Sacramento is making its pitch for an expansion franchise in Major League Baseball.<\/p>\n
Regional leaders near California\u2019s capital city formally unveiled a bid on Thursday. The group tossed out \u201cThe Sacramento Pitch\u201d in a release from the Greater Sacramento Economic Council that boasted about a \u201cfully entitled 50-acre stadium site\u201d and nearly $2 billion in public and private funds, as well as land.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen MLB moves forward on expansion, Sacramento will be impossible to ignore,\u201d said Mark Friedman, founder and chairman of Fulcrum Property and board chair of the Greater Sacramento Economic Council.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have the market, the site, the capital, and the community. Sacramento is ready to compete \u2014 and Sacramento is ready to win,\u201d Friedman said.<\/p>\n
Sacramento is the No. 20 media market in the United States. Of the markets ahead of it, only one \u2014 Orlando-Daytona Beach \u2014 does not have an MLB team.<\/p>\n
The Athletics are playing their home games for a second straight season in West Sacramento, Calif. Their temporary home is Sutter Health Park, a minor-league stadium that effectively holds the fort until the A\u2019s state-of-the-art ballpark in Las Vegas is completed in 2028.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a defining moment for West Sacramento,\u00a0and we\u2019re ready,\u201d West Sacramento Mayor Martha Guerrero said in a news release. \u201cMajor League Baseball is already seeing firsthand the passion, energy, and civic pride that exists here. This region offers a practical and achievable path for long-term MLB success, and we have the financial capacity, community support, and clear vision needed to bring Major League Baseball permanently to West Sacramento. We\u2019re built for this. We\u2019re ready. Bring it on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Preliminary plans call for a stadium to be constructed near, or at, the site of Sutter Health Park.<\/p>\n
In addition to politicians, \u201cThe Sacramento Pitch\u201d features former San Francisco Giants manager Dusty Baker and former MLB player and Sacramento native Derrek Lee.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have always believed Sacramento is a major league city. Throughout my career, I\u2019ve traveled across the country, and there\u2019s something different about the people here. This community truly loves baseball,\u201d Baker said in a news release. \u201cFor more than a century, this region has built a proud baseball legacy and developed generations of Major League Baseball players. I could not be more excited for the prospect of bringing a permanent MLB team here.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay (then-Devil) Rays were MLB\u2019s last expansion teams. They debuted in 1998.<\/p>\n
Commissioner Rob Manfred has said he would like to have two expansion cities chosen by 2029, one in the West and one in the East.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sacramento is making its pitch for an expansion franchise in Major League Baseball. Regional leaders near California\u2019s capital…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-337906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}