Athletics return – Nearly midnight in Las Vegas, and the A’s clubhouse felt like a pressure cooker—after the franchise’s return for regular-season MLB games, the league’s most nomadic stop to date, and a game so wild it still left players talking about the physics of “thin air.”
When the introductions started crackling at the Las Vegas Ballpark on June 8, the city looked like it was throwing a party for a team that wasn’t supposed to be back this soon—at least not for regular-season baseball.
A sellout crowd of 8,519 poured in, including four suites filled with Athletics front office officials and investors. Flames shot into the sky. DJ Pauly D of “Jersey Shore” and Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys delivered ceremonial first pitches. Bruce Buffer—normally the voice behind UFC fights—ran player introductions. A military flyover finished the spectacle.
For the first time in three decades. and only the second time in Las Vegas’s history. the city hosted regular-season Major League Baseball. The A’s had played there in 1996 as the Oakland Coliseum underwent renovations—this time. the franchise is a different kind of traveler. still searching for permanence.
By Monday, the baseball at the center of it all had already earned a kind of mythology.
Milwaukee Brewers won 15-14 in 12 innings on June 8. turning a chaotic night into a record of everything that can go wrong—or right—in a single game. The box score told the rest: 34 hits, 11 home runs, 29 runs scored, and 441 pitches thrown by 14 pitchers. A’s owner John Fisher watched from his suite. cheering in jubilation and then. as the game stretched. screaming in anguish.
“The most bizarre game I’ve ever had in Major League Baseball in 11 years,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “Never saw anything like it.”
A’s catcher Shea Langeliers described it the only way he could after a 4-hour, 14-minute marathon that included 16 ABS challenges.
“It was a crazy game. It was just kind of wild all of the way around.”
There were 10 innings of reason to stare at the scoreboard and still feel confused. Both teams scored in every inning but the fourth in regulation. Each exploded for four runs in the 10th inning. Then, after the chaos, both shut out in the 11th inning even with the automatic baserunner.
Kyle Harrison’s day turned quickly. He entered with a 1.57 ERA and gave up eight earned runs in 2 ⅓ innings—one more than the total of his past seven starts. Brewers first baseman Andrew Vaughn, who had never even set foot in the city limits of Las Vegas, went 4-for-4 with four RBIs.
On the A’s side, Tyler Soderstrom spent Monday morning house-hunting in Las Vegas, then hit two homers that night. Jeffrey Springs took the ball at nearly midnight’s edge of memory and ended up staring at a game that felt built for headlines: he gave up eight hits and five runs in five innings.
“It’s kind of crazy to sit in here and watch how the rest of the game went,” Springs said.
Soderstrom wasn’t just impressed by the result. He had an explanation that sounded like a forecast.
“This place is definitely hitter-friendly,” he said. “Thin air, so the ball flies. The infield is really hard, so a lot of balls are chopped straight down, bouncing through. It was something else.’”
The Athletics had planned the day as an overture for a future in Las Vegas. This game was the first of a six-game homestand against the Brewers and Colorado Rockies, and it served as a sneak preview for what comes next.
The franchise’s path has been anything but steady. The Athletics have moved from Philadelphia to Kansas City to Oakland and now Sacramento, and they’re set to have a new permanent home in 2028—a $2 billion state-of-the-art facility on the Las Vegas strip.
The business logic, however, has been its own kind of storyline.
In Sacramento, the A’s decided to move for three years after abandoning Oakland. They did so even as the club’s local TV deal keeps them connected to the Bay Area. The A’s are getting paid $80 million for their local TV rights this season as if they were still playing in the Bay Area. The piece of the equation that matters: the deal would have gone away if the team had moved to Las Vegas. which has the 40th-largest TV market.
There’s also a time lag built into the move. The A’s have 1½ more years in Sacramento, where they have no formal name and are called simply the Athletics with no city designation. By then, MLB is hoping that all 30 teams will share their local TV revenue.
Even the players felt the compromise. Teammate Lawrence Butler talked about how badly rival players want to join the team when they hit free agency, but also acknowledged they still have to play in a minor-league ballpark for one more year.
The A’s. staying at a resort on the Las Vegas strip. planned a stadium tour Tuesday. June 9. so players could take a first-hand look at their future domed facility. Several A’s players like Nick Kurtz and Butler plan to return this winter to house-hunt. A’s manager Mark Kotsay has already bought a house in Las Vegas.
And in the middle of all the logistics, some of the loudest talk has turned into a quiet question: will this city treat the team like a visiting act—or like its own?
Don Logan, president of the Las Vegas Aviators, has been with the franchise for 43 years. He sat in his office Monday, deluged with phone calls from friends asking for tickets, and predicted it would work largely because of visiting fan support.
“The thing that’s different about Vegas is the tourists,” Logan said. “I mean. we had 40-plus million people coming here before COVID. and you augment that to the two million people that live here. and it’s a different market. You’re already seeing that with the Raiders. If you’re a visiting fan and you want to see your team somewhere, you go to Vegas.”.
Logan said there are times when there are more fans for the visiting team than the Raiders. When the Chiefs and Packers played here, he said it felt like home games for them.
The A’s got a taste of that experience on June 8, too, with nearly as many fans cheering for the Brewers as for the Athletics and erupting when the final out came.
No matter. Logan framed it the way the business world often does: money is money, and when people buy tickets, allegiance matters less.
“This is going to be the ultimate destination place,” Logan said. “We’ve got the best hotels. We’ve got the best dining. We’ve got the best shopping. We’ve got the best entertainment. We’ve got the casinos. We’ve got a great airport with great access to all the major airports around North America.”
He also pointed to suites—business and entertainment bundled together—as a reason the format can outgrow a normal baseball season.
“Besides all of that, if you’re one of the major companies, and you want a place to entertain your key employees or your bring customers, you buy a suite and bring them here. That’s what’s happening in the other sports, and it’s going to continue to happen with baseball.”
Logan said the demand is already visible. The A’s have nearly sold out all of their 44 suites—30 regular suites, 12 party suites, and two dugout suites that allow fans to sit right next to each dugout with clear glass.
Premium pricing also sits at the center of the plan. The A’s could make a small fortune with their premium and club-level personal seat licenses that range from $6,000 to $106,000. If personal seat licenses are included, they are expected to be among the highest-priced tickets in MLB.
Brian Jacobs, 68, a retired school district superintendent from Pahrump, Nevada, said he doesn’t plan to empty out his retirement fund for seat licenses for him and his wife, MaryAnn. But he is already planning to give up his season tickets for the Aviators and buy season tickets for the A’s.
“We’re making that transition,” Jacobs said. “I think it’s going to be so exciting to have the big boys here in town. I’ve already been getting text messages from my friends in Southern California saying. ‘Hey. get ready for us to come up for the weekend to catch a ballgame.’ I think we’re going to have a lot more friends visiting us now.”.
The A’s are hearing similar excitement from inside baseball.
“I don’t want to say any names,” Butler said. “but a lot of players have been talking to me about wanting to come here. So that’s pretty cool to see that we’re going to be a known place that players will want to come play.”
Kurtz, the 2025 AL Rookie of the Year, said the move feels like a reset.
“It’s going to be starting something fresh,” he said. “and I feel like it’s going to be really cool. I speak for a lot of us saying that.”
He also tied the excitement to a point players can calculate quickly: taxes.
“And, oh yes, no state taxes compared to the 13.3% they’re paying in California,” Kurtz said.
“That’s the huge part,” Butler said. “California won’t be taking all of our money.”
Catcher Jonah Heim, who met his wife in Las Vegas when he played in 2019 for the Aviators, said the tax angle gives the team an edge.
“I think they’ll definitely have a huge advantage with no tax,” Heim said.
The A’s are pushing hard to translate that pitch into ticket sales right away. They are running a full-scale public relations blitz this week, with giveaways every game this homestand. Fans receiving Vegas 28 jerseys on Monday were part of that effort.
A’s manager Mark Kotsay said the goal is to show the franchise can act like a real part of the community.
“It’s good to be here in Vegas to be able to play a regular-season series in front of a community that we’re obviously going to be a big part of. ” Kotsay said. “We want to do as much as we can here in the community. get out. and show that our engagement is going to 100%. which I think we’re doing and going to do as we get further into this relationship.”.
Fans have answered with their wallets. At least 8,500 tickets were sold for each game against the Brewers, and 8,000 or more for each game against the Rockies.
The weather cooperated on Monday as well: an 80-degree balmy evening. The forecast calls for mild temperatures the rest of the week, but with a day game Sunday and a high expected to be 101, the week could turn uncomfortable quickly—dry heat included.
Still, even the best promotions won’t outweigh the one factor sports fans understand better than anyone: winning.
The Vegas Golden Knights showed that by being in the Stanley Cup Final their first year in 2017-2018, winning the Stanley Cup in their sixth year, and returning to the Final again this year.
Murphy said the A’s are finally showing signs of reaching the kind of level that changes everything.
“There’s some really special dudes over there,” Murphy said, “and they’ve been on the cusp for a while. They’ve impressed me the last couple of years how they’ve played.’”
The A’s are coming off losing 102 games in 2022 and 112 games in 2023, but have shown steady improvement and are 31-35, just 3½ games out of first place.
That makes the timing in Las Vegas feel urgent. They need to win right away in their newest temporary home—and they also need to make the city understand what the franchise already carries.
The A’s not only have to embrace their proud history, Las Vegas residents were reminded, but also actively bring it into the conversation. The franchise has been around for 126 years, won three consecutive World Series titles in the 1970s, and played in three consecutive World Series in 1988-1990.
Logan said the brand is established and distinctive.
“They have an established brand. It’s the only green-and-gold color scheme in baseball. They’ve got some advantages being the Athletics.”
He said the team needs to promote the fact that it’s an iconic brand.
“They’ve got to promote the fact that this is an iconic brand.”
He even offered a blunt promise about what changes once they get into a climate-controlled environment at the new ballpark: normalcy, without pop-ups flying over the fence for homers, and without needing to outscore the Raiders just to have a shot at winning.
Just don’t count on that this week.
For now. the A’s return to Las Vegas has already delivered the one thing executives can’t buy: a night that players and fans will remember. The game was a reminder that a wandering franchise still has the ability to turn a stadium into a stage—and for at least one week. Las Vegas is willing to watch.
Athletics return to Las Vegas MLB in Las Vegas John Fisher Mark Kotsay Las Vegas Ballpark Brewers vs Athletics June 8 $2 billion domed facility 2028 A's local TV rights $80 million personal seat licenses $6 000 to $106 000 no state taxes California 13.3% Larry Butler Shea Langeliers
So did they really bring the team back or is this just hype?
The “thin air” thing is probably just Vegas heat messing with the ball, right? Either way that flyover and Buffer guy is kinda wild.
Wait I thought the A’s were leaving again though? Like this article makes it sound shocking they came back, but I swear I heard something about renovations/relocation like last year. Also DJ Pauly D and Nick Carter?? That’s not baseball to me, that’s like a concert commercial.
8,519 sellout seems low for all that circus. And “only the second time” in Vegas history—does that mean they played there other years but not regular season? I’m confused. Vegas always has events and then somehow MLB is “back for the first time in 30 years,” meanwhile I feel like I remember the A’s there before. Physics of thin air sounds like something they say so the losses don’t count lol.