MESA – Baseball fans attend Cactus League spring training for a multitude of reasons. For some, it’s a spring break vacation to watch their favorite team play in the desert heat. Others go to games as part of a work event. For the Berk family, attending A’s spring training games is a family reunion. The Berks plan a weekend every year to have a reunion during spring training. Part of the family lives in the East Bay, while some live in the greater Phoenix area.
“We’ve got a group of 50 or 60 people here today,” said David Berk, a diehard Athletics fan since 1974, when he attended his first game as an infant. “We’ve been doing it so long where the A’s kind of call us in January, and we figure out what weekend we want to do this, and we get group tickets.”
The group was the first to settle in the grassy Hohokam Stadium parking lot for last Saturday’s game against the Milwaukee Brewers. Berk was brought into the fandom as a kid in California’s Castro Valley by his father, John, who became an A’s fan after getting a job in the Bay Area after college. John passed down his love for Athletics games to David, who then passed down the love to his sons, who were both at the family reunion.
But after 57 seasons in the Bay Area, the A’s announced in 2023 they were leaving Oakland’s decrepit stadium and moving to Las Vegas, a contentious decision that has left die-hard fans bitter even as they still support their beloved team. It’s a team that, for the next few seasons, will be known only as the A’s or Athletics, with no city name attached. For the first time since 1967, the Athletics will not be playing regular season games at the Oakland Coliseum.
The team will temporarily play at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento for the 2025-2027 seasons before officially moving to Las Vegas — joining another former Oakland franchise, the Raiders — in the Entertainment Capital of the World. For all the Oakland sports fans, this means decades upon decades of memories and fun times at the Coliseum have come to an end.
“I’ve probably been to a thousand A’s games,” said John Berk, the father of David. “That is a lot of games.”
Fans at the Brewers-A’s spring training game Saturday had mixed opinions on whether or not they would go to Sacramento to watch the Athletics play at their temporary gigs at Sutter Health Park, home of the Sacramento River Cats, the San Francisco Giants’ Triple-A affiliate. The River Cats and the A’s plan to share the 14,000-foot ballpark while playing on different days, a dynamic that hasn’t been tested in Major League Baseball.
John and David said they would attend an A’s game in Sacramento, but they wouldn’t make the trip just for the game. “I do have some friends and relatives that live in the Sacramento area,” John said. “So it is possible that we’ll go spend a weekend visiting my sister-in-law or my brother-in-law and catch an A’s game in Sacramento.”
On the other hand, some Athletics fans like James Ibbeson, a longtime fan who now lives outside of Reno, Nevada, are excited to watch the A’s play in Sacramento. Ibbeson used to live in Oakland and watched the second game in the Coliseum’s history on April 18, 1968. Ibbeson says his son is already looking at buying tickets to Athletics games in Sacramento.
“No improvements were going to come in Oakland, they had to come to Vegas,” Ibbeson said. “I think that park will be filled every day … no doubt in my mind.”
The Berk family expressed similar discontent to what many Oakland fans have shown over the years. Fans expressed their displeasure with how owner John Fisher ran the team by holding boycotts and demonstrations around games. “They don’t really have a reason to move,” said Felix Berk, one of David’s sons. “They’re doing it not for baseball, but for money. It’s not really a baseball decision.”
For a multitude of reasons, A’s games will still be on in the Berk household this spring and summer. John is a member of a fantasy baseball league that only includes American League players, so he’ll follow the Athletics for the stats. David thinks his passion for the team will supersede any frustration about the team leaving the East Bay.
“If you asked me a year ago, I would have said, ‘No, I’m done with this,’” David said. “I’m a huge A’s fan, and I don’t know if I can just turn that off. I’ll have a hard time supporting them financially, but I will still follow the team.”
Even if he continues following the team, David admitted it’s “really depressing” that the Athletics’ 57 seasons at the Coliseum, including four World Series championships and 21 playoff appearances, are over. “I grew up 15 minutes from the Coliseum, I’ve probably been to a thousand games there in my life,” he said. “My kids are 14 and 16 now. I threw them out here for spring training when they were two months old. They’ve probably been to two or three hundred games at the Coliseum in their lives. All of that’s over. It’s just a big part of our lives.”
Meanwhile, Jorge Leon, a lifelong A’s fan, has taken a different path since the team’s departure. He organized a large group of fans to help boycott A’s games and then turned that group into supporters of the Oakland Ballers, an independent league team founded in 2023. Leon was recently elected to the Ballers' board of directors, making him one of the first fans to have a significant say in a professional sports team's decision-making.
“It’s been quite the journey,” said Leon, 39, an Oakland native and father of two who works as a wastewater control inspector and high school soccer coach. “The reason I got to this point is because we’ve been trying to build the voice for the fans, trying to say that fans do matter. We have to unite in a way that’s similar to a union.”
With Leon’s help, the Ballers settled on Raimondi Park as a home field and invested almost $2 million to renovate it. The 4,000-capacity stadium averaged about 2,000 spectators for Ballers games in its first season, with attendance highest near the end of the year when the new team made an inspiring run into the playoffs.
“People want to say, ‘Hey, if I put money into this team, at least I have a sense of community with this ballclub,” Leon said. “It’s a risk. Can I say for sure you’re going to make money off it? I don’t know. But I do know the people running it — and people like me — will do their best to create a successful team and a great place to gather.”
As the Athletics move to Las Vegas, the future of Oakland baseball is now in the hands of the Ballers and their fans. Leon is excited about the opportunity to make a difference. “I’m excited for West Oakland,” he said. “Hopefully the Ballers whoop and we can rep the city well.”
