The Athletics were back in Las Vegas this week, opening a six-game homestand at Las Vegas Ballpark on Monday at 7:05 p.m. The first stop was a three-game set against the Milwaukee Brewers, a rare chance for Southern Nevada fans to see the club before its planned 2028 move.
For Las Vegas baseball followers, the timing matters because the team is already on the ground now, even though its home games are still being played in West Sacramento while a new ballpark rises on the site of the old Tropicana Hotel on the Strip. The Colorado Rockies were scheduled to follow with a three-game series beginning Friday, keeping the city on the calendar for nearly the full week.
The return also reaches back 30 years. In 1996, the Oakland Athletics played their first six regular-season games at Cashman Field while the Oakland Coliseum was being renovated, with two games against the Toronto Blue Jays and four against the Detroit Tigers. Don Logan, who helped manage that temporary arrangement, said the club knew Las Vegas could handle the details that matter around major league baseball. “We knew how to handle taking care of the players, transporting, setting up good hotels, transportation from the hotels to the ballpark, the food, the medical equipment, setting up the locker rooms,” he said. “They knew we knew how to take care of them.”
Logan said the relationship was personal then and remains relevant now, because the city is once again being asked to prove it can support the A’s before the permanent move arrives. He said the games are a way to build the fan base in Southern Nevada, adding that the club is “in a good spot” and that fans are “starting to see it more now.”
The friction is that the future is already taking shape while the present belongs elsewhere. The A’s are still a West Sacramento team for now, but the home crowd they are trying to cultivate in Las Vegas will be the one they hope carries them into 2028. After the Brewers series, the Rockies are next, and the size of the response at Las Vegas Ballpark will tell the club how much ground it is gaining before the Strip ballpark opens.
