A’s to have 2 patches: for Rickey, West Sac

MLB

Team plans to honor late icon, move to new home

The Sutter Health Park scoreboard welcomes the Oakland A’s on April 4, 2024, on the day of the announcement that the team will temporarily relocate to West Sacramento in 2025. HECTOR AMEZCUA — THE SACRAMENTO BEE

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By Chris Biderman

The Sacramento Bee

The Athletics on Friday announced plans to honor the late Rickey Henderson and their first season in West Sacramento when they take the field at Sutter Health Park this spring.

The team said it would wear two jersey patches for the 2025 campaign, one to honor Henderson with his No. 24 and another with a design of the Tower Bridge along with a script of “Sacramento.”

The team called Henderson the “greatest player in franchise history and one of the greatest leadoff hitters of all time.” Henderson, of course, owns Major League Baseball records for stolen bases (1,406) and runs scored (2,295). He was inducted in the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2009 and had his number retired by the team that year.

Henderson died Dec. 20 at 65. He made public appearances months earlier during the A’s final stretch of games at the Oakland Coliseum before developing pneumonia several months later. Henderson spent many years in retirement as a roaming consultant with the A’s working with players throughout the organization. He spent 14 of his 25 big league seasons with the club after growing up in Oakland.

The patch depicting the Tower Bridge and the “Sacramento” script comes after the team decided to adopt jerseys without a city name amid the temporary move to the capital region. The team said it would officially be called the “Athletics” without adding Sacramento as its official home city in name when it announced it would play at Sutter Health Park last spring.

The team is planning to stay in West Sacramento for three seasons with an option for a fourth before moving to a $1.75 billion domed stadium on the Las Vegas Strip. The team hopes to break ground on the project this year and open in 2028. In the meantime, the A’s will share the 14,000-seat Sutter Health Park with the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats, the top minor league affiliate of the San Francisco Giants.

The riverfront stadium is currently undergoing renovations to become MLB-ready, which includes the construction of a new home clubhouse and upgrades to the grass playing surface, dugouts, lighting, media areas and other amenities.

The team said the patch of the Tower Bridge will be in the team’s green and gold color scheme. Sacramento’s iconic bridge can be seen from Sutter Health Park beyond the right field wall and is one of the stadium’s most striking visual features. Manager Mark Kotsay and a handful of the team’s key players visited Sacramento earlier this month, sat courtside at a Kings game and visited a local grade school to surprise students.

The team also announced Friday there would be two giveaways for the team’s first game in West Sacramento on March 31 when it hosts the Chicago Cubs. Each fan at the game will receive a green and white trucker hat featuring the new Sacramento jersey patch and a Rickey Henderson rally towel.