The warm summer evenings have given way to just a hint of fall, but “the View” remains the same, one of the many selling points of Raley Field.
Located in the shadow of the California capital, the first-year, $48 million home of the Pacific Coast League’s Sacramento River Cats offers one of the prettiest vistas in all of baseball. As the sun sets over the right-field wall, silhouetted by the Tower Bridge spanning the Sacramento River, day turns into night. The city skyline looms in the distance. The stands are filled with fans of all ages.
Stocked with prospects from the talent-rich Oakland Athletics, the River Cats endured 127 player moves but won the PCL’s Western Division going away. They split the first two games of their playoff series with Salt Lake City.
Another chapter in Sacramento’s baseball history has been written, though not completed.
Before this year, the region was better known for what it didn’t have than what it did–no team, or suitable ballpark, since the mid-1970s. The nation’s 20th-largest television market, Sacramento was the largest U.S. city without organized baseball. Keokuk, Midland, Medford, even neighboring Stockton had teams, but the River City did not. To most fans, Raley Field was the farthest of far-off dreams.
Sacramento’s baseball decline accelerated when the Giants and Dodgers moved West in 1958. A continuous PCL member from 1918 to 1960, the Solons frequently changed ownership and big-league affiliations. When the PCL reorganized in 1960, the franchise moved to Hawaii, but a reincarnated group of Solons returned in 1974.
The top farm club of the Milwaukee Brewers, the “new” Solons were known for their power numbers, which were attributable to their ridiculous ballpark. Hughes Stadium, a 22,000-seat football stadium, was “reconfigured” for baseball.
Hitters were delighted. Pitchers were terrified.
Home plate to left field was charitably listed at 251 feet, though one bedeviled pitcher claimed to have measured it off and came up with 226 feet. Double-digit scores–occasionally for both teams–were common. Hughes, which still stands and still serves as a junior-college facility, “made Coors Field look like the Grand Canyon,” says a writer who covered games there.
Incredibly, a no-hitter was pitched there. Steve Dunning, a Class AAA pitcher in the Cleveland system, no-hit the Solons in 1976, in what turned out to be Sacramento’s last baseball hurrah. No one knew it was going to be 23 years before any boys of spring, summer or fall would come to town again.
But as the Capitol region grew, so did its infatuation with sports, especially after the NBA Kings arrived in 1985. Then and now the team sold out, despite records that until recently resembled the Bulls’ sorry efforts of the last two years.
Baseball? Go see the Giants or A’s, each within a two-hour drive.
Until a Chicagoan, his partner and, later, a well-backed owner came along.
Bob Hemond, the son of former White Sox General Manager Roland Hemond, co-founded River City Baseball in 1997. His mission: find a PCL team for sale, recruit someone to buy into it and build a ballpark to house it. Hemond’s search produced Art Savage.
An NBA executive in Cleveland and then the first president and CEO of the NHL’s San Jose Sharks, Savage cultivated his taste for sports ownership while working for George Gund in both places.
“Owning a team was something I always wanted to do,” Savage said. “It was a question of finding the right place and the right time. Sacramento became both.”
Savage’s touch for marketing and finance made the Sharks a model for NHL expansion franchises. His quest for a Class AAA baseball franchise reached fruition when he bought the Vancouver Canadians in 1998 and announced his intention to relocate to Sacramento. He didn’t have a place to play, but the announcement set in motion a series of political machinations on both sides of the Sacramento River.
The concept of Class AAA baseball proved lukewarm with Sacramento city leaders, who turned up their noses at anything less than a major-league franchise, though their chances of getting one were non-existent as long as two remained in the Bay Area. And the idea of public money to build a ballpark never even reached the debate stage.
Savage could feel the political winds blowing against him. Meanwhile, Christopher Cabaldon, the young, aggressive mayor of West Sacramento, saw baseball as an opportunity to change the image of his gritty little industrial town that had always existed in Sacramento’s shadow.
“Baseball worked for West Sacramento,” Cabaldon said.
With help from Sacramento County Supervisor Roger Dickinson, Savage and Cabaldon formed an alliance. A 17-acre patch of industrial-park land was selected as a stadium site and bonds were secured to finance the park.
Then the fun really began.
Savage and his management team, led by stadium operations vice president Bob Herrfeldt, had about 10 months to build the still-unnamed team’s new home. Most parks are built in 18 months or more, but the mild Sacramento winters gave the project a chance.
Construction began at warp speed.
“We spent a million dollars on demolition the moment we got the go-ahead,” project manager Don Webb said.
An army of workers on day and night shifts raced to get the park ready for the scheduled April 18 Opening Night.
Then Mother Nature stepped in with her own nasty split-finger: rainfall. Normally dry January and February proved anything but.
“Had we gotten the rain when we cleared the land, we still might have made it,” Herrfeldt said. “But the wet weather came when we were doing concrete and finish work. We had no alternative than to delay.”
Opening Night would be in May. The River Cats played their first 37 games on the road.
River Cats manager Bob Geren, a backup catcher for the Yankees and Padres in his playing days, has managed in five different places in as many years, so moving around is nothing new. But even Geren wasn’t ready for what befell his club in April and early May.
“Everybody missed seeing their families. That was the hardest part,” he said. “And having to tell the players every day, `Hey, this trip is not that big a deal,’ trying to keep their spirits up. I really think that a team takes on the personality of the manager, and if you’re down, they’re going to be down.”
Little touches helped make the journey more tolerable.
“We got to play three games in Oakland,” Geren said. “They counted as home games. It was quite a thrill for them to play on a major-league field.”
With the trip near its end, Savage and some of his staff met the team in Albuquerque. Each player and coach received a team leather jacket. More important, Savage brought along photographs of the nearly completed Raley Field, after a West Sacramento-based grocery chain that bought naming rights.
“The players could see that the ballpark was then a reality, not just a dream,” Geren said. “It made the rest of the trip easier.”
The Cats ended the marathon 22-15.
Opening Night II arrived May 15. Rain fell all day but abated just before the first pitch and the River Cats, in front of a capacity crowd of 14,111 fans, were finally home.
“If you have to play somewhere other than the big leagues, this is the place,” catcher A.J. Hinch said. “The facility is top-notch and the fans turn out every night. It’s a major-league environment in every aspect. A place like this is a great stepping stone for a young player.”
