for me. I feel for the fans of Oakland.’’

That’s why this remains a case study in failure.

Commissioner Rob Manfred was asleep at the wheel while this A’s saga sadly played out in Oakland and Las Vegas. Manfred parlayed a contract gig as outside counsel for the owners during the disastrous 1994-95 strike into a sweetheart role as boot-licker for former commissioner Bud Selig. That paved the way to his current position, where he has allowed one of MLB’s marquee franchises to be treated like an annoying houseguest overstaying its welcome.

Why should fans in Chicago care? Only about 80 miles separate Oakland — the A’s previous home since 1968 — from Sacramento. Northern California is Northern California, right?

‘‘I have a good amount of friends who stopped being A’s fans,’’ Hoerner said. ‘‘It’s really sad. It’s a storied franchise.’’

Imagine the White Sox playing in Rockford for three years before they head off to Nashville, Tennessee. If MLB could allow this to happen to the A’s and Oakland, it could happen to any team anywhere.

Even in Chicago.

This bizarre MLB Airbnb shows a team can hold its home city hostage while negotiating a better deal elsewhere. Sound familiar, Sox fans? This isn’t like the Rays playing in a spring-training ballpark while their storm-damaged home gets repaired. This wasn’t disaster relief. Just a disaster.

And a city that has hosted some of MLB’s grandest moments since the 1970s is still reeling.

In the mid-1970s, Oakland’s Swingin’ A’s, Raiders and Warriors ruled the national sports landscape. The Coliseum complex even had an NHL team, the forgettable Golden Seals, who were owned by Charles Finley while he owned the A’s.

Not bad for what’s now California’s eighth-largest city — two spots behind Sacramento.

Now Oakland has no teams.

The Golden Seals joined the NHL’s witness protection program in 1976 and disappeared in Cleveland. The Warriors, long aching for a return trip across the Bay Bridge, got their dream house in San Francisco in 2019. The Raiders and owner Al Davis did a tango with the NFL, fleeing to Los Angeles in 1982. Davis and the Raiders returned in 1995, hellbent on destroying the cookie-cutter blandness of the Coliseum. Son Mark escaped to Vegas in 2020.

And now the A’s — homeless and wondering whether Vegas is just a mirage or whether Sacramento eventually will swallow them up — have abandoned Oakland.

Blame owner John Fisher, who is the villain in all of this mess, along with a bumbling Oakland City Council and a commissioner’s office that has let Fisher have his way.

This is why Chicago — and every other MLB city — should be watching and worrying about the next owner who will hold a city hostage to get his way. There’s no one minding the store, so have at it.

‘‘What happened?’’ A’s legend and Oakland native Dave Stewart asked on a team broadcast last fall. ‘‘There’s no real explanation for it. And any explanation that you give, it doesn’t cover the impact and all the details that really took place for the Oakland A’s to be able to leave this city, playing [at a] minor-league baseball [park] in Sacramento for three years, and then eventually ending up in Las Vegas.”

It should be noted the same Dave Stewart has been linked to a group interested in buying the White Sox from Jerry Reinsdorf and Co. Nashville wants a team, and there are growing whispers Reinsdorf is looking to make a deal soon.

A driving force for Reinsdorf? Lack of interest — and financial backing — for a new stadium in Chicago.

This is how the A’s debacle began.

Last season, A’s home crowds were in the low thousands as the sun set on Oakland. West Sacramento figures to draw a full house every game. So there is an upside.

‘‘Fans are an important part,’’ Cubs manager Craig Counsell said as he surveyed the field. ‘‘If there are people in the stands, this will be a really good environment, no doubt about it.’’

Maybe, but it still looks a lot like failure.