Evan Drellich

2 months ago | nytimes.com | Evan Drellich

WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. - If you cruised through the Sutter Health Park concourse in the early innings Monday night, if you moved past all the A's jerseys on the just-a-bit-too small walkways and then sat with the picnickers on the lawn in right field, you could start to see it: The vision the A's are selling in Sacramento. A's fans were everywhere in a stadium never meant for Major League Baseball. And at the start of the game, few people seemed ready to riot over the team's exit from Oakland.

2 months ago | nytimes.com | Evan Drellich

WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. - On Day One in Sacramento, John Fisher said he isn't nervous. Sitting in a picnic area in the left-field stands during batting practice on Monday at Sutter Health Park, the owner of the Athletics paused when asked what emotions he had before his team's first game in a new city, whether any nerves were afoot. He started to talk about Opening Day generally and how hopeful a time spring is, "when everything is kind of reborn," before circling back.

2 months ago | nytimes.com | Evan Drellich

WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The most glaring difference between a major- and minor-league stadium is in height. The newly renovated home of the Athletics, Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, Calif., carries just one main level topped by a second concourse of mostly suites, and in that way, it is still unmistakably the minor-league park it was built to be. But in a city that's never regularly hosted Major League Baseball, the A's hope intimacy creates an unusual draw.

2 months ago | nytimes.com | Evan Drellich

TOKYO - Twenty minutes from the Tokyo Dome sits another of Japan's most revered ballparks, the 99-year-old Meiji Jingu Stadium, one of the few fields still in use anywhere that can claim Babe Ruth as a batter. Jingu's home club, the Yakult Swallows, held a spring exhibition Tuesday afternoon against the Hanshin Tigers, creating a crosstown doubleheader opportunity for fans lucky enough to also have tickets for the Dodgers-Cubs season opener at the Dome that night.

2 months ago | nytimes.com | Evan Drellich

TOKYO - Los Angeles Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman said he's day to day with perhaps a 75 percent chance of playing in the second game of the season after he was scratched from the Opening Day lineup in Japan with discomfort in his left ribs. Freeman, 35 and in his 16th big league season, felt something on his third to last swing of batting practice on Tuesday at the Tokyo Dome, where the Dodgers beat the Chicago Cubs 4-1.